Eli Roth

Like you, your Inglourious Basterds character comes form Boston. Can you promise that we won’t have to sit through any crappy fake accents?
My pet peeve in movies is Boston accents! People from Boston have a real problem with The Departed because the only real accents are Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon. Everybody else you know they’re pretending. People actually call it The Retarded. I don’t know a lot of people who made it through that movie. I can’t watch it. For me, the worst was Good Will Hunting, because I really like Robin Williams and then to hear him try to do a Boston accent was painful.

So how did you rediscover your accent?
I have friends out here in L.A., so it comes out when we’re watching Patriots and Red Sox games. I just had to make sure it was wicked sharp.

Rumor has it your character, Donnie, is the most badass Basterd. True?
Yeah! Donnie’s whole thing is he’s gotten all the Jewish people in his neighborhood to sign his baseball bat with the name of someone they’re worried about in Europe. And his mission is he’s going to beat every Nazi he finds to death with it. So while the Basterds are interrogating and scalping Nazis, they ask them questions, and finally if the guys are not talking they bring me out and I just pummel them with a baseball bat!

This is going to get pretty bloody, huh?
Oh, yeah! Quentin [Tarantino] certainly did not skimp on the violence.

You directed a fake Nazi propaganda film that airs in the middle of Inglourious Basterds. Was that the most twisted thing you’ve ever made?
I thought I had made some horrific movies before, but there I was, filming that propaganda movie, Nation’s Pride. The whole thing is this guy in a bell tower shooting American soldiers and it’s all supposed to be about the glory of Hitler and the power of the swastika.

I’m in the scene where they watch the movie. So there I am, a Jewish director, sitting with 300 Nazi extras watching this movie and going crazy. They’re in character and acting, but hearing them yell “Heil Hitler!” and “Kill the Jews!” in German, my stomach dropped. I looked at Quentin and said, “What have I done? Did I just start the Fourth Reich? This movie is going to reignite the Nazi party and they’re going to make me their Sarah Palin!”

Did you have any fun with the Nazi extras while you were on set? Those guys are a barrel of laughs.
We filmed this scene with all the Nazi extras watching a propaganda movie. It had been a very long, intense week, and as soon as our sound guy heard “That’s a wrap,” he put on “Everything She Wants” by Wham! So I got up in front of all the Nazis and started dancing. And then I started stripping. Everybody was cheering so I went full monty and did a full striptease to Wham! for 300 Nazi extras. Quentin came up to me after and thanked me. Everybody needed that laugh and that levity. We had been in this WWII Nazi headspace for so long. That’s a great moment that they’ll never forget, the bear Jew’s hairy ass dancing to Wham!—Interviewed by Mike Olson

Roth’s new film, Inglourious Basterds, opens Fri 21.

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