I always get excited about people from my hometown (Newton, Massachusetts) making it big in Hollywood. There are more of them than you would think. Anyway, today I saw mention of my great city in a New Yorker magazine article about the famous horror film director Eli Roth.
As a party trick, when he was growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, his mother once hired a magician to cut him in half with a chainsaw. “What other mother would do that?” Roth asked the other day at a West Hollywood café. “My parents have always been supportive.”
Eli Roth is famous for his “torture porn” films (no porn involved, just ghastly, bloody torture), such as “Cabin Fever” and ”Hostel” (parts one and two). These days you can see him in Quentin Tarantino’s new film “Inglorious Basterds,” Mr. Tarantino also produced both “Hostel”s, where Mr. Roth plays a baseball-bat-wielding Nazi killer called the the Bear Jew. It’s great to see a Newton Jew – the city’s population is roughly 50% Jewish – involved in a project like “Inglorious Basterds” where American Jews brutally torture and kill Nazi officers in occupied France. I like to think that Newton would be really proud. Looks like a Newton Passover Seder even helped Tarantino with the film:
[Eli Roth] served as Tarantino’s unofficial “Jewish fact-checker.” (His mother even appears as a Nazi collaborator.) “Quentin asked me, ‘Would a Jew offer absolution if it meant ending the war?’” Roth recalled. “I told him, ‘The Jews are more angry now about shit from seven thousand years ago than we were seven thousand years ago. We never forget, and we do not forgive. But if you want a good picture of Jewish psychology you should come to my Passover Seder.’ ” Tarantino went to the Seder, and he told Roth that all the talk of Jewish traditions gave him the confidence to finish the script.
Woah! I just realized that another Newton native, B.J. Novak, is also a star in “Inglorious Basterds.” He’s famous for his role in The Office tv show, which he also helps write. And, lets not forget, The Office also stars the devilishly handsome John Krasinski, another fabulous Newton native. Give it up for Newton!
