Eli Roth of “Inglourious Basterds”

Eli Roth, Hostel director and Inglourious Basterds star, discusses how Iron Maiden and Hannah Montana sent him to his “psycho place” and prepared him for WWII in this exclusive ARTISTdirect.com playlist feature…

A Taste:

The Misfits, Iron Maiden, Guns N’ Roses, Hannah Montana

Being from Boston, Eli Roth is naturally pretty good with a baseball bat. That’s why his Basterd, Sgt. Donny Donowitz, brandishes one in Quentin Tarantino’s WWII masterpiece Inglourious Basterds. Instead of cracking homeruns out of Fenway Park, Donowitz cracks skulls behind enemy lines.

The bat was Roth’s touch for the character too. Smiling, he laughs, “Everybody in Boston has a bat in the car for traffic confrontations. In that city, you really feel like you’re going to get your ass kicked every five minutes [Laughs].”

That’s why Roth’s Beantown basher in Basterds is constantly ready for war and pursuing this goal of complete violent apotheosis—in the most classical yet bloody fashion. Roth continues, “Donny was always there to become this hero. He wants fight on behalf of those that can’t fight. He just wants to kill them but he knows he’s the strongest one. Brad [Pitt] and I were in character all the time. We never broke it. The movie gave us permission to act like that all the time.”

One thing that he didn’t have to add to the character was the Boston accent though. “It drives me crazy when there are bad Boston accents in movies,” the auteur and actor laughs “To be a Jewish badass from Boston, I was like, ‘This is my chance!’ I went back there, hung out at Revere Beach, lifted weights and put on 40lbs of muscle for the part. I went crazy. I put everything I had into it.”

He also cranked a lot of music to prepare for the role, and his playlist might surprise you. Check out Roth’s playlist below in this video and don’t miss Inglourious Basterds this Friday August 21.

Eli Roth’s Playlist:

1. The Misfits

2. Iron Maiden

3. Guns N’ Roses

4. Danzig

There are different things that psych me up. I was listening to The Misfits, Iron Maiden and Guns N’ Roses—all of the ’80s heavy metal parking lot music that I grew up with.

5. Hannah Montana

Then my girlfriend put Hannah Montana on my iPod. I was like, “What is this?” I went crazy! I just started going nuts [Laughs]. Whenever I wanted to go to my psycho place, I’d put on Hannah Montana and go insane. So don’t ever let me loose at a Hannah Montana concert with a bat [Laughs].

—Rick Florino
08.16.09

Tags: Eli Roth of "Inglourious Basterds", Guns N' Roses, Hannah Montana, Iron Maiden, The Misfits