Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Part Two of my HOSTEL: PART TWO set visit.
I highly, highly, highly recommend reading my Part One visit. You can click here to do so.
I’ll be jumping right off of the end of the last report, so if you don’t remember it or didn’t give it a look-over, please click on over and come back. My state of mind, my history with HOSTEL and Eli Roth and the description of the sets are all in the first report.
It does suck writing this a good half a year after the visit. I make a case on all the set visits I’m invited to do for posting immediately, not holding until closer to the film’s release. I think back in the days of Starlogue and Fangoria and Cinefantastique, posting set reports the month of release was perfectly fine, but the game has changed since the internet boom. It’s not just the internet, I’d also blame DVDs. People now have a much better understanding on how movies work, what goes into film development and the process as a whole.
In my experience, set visit reports work best if the movie’s still in production. It’s early, people are interested in any little detail. I visited the HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX set last year and I haven’t even been able to mention I was there. Are you guys really going to give a shit when I’m able to post my set visit the week before it comes out? I can describe the Azkaban prison from the art I saw or you can watch the last trailer and see it for yourself. See what I mean?
Luckily with HOSTEL I was at the very least able to argue for a Part One report to go up immediately. Now, the movie’s around the corner and here I am with Part Two. I have a few pages of notes and some hazy memories… and I am able to bring along some candid shots from the production, so here we go.
That was one of the first pictures I snapped. I didn’t take too many. This was before my MIST and BROTHERS BLOOM reports where I kind of stumbled upon how much better the reports can be with a few candid shots. So, there aren’t much here and the only reason I felt in any way comfortable snapping these was because of my pre-existing friendship with Eli.
The above shot is the studio where they were filming on my visit. I was told that this place has a long and sordid history. Many of Hitler’s propaganda films were shot there.
There were primarily two actors I saw working, although both Lauren German and Heather Matarazzo popped up at various points in the day to just hang out, I guess.
The big scenes of the day all involved Bijou Philips. In the first and meatiest sequence I saw filmed, Philips shared the screen with a Russian character actress, an older woman by the name of Liliya Malkina. You’ve seen her, she was the grandma cooking the turkey at the beginning of Roth’s THANKSGIVING trailer.
Malkina was the bomb. She was a Russian Jew who lived through the Holocaust and seemed to have a strong background in vaudeville. She has a heavy smoker’s voice and a bulldoggish appearance, but somehow still felt very grandmotherly.
The scene had Philips tied to a make-up chair, sitting in front of a long mirror, edges lined with old-time lightbulbs, some of which are burned out. She’s gagged and struggling when the door behind her opens and Liliya walks in.
Like I said, she looked Grandmotherly, so Philips begs her for help. Malkina just shushes her as she starts combing her hair. Her English is broken. “Make look good…” She keeps shushing Philips’ gagged cries and eventually removes the gag to start making up her face.
The framing of the shot had both Philips in the chair and Malkina standing in the frame, backs to us. The mirror is large in the frame, so you actually see the mirrored image of them both through the whole shot. Later on, they got a closer shot from the front by removing the mirror and sticking the camera in there. I got an okay shot of that below.
Philips was… a character. She wasn’t exactly rude, but she certainly seemed very “actory,” if that even a word. To her credit, she gave it her all, but she was definitely outspoken.
The very first thing I heard out of her was when I first got there and sat at the monitor with Eli and the script supervisor. I hadn’t met her yet and as Eli and I were talking about how the production has been going I suddenly hear what sounds like crying. Eli heard it to. He called out, “Is Bijou crying or laughing?” An AD yelled back, “Crying.” Roth put his game face on and said, “Then let’s shoot.”
Philips was getting into character and working herself up into a fit, complete with hitching sobs and all the waterworks.
Over the headphones I heard Philips ask, still crying, for the AD put the gag in… a single piece of folded cloth tied around the back of her head. “Put it in tight,” she said. The AD didn’t want to hurt her, so he tied it only loosely at first. “My gag is NOT tight!”
It was tied off tight, as requested, cutting into her cheeks pretty hard.
They got the first shot off and Philips gave it her all, screaming through her gag, pulling at the handcuffs keeping her tied to the chair, whipping her head back and forth, tears flowing.
Afterwards, she was let out of the chair and sat next to me to watch the playback on the monitor. “I feel like this is all I do in every movie I do. I cry, I die, I get raped…”
In the scene, when the gag is removed, Philips starts with the real begging. When she realizes this lady isn’t going to help her, she starts really freaking out, screaming, etc. Malkina stops her by danging the handcuff key in front of her face. Philips stops all at once and watches as the key lowers and undoes one of the cuffs.
Malkina gently whistles as she pets Philips’ newly freed hand. After a beat, Philips lunges forward, biting the woman’s nose.
In all the shots I saw film the bite was mimed. They grabbed an insert later with a KNB effects nose, but I’ll get to that in a second.
Eli got enough of the wide takes and the new set-up had the camera close to the base of the chair, moving up, seeing Bijou’s naked legs (she’s wearing this hospital blue t-shirt and shorts) and seeing the cuffs attached to both her and the chair. It ends with a framing like the wide, but closer, with the mirror reflecting most of the image back.
“Let’s chain ‘er up and get ready to roll,” Roth said.
Philips asks for her motivation in this scene. He says right now, her character, Whitney, "doesn’t know what she’s in for. Could be for sex? Who knows?”
“Then why do I bite her nose?” Philips asks.
“Whitney acts on instinct. She knows, no matter how sweet this lady is, she’s there to make a buck. She knows that she’s evil.”
The scene plays out again and they get it after a few takes.
Then they move in for the close-up of the bite. What happens here is KNB created a fake nose to put over Malkina’s own nose. They don’t show the bite as much as they show the aftermath. Philips has blood in her mouth and they start with the lunge up to Malkina’s face. Then we see Philips pull back and get our first look at the nose appliance. It’s not all that disgusting, in that we don’t see a huge chunk taken out of it, but you do see lots of blood, some cartilage and teeth marks in the skin.
Malkina screams, holding her nose, as Philips uncuffs her other hand and makes a break for it.
In this shot, you only really see the back of Bijou’s head, something she apparently didn’t realize when she came back to watch the monitors. “I’m so bummed. I had no idea you couldn’t see my face… It’s such a great fucking performance…”
She had her moment in another set-up, which featured the back of Malkina’s head as she pulls away and Philips spits out a chunk of nose and mouthful of blood.
It was around this time I met Heather Matarazzo, who was a real sweet girl. Very friendly and cool to talk to. And funny, too. At one point she was joking around with Philips and Philips’ incredibly cute friend, Emily, then turned to me and asked if I could possibly spread the rumor that she and Philips were together. “It would set the dyke community aflame!”
Before they turned the camera around (the aforementioned through-the-mirror shot), they got close-ups for Malkina. She shined, totally playing up the creep factor.
The through-the-mirror shot was to get close-ups on Bijou. I don’t know exactly what happened. Either she had worn herself out or cracked a little under the pressure of having the camera focused on her, but she blew a lot takes. She wasn’t able to get the waterworks going again and claimed that the make-up on her face had somehow caused her to dry up. So, they gave her fake tears.
It took some time and gentle direction from Eli, but she eventually got it back enough to get her the shot.
After this rocky patch I experienced the most awkward moment on this visit. Philips was walking back to the monitor and was wiping her eyes clear of the fake tears with the bottom of her shirt. As she was doing this, her boob popped out. She didn’t seem to notice or care, finished wiping her eye and let the shirt fall back down.
The second that boob fell out I thought to myself, “Wait, is that what I think… yes. Yes it sure is,” and found somewhere else to look as quickly as possible. It’s not the first time I caught a flash on a movie set, but it was certainly the closest I’ve been to the person flashing.
This would be about 2/3rds into my day and the production did two things to wake me up (remember I made the 20 hours of travel and went right to the set, so I was probably up around 32 hours straight at this point). One, Eli grabbed me something called a SPEED 8, some kind of Eastern European energy drink that probably had aborted fetus adrenal glands in it or something. Two, I went up to visit the boys at KNB and was handed a severed cock.
I knew some of them from previous set visits and trips KNB’s studio in the valley. In particular, I got to hang a little with Mike McCarty and I believe it was he who handed me the dick wrapped in a plastic bag. Thanks, Mike.
And, yes, if you’re curious that does play into the film. They didn’t just have one laying around… or maybe they usually do, but here there was a reason for them to hand a visitor a severed dick.
They kept the mirror set up for Philips’ dash out the door. Out the door you see her run out into the hallway to a chainlink door. It’s locked. She shakes it a couple times, then turns, runs back down the hallway and out of view.
The production moved the camera into the hallway. You can see it in the above pic. Bijou ran down the hall… the camera was about where I was when I took the above picture, looking down the hall.
Bijou runs towards the plexi-glassed monitoring station. There’s no one there, but as she approaches, an iron gate shoots out from the wall and cuts her off. She slams into it, gives it a mighty shake, then doubles back, running back towards the camera.
Another gate cuts her off. She tries to make it past before it slams shut, but doesn’t make it. She cries and men appear behind her, all holding the leashes to some of the meanest looking German Shepherds I’ve ever seen.
They actually had to bring in a stunt double for Philips for the next shot because these fuckers were so mean. The stunt woman had her hair covering her face, but crouched in the corner as the men approached with the dogs, pulling the leashes tight and lunging at the woman, stopping inches from her.
There was one take where the dog’s teeth were millimeters from the woman’s arm. I thought she had been bitten and I wasn’t alone. Gabe, Eli’s brother and producer, Eli and myself each gasped when it happened. When it turned out she wasn’t hurt, Eli’s grin was huge. He was so happy he got that shot without having to spill a crew-member’s blood.
That was about the extent of my visit. I stumbled back to the hotel and slept 14 solid hours. That gave me an afternoon to explore Prague a little bit before I had to leave for my trip back.
Hope you guys enjoyed the set report. Here’s a parting picture. I couldn’t visit this set and not come back with a picture of some gore, so here you go!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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