Eli Roth is not as well known in front of the camera as he is behind it, but that will likely change once Quentin Tarantino's WWII revenge movie, Inglourious Basterds, opens next week. Roth wrote and directed the horror film Hostel, but steps into the spotlight in Basterds as Sgt. Donny Donowitz, a fierce Jewish Nazi hunter.
Roth's character, nicknamed "The Bear Jew" by the Nazis, specializes in bashing his enemies to a pulp with a baseball bat. To prepare to film such emotionally charged scenes, Roth said that he called on the memories of his deceased Jewish relatives and an unlikely source of inspiration: Miley Cyrus and the music of Hannah Montana.
I went back and forth thinking about my relatives being killed in concentration camps to listening to Hannah Montana.
You couldn't ever put me in a Hannah Montana concert with a baseball bat or I would wipe the place out.
Inglourious Basterds stars Brad Pitt, Mike Myers, Diane Kruger, B.J. Novak, and Julie Dreyfus.