On January 6, Inglourious Basterds’ Eli Roth tweeted the whole harrowing story of his disastrous vacation in Mexico, in which his kayak sank, leaving him stranded in the ocean on a rock, standing on a crowd of spiky sea urchins until he was finally rescued by a fisherman. We caught up with him yesterday afternoon at the BAFTA/LA Awards Season Tea Party, and he was still hurting, hobbling up the red carpet. “I got about 25 of the urchins out the other day,†he said. “I still have them in my toes. Imagine a pencil breaking off and staying in. It’s horrible. Some of them are buried so deep in my toes, I don’t know how I’m gonna get them out. I’m gonna have to get surgery on my foot. I can’t run. I can’t really walk.â€
The Hostel director also gave a few more details on where the faulty kayak came from: He had been out swimming when he first saw the boat tied to a buoy: “This fisherman was like ‘Oh, you wanna use my kayak?,’ and I’m like, ‘Okay.’ So, I went off behind an island and I didn’t notice there was a hole in the kayak and it sank. I was in open water, without a life preserver.†Total stranger’s kayak, no life preserver, out of sight of land: What could go wrong? SMASH CUT TO: sea urchins.
Hobbled though he may be, you can not keep the Bear Jew down. The night before, at the New York Times Style Magazine cocktail party, he was spotted hovering over a blonde, whispering, “You should come out later.†Take that, sea life!