Uwe Boll

Uwe Boll
Boll on the set of Dungeon Siege, at the studios in Vancouver
Born	(1965-06-22) June 22, 1965 Wermelskirchen, West Germany
Occupation(s)	Director, producer, screenwriter
Years active	1991–present
Website	http://www.boll-ag.de

Uwe Boll (German pronunciation: [ˈuːvə ˈbɔl]; born June 22, 1965) is a German director, producer and screenwriter, whose work includes several films adapted from video games. He finances his own films through his Boll KG production company. He is often cited as one of the worst directors of all time.

Early life

Boll was born in Wermelskirchen. He studied at the University of Cologne and the University of Siegen, and holds a doctorate in literature.

He first decided to go into the movie business at ten years old, after seeing Marlon Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty.

Films

Boll's first two major releases were the horror movie Blackwoods and the drama Heart of America, both of which he directed and co-wrote.

Boll is best-known for adapting video games into movies, having directed and produced a number of such adaptations, including House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Alone in the Dark II, BloodRayne, BloodRayne II: Deliverance, BloodRayne: The Third Reich, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Postal and Far Cry.

In the opening credits to Seed (2007), Boll used footage of animal abuse and torture he acquired from PETA to underscore the film's nihilism. He has also promised to donate 2.5 percent of his net profits from Seed to PETA.

Financing

Boll's movies have often performed poorly at the box office in the United States. House of the Dead, which was budgeted at $12 million, made $5.73 million in its opening weekend, Alone in the Dark, which was budgeted at $20 million, made over $5.1 million, and BloodRayne, which was made for $25 million, made $2.42 million. The least profitable commercial performance of his career was In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, which made barely $10 million worldwide at the box office on a $60 million budget.

Until the law was changed in 2005, Boll was able to acquire funding thanks to German tax laws that reward investments in film. The law allowed investors in German-owned films to write off 100% of their investment as a tax deduction; it also allowed them to invest borrowed money and write off any fees associated with the loan. The investor was then only required to pay taxes on the profits made by the movie; if the movie loses money, the investor got a tax writeoff.

In the DVD commentary of Alone in the Dark, Boll explains how he funds his films: "Maybe you know it but it's not so easy to finance movies in total. And the reason I am able to do these kind of movies is I have a tax shelter fund in Germany, and if you invest in a movie in Germany you get basically fifty percent back from the government."

Boll has received a lot of negative publicity regarding this funding method.

Criticism

As of May 2011 House of the Dead (for which VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever described Boll as a "cinematic train wreck"), and Alone in the Dark appear on the Internet Movie Database's Bottom 100 films list. Three of his films (Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, and BloodRayne) also appeared on GT Countdown's "Top 10 Worst Video Game Movies"; all were in the top five, with only Super Mario Bros. (at number 2) preventing them all from being in the top three; BloodRayne was ranked number one. In a review of Alone in the Dark, Rob Vaux states that the movie makes other "bad" movie directors feel better in comparison: "'It's okay,' they'll tell themselves, 'I didn't make Alone in the Dark.'" Another reviewer wrote that Alone in the Dark was "so poorly built, so horribly acted and so sloppily stitched together that it's not even at the straight-to-DVD level." For example, in one scene a character who was "killed" can be seen getting up as the actor prematurely made the move to get off the set. One critic has dubbed him as the "Jonas Brothers of movie directors".

Boll also made a bid to direct the upcoming World of Warcraft movie, but was turned away by the owners of the Warcraft franchise, Blizzard Entertainment who said: "We will not sell the movie rights, not to you…especially not to you." Boll responded "Because it’s such a big online game suc­cess, maybe a bad movie would destroy that ongo­ing income, what the com­pany has with it."

Blair Erickson, a writer of a treatment for Alone in the Dark, has written a critical account of his experience working with Boll, in which Erickson alleges that Boll stole ideas from prior movies and wanted to add elements to the story that were not true to the tone of the source material. Uwe chose to not use Erickson's script, citing reasons such as it having "not enough car chases."

The comic book series Firestorm features an issue where the titular character reacts angrily when his girlfriend Gehenna purchases DVDs of all of Boll's films. When he berates her for her decision, she jokingly claims that she becomes aroused by how bad Boll's films are.

Boll has blamed the poor theatrical performance of his early video game adaptations on his distribution company, Romar, and has filed a lawsuit against them. Boll's films prior to the release of House of the Dead were more positively received. The New York Times, for instance, gave Blackwoods a positive review, although most reactions to the film have been negative.

On X-Play's "Gphoria" awards show, one of the categories was "Game Most Deserving of an Uwe Boll Adaptation."

Boll received a rare "Worst Career Achievement" award at the 29th Golden Raspberry Awards on February 21, 2009 for In The Name of the King, 1968 Tunnel Rats, and Postal. Boll has been nominated for Razzies three times in total.

Boll has begun to sue BitTorrent users for illegally downloading his film, Far Cry, as a way to generate revenue from money thought lost to illegal file-sharing.

Response to criticism

Boll does not shy away from his critics. In the Alone in the Dark DVD commentary, he responds to criticism that his adaptations make significant changes to the plot and style of the source material: "Fans are always totally flipping out and I understand that the fan of a video game has his own agenda in his head and has his ideas about what is a good movie and what is a bad movie." Referring to House of the Dead, Boll said: "I think I made a perfect House of the Dead movie, because it really shows how the game is. It's a lot of fun, it's over-the-top action." Boll is especially critical of his Internet detractors. Referring to two Ain't It Cool News critics who negatively reviewed his work, Boll said, "Harry (Knowles) and Quint (Eric Vespe) are retards."

Boll also criticizes the game companies themselves for providing zero support once the movie license is sold. He cites the cross-promotion and support which comic-book-based properties adapted for the screen receive, whereas video game companies often "sell off the license and then forget about it." He argues that this is the reason video game adaptations are not well received by critics and audiences.

When Wired published a negative review of Postal, Boll responded with an e-mail claiming that the critic didn't "understand anything about movies and that you are a untalented wanna bee filmmaker with no balls and no understanding what POSTAL is. you don't see courage because you are nothing. and go to your mum and fuck her ...because she cooks for you now since 30 years ..so she deserves it" [sic]. Boll claims that this angry email was sparked not by the review, but because the Wired editor told Boll in person that the editor loved the movie then published a negative review.

Critic boxing matches (Raging Boll)

Boll made headlines by challenging his critics to "put up or shut up". In June 2006, his production company issued a press release stating that Boll would challenge his five harshest critics each to a 10-round boxing match. Invitations were also open to film directors Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. To qualify, critics had to have written two extremely negative reviews of Boll, in print or on the Web. In 2005, footage from the fights were to be included on the DVD of his upcoming film Postal. On June 20, 2006, Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka stated on Something Awful that he had been invited by Boll to be the first contestant, after Kyanka reviewed Alone in the Dark. The online gambling site GoldenPalace.com decided to sponsor this event, dubbing it "Raging Boll". A lot was drawn up in late August 2006, featuring Kyanka, Rue Morgue magazine writer Chris Alexander, webmaster of Cinecutre Carlos Palencia Jimenez-Arguello, Ain't it Cool News writer Jeff Sneider and Chance Minter, amateur boxer and website critic. Boll fought and won against all five participants. The first match took place on September 5, 2006 in Estepona, Spain against Carlos Palencia. The others battled on September 23, 2006 at the Plaza of Nations in Vancouver.

After Kyanka lost his match, he would go on to make several allegations against Boll, including the fact that Boll refused to fight against Chance Minter (an amateur boxer), because he was an experienced boxer. However, Boll fought Minter as his fourth opponent. He also claimed that Boll misled them by claiming it was a PR stunt when he actually intended to fight them and that Boll claimed that the participants would get training before the match (which no one did). Boll had seriously wounded Sneider, who had also believed Boll.

Kyanka added in a post-match interview that, "Half of us (the contenders) hadn't even seen his movies." Sneider shared similar sentiments, stating "I think he's a jerk. This might be PR but I don't want to keep getting punched in the head." Boll has denied these claims in an interview, stating that he gave his opponents three months to prepare. Other contestants responded less negatively. Alexander, in a Toronto Star article, recounts being invited to Boll's beach house on the following day, where Boll asked him about the reasons for his universally negative reviews. Alexander bluntly told Boll that his movies were "bloated, expensive and incoherent attempts at aping American genre pictures, sporting some of the most boneheaded casting choices in filmdom". He also stated that Boll was an "insane, two-fisted rogue, and a shockingly honest one at that, someone who absolutely adores film, knows its history and truly lives for what he does."

Alexander referred to the event as "the weirdest pop culture bizarre journalism stunt I've ever been involved in." Minter also praised what he had seen of Boll's upcoming production known as Seed. Boll praised the contestants in a post fight press conference, stating "I now like the critics... Everybody who was in the ring showed guts. Nobody dived."

Electronic Gaming Monthly's November 2006 edition's "The Rest of the Crap" section, written by critic Seanbaby, described Seanbaby's own involvement. Apparently Uwe was going to appear on G4's Attack of the Show! to promote this fight by sparring with one of the hosts. Seanbaby claims that, "Again, he's a matchmaking genius, because everyone on TV is 3 feet tall. If you were watching Attack of the Show during the time I cohosted, you might have noticed that I could have leaned over and eaten host Kevin Pereira." A producer of the show then asked if Seanbaby would come and spar in the host's place for the event. Seanbaby says that he trains in Muay Thai and jujutsu, stating that, "boxing is to fighting what Hungry Hungry Hippos is to eating." When Uwe heard of this, he wanted to know Seanbaby's age, height, weight and fighting experience since he "learned he wasn't fighting a midget." Seanbaby claims he sent said information to Boll, after which Boll chose not to appear on the program.

Petition to retire

In April 2008, The Guardian ran an article claiming Boll had promised to retire if an online petition at PetitionOnline.com asking him to do so received 1,000,000 signatures.

On May 7, 2008, the makers of Stride gum announced they would give each signer a digital coupon for a pack of gum if the petition obtained the required 1 million signatures by May 14, 2008.

As of 21 June 2011, there are around 364,572 signatures. In an interview with Mike Gencarelli of the Movie Mikes website on March 22, 2010, Boll stated that he would not retire, should the petition receive one million signatures, commenting:

I think no, it has been too long. If they would have made to a million in like 2 months, then they would have had something. They even got sponsored by that gum factory. I felt like it's three years later, forget it. I also felt that people signed numerous time on the petition so it is probably only like 150,000 people that actually signed it.

Response

As part of a publicity stunt for POSTAL, Uwe Boll released a video stating that he is "the only genius in the whole fucking [movie] business" and that other directors such as Michael Bay and Eli Roth are "fucking retards." He promised that his film Postal would be "way better than all that social-critic George Clooney bullshit that you get every fucking weekend." In response to an "Anti-Uwe Boll" online petition, Boll has also expressed hopes that somebody will start a Pro-Uwe Boll petition, which he would expect to hit a million signatures. As of May 15, 2011, the pro-Uwe Boll petition with the most signatures is the Long Live Uwe Boll poll with a total of 7,588 signatures.

Bay responded to the "fucking retards" comment by calling Boll "a sad being" and stated that he did not care "in the slightest" about the remark while Roth facetiously said Boll's comments were the "greatest compliment ever." Boll later noted that the comments were meant to be a generic picture over Hollywood, and that he has nothing against the people mentioned.

Boll then appeared on Thursday, April 10's episode of G4's Attack of the Show, where he was interviewed regarding his controversial online retort. In the interview, he said (in regard to Michael Bay and Eli Roth responding to his criticisms) that Roth "has a sense of humor" and that Bay "has no sense of humor." He also jokingly stated that he believes that his upcoming adaptation of Postal (from the video game of the same name) could beat Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the box office.

On April 27, 2008, Boll responded to Bay's "not caring about Boll" comment. "To prove who is the better director", Boll offered to challenge Bay to a boxing match at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. If Bay accepted, the match would last for 12 rounds and would take place in September. In response to Boll's comments, Bay again posted a statement this time saying:

I never even heard his name till last week when he made threats and rants. The guy is a fucking idiot, making threats to me, Clooney, Eli Roth, says he has a doctorate—but uses the word 'retard' in his vocabulary, come on. When you look at his videos, what is interesting are the backgrounds. I guess his low rent offices, with 15 year old 3/4 machines, archaic computers, this is just some dumb chump trying to get some fame when he has none, so he has to make Youtube lame quality anger rants. This guy just wants attention because he can't get any for the so called movies he makes. Nothing sadder when he had his screening in LA to an over half empty movie house.

Writings

Boll has written two books, Wie man in Deutschland einen Film drehen muss (How one must make a movie in Germany) and Die Gattung Serie und ihre Genres (Genus Series and its Genres), on themes of serial television.

Upcoming projects

Uwe Boll's website now offers the opportunity for anyone to "co-produce" his upcoming film Blackout. In exchange for a gift of €33 (US$44), a donor will receive a limited edition DVD of the film and a signed certificate from the cast and crew.

In September 2010, a trailer for his new film, entitled Auschwitz, about the concentration camp, was posted on YouTube. The trailer, in which Boll appears as an SS gas-chamber guard, contains explicit scenes of the brutalization and killing of concentration camp inmates. Boll has been quoted as saying that films such as Schindler's List "no longer had the ability to reach young people and that it was his duty as a German to make the film as a way of confronting the past."

Boll is the subject of a documentary film entitled Raging Boll, directed by Dan Lee West, which premiered at the Austin Film Festival in October 2010.

The upcoming Italian zombie film Eaters is presented by Uwe Boll. Boll will also be producing the upcoming film Zombie Massacre based on the 1998 video game of the same name.

Boll is also slated to appear as himself in the upcoming Postal III video game.

Personal life

He currently lives in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and currently holds both Canadian and German citizenship. His wife is native to Vancouver.

Filmography

Year	Film	Director	Producer	Writer
1991	German Fried Movie	N	N	N
1993	Barschel – Mord in Genf?	N	N	N
1994	Amoklauf	N	N	N
1997	Das Erste Semester	N		N
2000	Fíaskó		N
2001	Sanctimony	N	N	N
	Angels Don't Sleep Here		N
2002	Blackwoods	N		N
	Heart of America	N
2003	House of the Dead	N	N
2005	Alone in the Dark	N	N
	BloodRayne	N	N
2006	In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale	N	N
2007	They Wait		N
	BloodRayne 2: Deliverance	N
	Postal	N		N
	Seed	N		N
2008	1968 Tunnel Rats	N	N	N
	Alone in the Dark II		N
	Far Cry	N	N
2009	Stoic	N	N	N
	Rampage	N		N
	Darfur	N	N	N
2010	Final Storm	N	N
	Max Schmeling	N	N
	BloodRayne: The Third Reich	N	N
2011	Auschwitz	N	N	N
	Blubberella	N	N	N
	In the Name of the King 2	N
2012	Zombie Massacre		N

External links

• Uwe Boll at IMDb
• Uwe Boll at AllMovie
• Uwe Boll at Rotten Tomatoes
• Golden Palace Events – Photos, video, and details of Uwe's September 2006 boxing match with his critics