The name Uwe Boll tends to stir fear—or derisive snickers—in film critics. His movies (most of them video-game adaptations like House Of The Dead, Alone In The Dark, and BloodRayne) have been universally panned for their shallow plots and wooden performances, yet Boll doesn't suffer such criticism quietly: He's been known to send his critics angry e-mails and lash out at them on DVD commentaries. Last summer, he even challenged detractors to a boxing match. While this has done little to change perception of him as this generation's Ed Wood, Boll may finally surprise everyone with Postal, an outlandish satire (based on the video game of the same name) starring A Christmas Story's Zack Ward as a "trailer-trash dude" in a world where Osama bin Laden is hiding in America, Dave Foley is the leader of a sex cult, and Boll himself is the demented owner of an amusement park built on Nazi gold. Already receiving positive word-of-mouth, Postal has also stirred up controversy for its opening scene, a graphic 9/11 parody that dares to make the World Trade Center attacks a punchline. Just prior to his appearance at this year's Fantastic Fest, Boll spoke with The A.V. Club about Postal, his unique relationship with his critics, and why he feels he deserves another chance.
The A.V. Club: How did you approach writing a script for a video game that had no real story at all?
Uwe Boll: I've had that problem before! [Laughs.] I actually saw Postal as a story where you have every day the same kind of setup. You have to pick up your welfare check. You have to make a decision: "Do I get violent or should I play it peaceful?" There were so many good ideas for a comedy in that game, like he lives in a trailer park with his dog. He shits always in front of his door. He has a 300-kilo wife, and she claims he changed after the wedding, but she gained 250 pounds. And he has his crazy Uncle Dave who's like a sect guru. You can play Osama bin Laden or [George W.] Bush, and you can use cats as silencers. So I think it's a very good foundation to develop some crazy ideas for a satire.
AVC: With such a simple premise, it seems you could have written almost anything, so why use it as an adaptation? Why not claim it as your original work?
UB: There are two reasons. First of all, I think I stole too much from the game. [Laughs.] You can't have "the Postal Dude" who lives in a trailer park, the similarities in how he's dressed, the cats as silencers. There are a lot of ideas in there that they would claim against me, and I don't want that. The second is, I see Postal as a very good title for a movie like this, because in a way, Postal shows that we're all going down the drain on this planet. It has something in the word. Not only "going postal," but it is also a little "post-apocalyptic," like we are already over it. We cannot save it any more, so let's enjoy the last 20 or 30 years of the Earth. [Laughs.]
AVC: What happened to Gary Coleman being part of this project?
UB: He didn't want to swear in the movie, and I asked him, "Did you ever see yourself in the video game? You were on a rampage killing everybody!" [Laughs.] He said he does not give [a] shit about this, and I say, "Now you're swearing!" He said, "I'm very Christian, and I don't want to swear in the movie." Verne Troyer played his part, and he's swearing in every line, so there's no way I could have done that movie with Gary under those circumstances.
AVC: So it wasn't worth it to get rid of the profanity to keep Gary Coleman?
UB: [Laughs.] Absolutely not.
AVC: Ron Perlman was also attached at one time, right?
UB: He was, but then he got Hellboy 2. I wanted to have him as Uncle Dave, but then Dave Foley played him. Both of them would be great, but Dave Foley really went for it. He even went for a full-frontal nudity scene, which was surprising for me also. I was sitting behind my video desk and couldn't believe it! He did it without telling me. He was supposed to get up from his bed and close his bathrobe, but he didn't close it. We were all sitting there laughing our ass off. He played it super-cool. It's those kind of offensive scenes that make Postal special, because it's harsher than what we're used to from even the Farrelly brothers' comedies. It's like one step more than even Borat. Postal is like Borat without the black bars. [Laughs.]
AVC: You've worked with some big names in the past. How did you decide upon the mostly unknown Zack Ward to star?
UB: We did casting in L.A. and a lot of people came against the advice of their agents. The agents said, "You shouldn't be in Postal, it will damage your career." Sarah Silverman and David Cross passed. I thought, "Oh God, if people like this are passing, we are really harsh." So Zack Ward came to casting and played one of the cop parts, and then later I looked at the DVDs again and said, "This guy is Postal Dude." He's like white trailer trash. He's had a long time in the film industry, but no real success. He needs money; he's two-times divorced in real life. He said he works only to pay off his Philippine ex-wife. [Laughs.] It's totally depressing! He's fucked-up. I was like, "He is perfect." He is in that mood, like, "I hate this town." I'm really happy he played Postal Dude.
AVC: You must like working with him, because he's also playing "Billy The Kid" in BloodRayne II: Deliverance.
UB: Absolutely! Look, he started with A Christmas Story, and I think that he is a really great actor. The thing is, he gets typecast now, like in Transformers. He's always the red-haired bully or strange guy who gets killed. He's never getting the hero part. But his acting abilities are way above a lot of the good-looking guys.
AVC: What did you see in Zack that screamed "vampire cowboy"?
UB: [Laughs.] He's a very sportive guy. He's very used to weapons, and he has the physical ability to be a badass or an evil guy. So the Billy The Kid part is closer to him, as is the Postal Dude. I think he has that kind of violence in him, and I thought I really had to have a badass villain in BloodRayne II, so I cast him.
AVC: Did you approach any of the original BloodRayne cast to be in the sequel—Kristanna Loken in particular?
UB: First of all, everybody died in BloodRayne, and only Rayne survived. Of course I wanted Kristanna to play in BloodRayne II, but she signed with SCI FI to do Painkiller Jane. It was a 22-episode TV show, and she said she could only do it if I waited one year. This was impossible, because Universal wanted it for September '07, so I was forced to shoot it in winter in Vancouver. Worst shoot we ever had, to be honest. Some days it was snow, other days only ice and rain, so we had to put snow in. We had a big explosion with a heater in the railway station, so the whole railway station burned down. We had $600,000 in damages. Natassia Malthe had to jump into a lake, and there was ice on the surface, and she crashed through the ice and almost died. Everybody was really, really tired from shooting [at] nighttime in the cold. We shot almost until Christmas, because the burning railway station cost us three more days. Then we had to rewrite the scene so that Michael Paré burns down the railway station. We were so happy that this movie was over. I think overall, BloodRayne II looks really grumpy. It's kind of a corny, winter Western, very rough and cold. Universal likes it even more than the first one.
AVC: Postal may come as a surprise to people who are only familiar with horror movies from you, but you actually debuted with German Fried Movie—which was a German version of Kentucky Fried Movie. Have you wanted to return to comedy since then?
UB: I think Postal was my way back to where I started as a film director. It made sense to do German Fried Movie because we didn't have enough money to shoot 30 days of movie with the same actors. We were forced to have actors we could get for free, and shoot only small scenes and do it as a compilation movie, so we have a guy in German Fried Movie who is switching channels, and we see the different TV programs. We had suicide shows, a Desert Storm show from the first Gulf War, "Danger Seeker" from Kentucky Fried Movie, all these absurd things. [In Postal], I basically wanted to return to that. It's a ruthless, Mad TV-type thing. We sent out a DVD to the South Park producers, and they liked the movie so much that we can say now, "It's like South Park with real actors" on the trailers and posters.
AVC: Do you think America is ready for a 9/11 parody?
UB: Look, the thing is, it is maybe a little too early. But as a director, what should you do? I think it's better to be too early and disturb a few people—but have other people say it was necessary—than to do it way after the fact. The other way, you do something that nobody gives a shit about. We shouldn't forget that Charlie Chaplin did a movie about Hitler while Hitler was alive, and Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece Dr. Strangelove was during the McCarthy time, where everybody was a communist and McCarthy was flipping completely out. I think it's important to have a movie like Postal now, where we are on the peak of the Iraq War, on the peak of terrorist attacks, where everything is actually happening. Not like in a few years, where maybe bin Laden dies or Bush is no longer in office. I think it's important that Bush is still president when the parody comes out.
AVC: What would you say are some of the major political ideas you're trying to get across with Postal?
UB: The main point is that I think if we want the Earth to survive and everybody to have a positive future, we have to stop thinking in [terms of] religions and races. We have to face that we are all on the planet Earth together, and we have to figure out how we all survive. It makes no sense if we are all driving hybrid cars, but China pumps massive [amounts of] CO2 in the air. If we don't start working together and find solutions—if every country thinks only [in terms of], "First we, then the other nations"—then we will fail. I think this is the biggest problem we face right now. Even if people hate my other movies, and hate me, or whatever, I think from this point of view, Postal is the most important movie after September 11. It's not respecting any edge, any border, any nation, any religion—it's an all-type offender.
I think that only if everybody gets a little pissed about something then you will start thinking about your situation. In Germany, people are saying, "Bush is an asshole. Bin Laden is an asshole." But then I make jokes about Auschwitz, and how the Germans are lederhosen-wearing sausage freaks—and they hate me for this! And I'm like, "You all are sitting there because you want to relax and have a nice evening, and now you're pissed because I put also a mirror in front of you." This is the point of Postal, because no one can relax. Everybody gets hit. If you want a career in Germany as a filmmaker, you shoot another fucking movie about "My old uncle tried to kill Hitler." Right? You do Sophie's Choice Part 11, and you get an L.A. agent and make a career in America because you showed you were against Hitler. But in reality, 98 percent of the people were not against Hitler.
You don't need any courage today in Germany to make a movie about the Nazi time. You get all the subsidies, you get the TV stations, you get the good reviews. But you need courage to kick in the balls all the people that are still hiding under the blanket, and to say, "Oh, Hitler was maybe not so bad." And with my little Nazi jokes [in Postal], I offended the Germans in a harsh time. This was important to me to say, "Look, I'm not pussying out for you. I'm not delivering to you a nice anti-Bush, anti-bin Laden comedy." I think this will pay off. I don't know. But I know that I'm very proud that I made the movie.
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