AVC: In a Washington Post interview, Running With Scissors [the company behind Postal] said they didn't want anything like a recreation of the Columbine massacre, or the Twin Towers falling, in their games. You'd already done Columbine in Heart Of America, and now you put the Twin Towers attack in Postal. Did you ever feel like your sensibilities clashed with those of the game's creators?
UB: In the beginning, yes, but then later, they really liked the movie. And now when they see the scene with the Twin Towers, where we see it through the window-washer's perspective… [Laughs.] I think it makes fun of the terrorists. They have the big fight in the cockpit, the complete stupidity about the virgins. This is only the end result of them crashing into the World Trade Center. It's not what the New York Post tried to make out of it: an anti-American movie. That's completely wrong! It shows the absurdity of the terrorists, and to not show the last scene where the airplane crashes into the World Trade Center would mean no end of the scene. It would make no sense.
AVC: You have game developer Vince Desiderio running through screaming about you ruining his film, so obviously they were pretty good sports about it.
UB: [Laughs.] Yeah, to have that in the movie—that he wanted to kill me because I fucked up his movie—this is only for the insiders. A lot of normal [people] don't get it. I had to put it in for all the video-game freaks out there bashing me and e-mailing me. I also wanted to show that I have enough ironic humor, to show myself as a corrupt asshole.
AVC: What is it that you enjoy about adapting video games? Why did you choose that niche?
UB: In the beginning, it was money. We did House Of The Dead and made money with it, so I thought, "How can I raise money from investors based on this?" It's easier to raise money than if you come in with an original idea. But I also found more games I really like. I liked the game Alone In The Dark a lot. It's really creepy. BloodRayne, I didn't like the game so much, but I liked the character. This super character with two swords, and she needs sex and blood to survive. I liked that ruthless kind of character—not so clean like Kate Beckinsale in Underworld, where she never sucks blood. I wanted something dirtier and bloodier.
I always try to get games of different genres. This is the reason Postal is a comedy, and Far Cry is a real, pure action movie—like Die Hard on an island—and In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale was my opportunity to do my epic, Braveheart, Lord Of The Rings, Gladiator movie. I try not to repeat myself in genres too much. Everybody says video-game adaptations are all the same, but I disagree. Normally, video-game adaptations are like Alone In The Dark, Resident Evil, Alien Vs. Predator—sci-fi creature stuff. But I think I've [covered] a wide range of genres and time periods, like Transylvania in 1700 and now a Western with BloodRayne II, or adventure with Dungeon Siege, or comedy and satire with Postal.
AVC: You hold a doctorate in literature. Isn't a video game comparatively shallower source material than a good book or original screenplay?
UB: Of course there are a lot of books that are interesting to make movies out of, but on the other hand, I think video games are also kind of like bestselling books for the younger generation, and the younger generation is the one going to the theaters. It's more about what you create out of it. And if you really go for a bestselling book—like Stephen King, John Grisham, or whatever—you pay five, six, seven million for the movie rights. Video games, you get normally for around $500,000.
AVC: Do you think that exclusively adapting video games automatically sets you up for a negative critical reaction?
UB: Absolutely. I think a lot of people don't take you seriously if they hear it's a video-game-based movie, and a lot of press people don't write about you. With BloodRayne, a lot of serious newspaper people didn't actually even see the movie. They went online to see other reviews, and then wrote their own. I think comic-book-based movies have a better image. We see it with 300, Sin City, Spider-Man—they are A-list features, and video-game movies are B-list.
AVC: Do you find that unfair?
UB: Yeah! They should take everything seriously, and look at everything on its own before they judge it. I think Resident Evil or Silent Hill was definitely better than The Punisher or Ghost Rider. There are lots of comic-book-based movies that are shit, and a lot of video-game movies were acceptable, [well]-made action movies.
AVC: Two of your movies that received the most negative reaction—Alone In The Dark and BloodRayne—have sequels coming out. Are you hoping that people will come around to it if they give it another chance?
UB: First of all, I hope this. Second, Lions Gate is releasing a director's cut of Alone In The Dark in September, and I cut out eight to 10 minutes of Tara Reid, and dialogue, and I added more scenes of action and creepy stuff. I think the director's cut plays way better than the original. [Alone In The Dark 2] is based on the game Alone In The Dark 5 which is coming out, and this will help, that they're both based on the horror in Central Park—we shot it in L.A. I think it will hopefully be better received, because in the first part, we were totally alone and Atari did nothing. I think with BloodRayne II, it's a totally different genre—a vampire Western—and I hope that a lot of negative reviewers from the first one give it a fresh view.
AVC: To some, it might seem like you're doing these films out of spite, like you're rubbing it in their faces by doing a sequel to a movie that was panned the first time around.
UB: That's one thing, but on the other hand, BloodRayne and Alone In The Dark were, in various territories, very successful, and also in America on DVD. In Spain, Italy, Russia, Thailand, and the Middle East, they were both in the top five at the box office for at least one or two weeks. They were not bombs everywhere. All the territories have an interest in getting a second part, and BloodRayne II will actually get a theatrical release in Russia, Spain, and so forth. From this point of view, business-wise, it made sense to do a second part. But I thought, "If we're going to do a second part, let's try to make better movies."
AVC: The people who pan you, critics you've called "idiots" online—what don't they get about your movies?
UB: If you have a serious reporter and he writes both the good and bad things about a movie and then writes a negative review, I have no problem with it. But I have a problem with people—bashing guys—who, no matter what you do, [say] it's all crap. They have no clue what the fuck they're talking about. They have no better understanding of movies. They have no knowledge. They cannot do better movies. They say, "If I had a camera, I would do a masterpiece." It's all bullshit. This pisses me off. There are a lot of idiots on the Internet getting a lot of attention. A lot of people like Richard Lowtax from SomethingAwful.com. He has his own community, and the only movie he did so far was posted on YouTube. I don't know who thinks this is funny. I think it's stupid, that movie. It's not technically [well]-made, and I don't see any talent in that guy. But he gets hyped like he's a hero, like he would have made a better BloodRayne. This guy has no clue even what a shooting schedule is. As a filmmaker, I get compared to people who have no clue how to do anything, but because of some Internet writing, it looks like they would actually be better filmmakers. I think this is absurd.
AVC: Two of your most vocal critics are Harry Knowles and Quint from Ain't It Cool News. You've called them "retards," yet you're coming to Fantastic Fest, which they help program. Why agree to be a part of their festival?
UB: First of all, I had no clue that they were part of that festival when I got the invitation. But second, everybody can get a new chance. [Laughs.] If they say they'll give Postal a fresh chance, and see it and then judge it and talk to me about it, then I'm more than happy to come down there. On BloodRayne I didn't get it. They were sitting in the audience at [SXSW] with 300 people, and we got big applause and it was a great atmosphere. The only people that didn't applaud were the four or five guys from Ain't It Cool. After the screening, Quint came to me to get an autograph, and we talked on the sidewalk, and there was no indication they hated the movie. But on the Internet, they bashed that movie to the ground!
I think this is dishonest. You should say right away how you feel about the movie, and if you write a review of it, at least say how the audience reaction was. If you write, "I didn't like that movie because Michael Madsen was drunk," you can write that, but you should also write, "It looked like 80 percent of the audience enjoyed it." If you omit that fact and write only "The next piece of shit from Uwe Boll," I think that's unfair. And in regard to Harry Knowles and Quint, in Hollywood, a lot of people think that AICN is corrupt, and that they get paid by filmmakers and studios to get better reviews. I don't do that. And of course he has these people he loves, like [Quentin] Tarantino and [Robert] Rodriguez. I like them also, but the point is, whatever they do, it's "the next masterpiece." Eli Roth, Guillermo del Toro—it's always a "masterpiece." It doesn't matter what they do. And then it's always "shit," what I do. Postal is a totally different movie than everything they've seen before, so I want to come to Texas and hopefully convince these guys. I want to be like, "Look at Postal like Tarantino did it. [Laughs.] Brainwash yourself and convince yourself that Tarantino did it. Forget my name and enjoy the 100 minutes and then write your review."
AVC: You challenged two of the guys who wrote for that site—as well as several other critics—to a boxing match. Do you think the critics who showed up expected you to really fight them?
UB: Absolutely! They had it in the application that they had to sign a waiver that I was not responsible for health damage. They had time to train. This was a thing where Chris Alexander from Rue Morgue and Chance Minter got my respect, and Rich Lowtax and Jeff Sneider, where they said afterwards, "Uwe promised not to hit us"—they did that to damage me. This is a complete lie, and everybody knows that it was a real fight, and that I did the application [to fight me] because I was pissed. We had 1,000 people in the stadium watching it live, and they wanted to see blood and guts. [Laughs.] There was a real doctor, a real referee—it was so clear it was a real boxing event. I said to them after the fight, "If I prepared my movies the way you prepared for the boxing fight, then my movies would be really bad." [Laughs.]
AVC: Did physically taking out your frustrations on your critics give you any satisfaction?
UB: On that evening, yes! And after that, Chris Alexander was very fair in all his articles on my movies, because he used that opportunity to talk to me privately during breakfast. Jeff Sneider, from AICN, came to Vancouver and refused to come to the set of Postal. I never saw him until five minutes before the fight. I think this is so stupid. These 22-year-old guys who have no film experience come to Vancouver, and instead of coming to the set, they hang out in Starbucks. What [kind of] characters are these people?
AVC: Do you value the opinions of critics?
UB: Absolutely! I think without the harsh critics, I would maybe have not made progress. From BloodRayne on, I spent more time and money on the development. With Dungeon Siege, I got very good responses from all the agencies on that script, which we worked for one and a half years on. Also Far Cry. I think the harsh reviews helped, in that I spent way more energy in the preproduction and development. From this point of view, I'm very thankful for the harsh critics. I still think the critics were unnecessarily insulting in a lot of things, but I think it helped.
AVC: Do you actively seek out reviews or writing about yourself?
UB: Absolutely! I get most of my reviews through e-mail, and then I go and read it and go on message boards to check it out. I want to see what's out there and to better estimate my position. I'm definitely happy that a lot of people are voting positively for Postal—especially the hundreds and hundreds who actually saw it. Still, there are a lot of people who didn't see it who are giving me only one point out of 10 because they hate me, and it has nothing to do with the movie.
AVC: You're unique among most filmmakers in that you're pretty vehement about responding to critics who give you negative reviews, like the e-mail exchange you recently had with a Wired reporter. It seems to genuinely upset you. Do you take criticism personally?
UB: That was different. What the guy from Wired did was come up to me after the screening and say the movie was great and set up an interview with me. Then he bashed it in his review. I was flipping out, because it's dishonest and it's shit. Nobody should do that. I think it's unfair to tell a filmmaker, "Congratulations! I loved it!" And then the next day it's, "Another piece of shit from Boll, no different than BloodRayne or Alone In The Dark." It also makes me upset that he published that e-mail from me. It was private, for him, and with that behavior, I don't think he has a career as a journalist in the future. If you're so dishonest and don't have enough self-confidence to tell the person you're interviewing, "Look, I didn't like the movie. I didn't think it was funny. But let's do the interview anyway." I would still give him the interview. But it's not fair to lie and to be two-faced.
AVC: Why respond to it or even acknowledge it? Most artists, when they get a negative review, just brush it off and try to stay above the fray.
UB: I know, but I'm different. [Laughs.] I like the direct contact. I went to the Penny Arcade in Seattle, where 2,000 people were booing me for 20 minutes. But at the end of the thing, at least three or four hundred people came to me with BloodRayne and Alone In The Dark DVDs to sign. I was like, "Now you're coming to me with these DVDs, but when I was onstage, you were booing me like I'm the Antichrist standing there?" I do that because I want a lot of people that only know me [through] the mass media to learn more about what I'm doing, and to know that I'm an independent filmmaker and I'm not part of the Hollywood system. I'm coming from where they started. I'm not coming from a family with a lot of money, I had $60,000 for my first movie. I was 33 before I made any money off of movies. I worked my ass off for free. To get that I'm "enemy number one" among young kids is a little absurd. Michael Bay got $100 million for his first movie, and Eli Roth—"The Future Of Horror" because of Cabin Fever and Hostel—is the fucking son of Joe Roth, a studio chief! These guys are getting turned into heroes? [Michael Bay actually received $23 million for Bad Boys, and Eli Roth is the son of a Harvard professor and a painter. —ed.] Any asshole can make a good movie for $100 million. I think it's way harder to make a movie with no money, and to start with no contacts and work your way up to international productions. It's unfair that I'm enemy number one.
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