Uwe Boll Biography
Summary
"Uwe Boll" (pronounced ), born June 22, 1965 in Wermelskirchen, Germany) is a German director, producer and screenwriter of films often adapted from video games. Unlike most directors in the United States, who receive funding from Hollywood studios, he finances his own films through his Boll KG production company. Boll studied at the University of Cologne and the University of Siegen, and holds a doctorate in literature.
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 has a horror film "Seed" in production.
Boll is best known for adapting video games into movies, having directed and produced a number of such adaptations, among them "House of the Dead", "Alone in the Dark", and "BloodRayne". He has announced plans to produce adaptations of "Dungeon Siege", "Postal", "Legacy of Kain" and "Far Cry". Boll intends to produce "Alone in the Dark II", and "BloodRayne II: Deliverance", as well as a third movie based on the "BloodRayne" franchise.
In his 2007 film Seed, Boll uses footage of animal abuse and torture he received from PETA (Peopple for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) in order to shock people into seeing what screwed up creatures, human beings are. He is also donating 2.5 percent of his net profits from Seed to PETA. Boll is a devote animal lover and has two dogs of his own.
At G-Phoria 2007, an award was given for 'Deserves a Uwe Boll Movie', for which the nominees were five sub-par games from the previous year.
Financing
Boll continues to secure investors for the rights to future video-game-to-movie adaptations. His investors are mostly German. He carefully secures the rights for potential future adaptations, afterwards doing all of the actual production himself, and finishes the product.
Movies directed by Boll have performed modestly to poorly at the domestic box office. "House of the Dead" (budget: $12 million) broke $5.73 million on opening weekend (... more) , "Alone in the Dark" (budget: $20 million) made over $5.1 million (... more) , and "BloodRayne" (budget: $25 million) topped $2.42 million. (... more)
In the DVD commentary of "Alone in the Dark", Boll explains how he funds his films:
Boll is able to acquire funding thanks to German tax laws that reward investments in film. The law allows investors in German-owned films to write off 100% of their investment as a tax deduction; it also allows them to invest borrowed money and write off any fees associated with the loan. The investor is then only required to pay taxes on the profits made by the movie; if the movie loses money, the investor gets a tax writeoff.
While Boll has received a lot of negative publicity regarding this funding method, he was actually one of the few directors to use the tax shelter as intended. His films were financed, produced, and directed by a German company, which was the initial intention behind the tax shelter: to provide incentive for investment in German entertainment properties. Regardless of the law's intention, most of these German film funds ended up funneling money to American studios to finance American blockbusters. The law merely required that the movie's copyright be owned by a German company; thus studios would 'sell' a movie's rights to a German company, then immediately lease the movie back for a small fee, while the German owners would agree to very limited control. Essentially, the German company would own the movie on paper, but have no say over its production. Because of this, in January 2006, as had been expected for several months, the German legislature changed the country's tax laws to eliminate the tax shelter. It is not known if this will have any effect on Boll's funding as the new laws only seek to punish investors who are abusing the law for tax purposes; Boll's activities appear to be well within the legitimate usage of the tax shelter.
Criticism
Boll's movies have been critically panned. As of November 6, 2007, all three of Boll's video game adaptations appeared on the Internet Movie Database's Bottom 100 films list. (... more) In a review of "Alone in the Dark", Rob Vaux states that the movie should make all 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.'
When rumors surfaced that Boll had expressed interest in a "Metal Gear Solid" movie, and claimed to have been given a script to read, "Metal Gear" creator Hideo Kojima responded in his audioblog HIDECHAN, 'Absolutely not! I don't know why Uwe Boll is even talking about this kind of thing. We've never talked to him. It's impossible that we'd ever do a movie with him.'
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.'
Boll blames the poor commercial performance of his 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" received better reception. The "New York Times", for instance, gave "Blackwoods" a positive review, although overall reactions to the film have been negative. (... more) Boll's film "Heart of America" was based on the Columbine High School massacre and was praised as having the most mature subject matter of any of Boll's films.
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.'name = 'EuroGamer' /> 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 dont see courage because you are nothing. and no go to your mum and fuck her ...because she cooks for you now since 30 years ..so she deserves it' . Also, in the 2007 G-Phoria awards on G4 (the annual video game awards), G4 has created a special award titled the 'Games most deserving of a Uwe Boll movie' stating that some of the most disappointing and overall horrible games could be made into disappointing and horrible movies by Uwe Boll. The 2007 nominations include Red Steel (Wii), Fuzion Frenzy 2 (Xbox 360), Full Auto 2: Battlelines (PS2, PSP),Bomberman: Act Zero (Xbox 360), and Bad Day: L.A (PC)==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 be eligible, the critic must have written two extremely negative reviews of Boll, in print or on the Web, in 2005. Footage from the fights will be included on the DVD of his upcoming film "Postal". On June 20, 2006, Rich 'Lowtax' Kyanka stated on Something Awful that he has been invited by Boll to be the first contestant. Only after that Kyanka reviewed "Alone in the Dark." The online gambling site GoldenPalace.com decided to sponsor this event, dubbing it 'Raging Boll'. The list of five critics to step into the ring with Boll was drawn up in late August 2006, and featured 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 took place on September 5, 2006 in Málaga, Spain against Carlos Palenciawith the rest 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 that Boll refused to fight against Chance Minter, an amateur boxer, because he was an experienced boxer; that Boll misled them by claiming it was a PR stunt, but actually intended to fight them; that Boll claimed the participants would get training before the match, which no one did, and that Boll had seriously wounded Sneider, who had also believed Boll. However, Boll actually fought Minter as his fourth opponent.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. He also denied ever saying it was a PR stunt and claims that it was going to be a real fight. (... more) Some of the other contestants, however, have not been as negative. 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 unilaterally negative reviews. Alexander bluntly told Boll that his movies were 'bloated, expensive and incoherent attempts at aping American genre pictures and sport some of the most boneheaded casting choices in filmdom' but 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.'name = AP/> Minter also praised what he'd seen so far of Boll's upcoming production "Seed". Boll praised the contestants in a post fight press conference, stating 'I like now the critics... Everybody who was in the ring showed (guts). Nobody dived.'name = AP/>Ron Sparks offered to fight Boll in Vancouver as part of the "Postal" publicity stunt, but Boll declined, citing Sparks's age and size advantage. Sparks himself defended Boll's decision in his (MySpace blog) , however, saying that because Boll was fighting several boxers back to back, and putting them in his movie, he had the right to choose any opponents willing to fight him.Also, printed in Electronic Gaming Monthly's November 2006 edition of the section 'The Rest of the Crap', written by critic Seanbaby, described Seanbaby's own involvement. Apparently Uwe was going to appear on G4's "Attack of the Show!" and promote this fight by sparring with one of the hosts. He claims that, 'Again, he's Uwe Boll a matchmaking genius, because everyone on TV's 3-feet tall. If you were watching AotS during the time I co-hosted, 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, and that, 'Boxing is to Fighting what Hungry Hungry Hippos is to fighting...' 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'. After receiving said information, Boll chose not to appear on the program.==Writings==Boll has written two books, "Wie man in Deutschland einen Film drehen muss" ("How to Make a Movie in Germany") and "Die Gattung Serie und ihre Genres" ("Series and Their Genres"), on themes of serial TV. ==References====External links==* (Official Website of Boll's Production Company, BOLL KG) ** (Uwe Boll) at Rotten Tomatoes* (A3UPodcast.com Interview) Podcast Interview With Boll* (Golden Palace Events) - Photos, video, and details of Uwe's September 2006 boxing match with his critics* (Boll Bashers) A comprehensive website on Boll * (Interview with "Uwe Boll") at (Creature Corner) * (Dinner With Uwe) - IGN's four-part video interview* (Interview with "Uwe Boll") at (The Globe & Mail) * (Boll to brawl critics onscreen in Postal movie?) at GameSpot News* (Interview) - "Now Playing magazine"* (Uwe on UGO.com) - Uwe Boll wants to make a sequel to Schindler's List
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Uwe Boll.
