Uwe Boll invites critics to a smackdown - Literally, not figuratively

[Sonic Youth]

German director Boll challenges critics to join him in the boxing ring

Jeremy Hainsworth
Canadian Press


Thursday, June 15, 2006


VANCOUVER (CP) - Are you an in-shape male weighing between 64 and 86 kilograms and hate the films of controversial German director Uwe Boll?

If so, he wants to fight you in Vancouver as part of one of his films.

The director of the recently released vampire flick BloodRayne starring Kristanna Loken and Ben Kingsley claims to be frustrated with critics trashing his films.

Some, he says, do so without even having seen the productions.

"Many journalists make value judgments on my films on the opinions of one or two thousand Internet voices," Boll said.

"On the message boards, you have, like, tons of people, they want to punish me kill me, grill me, shoot me, everything. The Internet threats are so full of hate in a lot of times that I think it goes way over the top of normal reviews and normal talk about a director.

Boll is due in Vancouver in July to begin production on the super-horror film Seed starring Canadians Will Sanderson and Andrew Jackson and New Yorker Michael Pare.

In Seed, the main character is subject to a failed electrocution and desperate officials bury him alive.

"He digs himself out of the grave and goes on a revenge trip," Boll said.

Once Seed is completed, Boll will go to work on Postal in late September.

The top five critics who sign up to fight him will be flown to Vancouver and will be extras in Postal.

[Are there even five critics who would make the weight range?]

Five, 10-round fights will be staged over the last two days of filming and scenes from the matches will become part of the film, Boll said.

To be eligible, critics must have written at least two negative articles about Boll in 2005.

Boll claimed in an interview Tuesday from Germany that reviews for BloodRayne - the tale of a woman who is half human, half vampire - were trashing the movie before it came out and that put the film in the bottom 50 on the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) prior to its January release.

"There are a lot of reviewers, they talk about the bad press I get and that is also because of the Internet geeks," he said.

"If they don't appreciate what I did, they should show also that they have balls," he said. "They have three or four months to train and get in shape for it."

Boll said he boxed "a long time ago" and fought as an amateur in Germany for about 10 years.

"Now, I have to reactivate my boxing gloves."

Boll said he has already received offers to fight him but not from those he feels are qualified as critics qualified for the punch-up.

But it's not just the critics Boll wants the chance to take a few punches at.

He's specifically targeted fellow filmmakers Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino.

Both Avary and Boll have made films based on video games.

In an interview with Edge Online, Avary discussed his recent project, Silent Hill, and the comfort level game-makers have with filmmakers using their work as the basis for films.

"Will Silent Hill make game designers more comfortable?" he asked. "Guys like Uwe Boll have done a lot of damage and I don't know that one good game adaptation will undo it all."

Boll is upset with Tarantino because the gore-thriller Hostel - billed as "presented" by the American fillmaker - came out at the same time as BloodRayne and overshadowed the latter's release.

"This was very bad for me," he said.

Hostel was directed by Eli Roth, not Tarantino, although the latter is listed as executive producer on imdb.com.

Boll was also unimpressed with claims on the Internet that Tarantino could beat him up.

Boll readily acknowledged his boxing challenge is more for the humour than anything.

"This is more a gag," he said. "I'm not counting on Quentin Tarantino coming up to Vancouver."

Tarantino could not be contacted for comment through the William Morris Agency which represents him.

While he hasn't heard of directors challenging their critics to fisticuffs, Vancouver International Film Festival director Alan Franey said odd stunts are not unknown.

"Werner Hertzog challenged . . . some young filmmakers that if they actually got off their butt and made a film instead of complaining about how difficult it was he would eat his shoe - and did," Franey said.

Hertzog directed the legendary 1979 vampire film Nosferatu starring Klaus Kinski.

Boll has not done a lot to make himself popular with the Hollywood establishment.

When BloodRayne premiered at Graumann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in early January, Boll stood at the front of the theatre and said: "I hate Hollywood."

Boll's next picture due in theatres is In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.

Like BloodRayne, it's also based on a video game. It features Loken again as well as John Rhys-Davies, Ray Liotta, Matthew Lillard, Leelee Sobieski, Claire Forlani and Burt Reynolds.

Much of the shooting for that film was also done in B.C.