Original subtitles

- I'm Uwe Boll, shut the fuck up during the movie.

[thunks]

See, this happens when you don't shut up.

- Insulting, irreverent, politically incorrect.

He may be the most honest and most badass director

in Hollywood.

- There is a movie director, uh, who gets hammered by the critics

all the time.

- Why somebody with such a lack of talent,

would even enter this field?

He's fascinating really.

- Probably one of the most prolific filmmakers

there are right now.

- Terrible movie after terrible movie.

Yet, he keeps making millions.

- Yes, this is true; he's considered by many to be

the worst director working today.

- The worst of the worst all have one thing in common,

they were made by one man.

- The biggest hack filmmaker on the planet.

- He is so reviled and so hated and notorious.

- He is just a lunatic.

- He is one of the most original and hardworking

filmmakers around.

- He's become, I think, a real force

to be reckoned with outside of Hollywood.

[dark foreboding music]

- Ah, basically my message is "fuck yourself".

You know what that is, that is the Hollywood reporter, right?

Look at them.

They're all laughing and smiling, all your idols.

You wanna be like them, right?

And you know what they are doing?

They are laughing about you.

That is the film business, it's like a dirty pieces of shit

and I never played that game.

I made movies and focus on the movies, right?

that is, uh, uh, how I operate, you know.

It is so pissing me off how fake that business is, but also

how the young people of today falling in the fucking trap

because they're all stupid, you know, like, wake the fuck up.

Ironman is not existing, the Avengers are not existing!

These are fucking retarded idiots and Robert Downey Jr.

and all that people, yeah, they are idiots, uh, you know

idiots, not idiots, they just grab the money and they're

laughing their asses off.

That is the most bullshit business with bullshit idiots,

one after the other, lined up behind each other, you know.

They are all fucking each other in the asses and nobody

makes any decisions.

All the actors ever worked with, Ben Kingsley or whatever

are fucking pussies, nothing else.

They are in the assholes of the managers of the agents,

and publicists, and attorneys that protect them,

that, it's so fake and absurd that I really, really wish that

they would get fucking wiped out.

And I have enough money to play golf till I'm dead.

So, goodbye and goodbye Hollywood.

[dark ominous music]

- I suppose I may have tampered with the king's food.

- You've poisoned me, you've killed me.

- Don't be so melodramatic. - No!

- It's nothing that can't be fixed.

[dark suspenseful music]

- You guys, check this out.

It's a warning.

- What's the warning?

- It says once you make it down here alive,

you're already dead.

[soft pensive music]

- I was never really into creating an image for myself.

It just happened, you know, I made, like, movies

then I got first nobody cared, then I got really bad reviews

and everybody cared about the really bad reviews

and then you get all that press because you're the worst

director of all times.

That, I mean, it's more important, uh,

I think, to do stuff as long as you can, you know.

And not really to worry about what the people think about you.

I think that is, uh...

It's just a waste of time.

- Honestly, we just liked making movies and, you know,

the crew loved him.

But I'm sure people see those movies and look down on them

but, at the same time, there's a lot of bad movies made.

- I've done 20 movies with Uwe

and everyone was fun.

He's funny and he's smart.

He's just a really good person.

- I know I've done over 10.

Uwe and I got along right away.

On Sanctimony, it was the first time I worked with Uwe,

and we became friends.

I think it was Uwe's first American film

and when I found out that he was a doctor of German literature

and had his masters in economics I knew he was a brilliant guy.

And he was into food and movies, so we had a lot in common.

- I found him an efficient director and a clear director,

and that, to me, is the best combination.

- If he called me today and had scale money, just bottom of the-

you know, I gotta work union, but if there's some sort of way,

I would, anything, I would work for Uwe.

- He's a bit of a wild man.

I've known him for almost 20 years.

I've done nine movies with him and I've seen different

incarnations of him.

I've seen him evolve over the years.

- I fell in love with him on the first movie.

He's just a character who knows what he wants

and doesn't really care what it takes to get there.

He gives you the tools to do it and just expects it.

- Anybody that says they hate Uwe Boll

doesn't know Uwe Boll.

If they know Uwe Boll, they would love him.

He's a lovable guy; he's a really nice guy.

He's no bullshit, he tells you like it is.

- When I first met Uwe, I had no idea of his reputation.

My mom actually was like, oh, I'm going to search him up.

And then I had like 25 missed calls.

Then I call her and I'm like what's going on, what happened?

And she's like, I Googled Uwe

and did you know he's called the Raging Boll?

Oh my God, what if he has a temper or something?

And I was like, mom, like he's the most like chill guy.

I just found that his family values and his family in Germany

is really wonderful, like, his brother and his mother and um...

- It was the sex.

You should have to say the truth, and what was really the--

- This is why I sensor him all the time.

[laughs]

- Yeah, I growed up in a small town, Burscheid,

'65 born, there was no private TV.

There was no cable TV, no internet.

So, you grow up outside, mostly, playing soccer,

going in a forest, playing with other kids.

There was no concerns at that point from parents, like,

you know, when you were six years old, you could like just

get out of the house and play for five hours and nobody cared.

But there was a lot of times also alone with myself

playing with my toys, creating my own little world.

My grandparents lived in the same house, like my parents.

My mother was a housewife and father was working.

When he was young he was an extremely good handball player

and a German champion with his team, Leverkusen.

I played handball, I played soccer,

and so he was always yelling around and giving my brother

and me shit, what losers we are, basically.

And uh...

So, there is...

Yeah, he was more like this, kind of, aggressive person.

He never hit me or something, but he yelled at us, daily.

Where the fuck is this? Where the fuck is this!

It was the whole time like this.

And my mother is very sweet, we always had dogs.

So she was the good soul of the family.

And, yeah, it was like more, on a distance, you know,

like when I see, now, me with my kids interacting,

you know like, whatever, we, we, we play together, I read books

for them, we go to bubble bath together, like, stuff like this,

my father, [chuckles] I don't think he ever read a book to me

or ever in a way, uh, played with us.

You know, like, with lego or something.

That never really happened.

And that was my mother's turn to do stuff like this.

So my brother and I discussed a lot of things when my father

died last year and it was this, kind of, that is the reason

we don't need this kind of "I missed you" or something.

It's just we meet each other and we say whatever like...

"Hi, fuck-face", and then we start talking, but it's not,

it's not in me to be like really,

um close to people in a way.

As other people would say, I'm like, yelling around but,

but that is not yelling around; that is for me to totally normal

normal behavior, how I always growed up and talk.

There was no please and thank you and you're welcome

in my family, it was just not in our, in our language.

[chuckles]

There was, like, for a single dollar or whatever,

a German market, at that point, you could watch a matinee shows

Sunday mornings and I, and my parents let me go there.

I was like eight, nine or 10 years old and I watched

Dr. Zhivago, Sparticus, all that classics.

There, I started loving movies and the other kids were not

allowed to go there and so, I watched all that movies

and told the stories, elaborated like, big speeches about

the movies to my friends [chuckles]

and turned, really, into a story teller, right?

And I think that was the beginning.

And then I told my mother I really want to make movies later

but nobody took it serious, of course.

And then I kept going, basically, right?

So then when you had a chance with super eight millimeter

to film something.

That digital world from today was not existing.

So it was harder to get something filmed,

to do something, and it was more expensive, you know.

So, I think what was a big help at that point was that

I met, I was like 11 years old, I met Frank Lustig in my school.

He wanted to make films and his parents had more money

as my parents, and he always got the new stuff,

Beta, Beta Max.

And then when we started having some video equipment,

we started filming all kinds of stuff.

I think it was gold to have somebody who wanted to

make movies too, because then you fire yourself up.

You discuss about movies, you discuss directors,

you discuss everything and you're also more motivated

as you would be all alone

to actually proceed with filmmaking.

Very adventurous, at that point.

We basically said let's make a real movie with real equipment

like 16 millimeter or 35 millimeter, if possible.

Then we have something we can actually try to sell or

we can show and movie theaters and stuff like this.

So,1991, I did "German Fried Movie".

That was the first real feature film I did.

We coming from Leverkusen and Burscheid, by Cologne,

you didn't had a big film community or something.

It was like basically you had to go to schools, theater schools,

to get actors.

You try to convince him to play for free or to do it

for 50 bucks or something like this.

So that was all learning by doing, in a way, and uh,

yeah, that was the early, the early film making times

and it was very, maybe it was, in the beginning,

not professional, you know, like, because you have so much

in your mind that to really focus on, okay, now I calm down

and I direct that scene and I don't think about

something else.

That, definitely, in "German Fried movie",

was not the case.

So the directing was, a lot of times, a side effect

[chuckles] of a scene after you...

You were able to pull it off.

So "German Fried movie" was finally finished,

we got some good reviews, ut the video company, UFA,

is a huge one in Germany an they bought the video rights

and they gave us 150,000 for the next movie.

So, an advance for a political thriller,

Barschel: Murder in Geneva, about the real German prime

minister who was found dead 1987 in a, in a hotel room

in Switzerland.

So, but that movie failed.

We had 50,000 bucks left and Frank Lustig said

you can do whatever you want with the money, and I said shoot

another movie, "Run Amok" but was a very harsh

serial murder movie.

And then, I saw that as the end of my career

and that is the way I made the movie too.

It's very, let's say, slow motion, big bombastic score.

It's my farewell, basically, already.

But I felt, as a director, my career is basically over

and I saw the, the German film funds

raising money, going to Hollywood.

Like basically, that is what I want always wanted to do.

I wanted to do English-speaking, genre movies, Hollywood movies,

the movies I growed up with.

[electronic music]

- Uwe came to make a movie in Vancouver,

I guess, coming on 20 years ago called Sanctimony.

So he came to Vancouver, he said back then to, he said,

I came to Canada to make American movies.

From a producing perspective, I was moderately new, maybe.

I might've produced five or 10 movies at that point.

And he directed a number of films and so he'd been

in the industry in Germany for a while.

So both of us we're mildly experienced, but it was his

first film and sort of the North American market

and working with North American distributors and producers

and partners that were non-German.

- He was just some crazy German, none of us had heard of him so,

it was a crazy show.

I mean, the script was bizarre.

I think it was translated from German and maybe not

the best translation so, lot of it didn't make sense.

But everyone liked his style and he was definitely into

trying new things and, you know, it was a good experience.

- He showed up three days before filming.

He didn't go to any of the tech surveys and didn't do any

of the preps, so we prepped remotely by email.

And the script was, I didn't know what to expect because

the script was a bunch of, that he wrote himself.

It was a bunch of lines from dialogue from Lethal Weapon

and dialogue from Terminator and dialogue from all these

English movies because he didn't speak English,

so when he got here, I didn't know how he was gonna...

Gonna react.

- He had his own way of, I mean making films in Europe

is different.

So he came in with different expectations than

[chuckles] than many of the people we work with.

And he has a different way of working.

- And one is, for example, you wait very long

till you offer money to the actors, so you wait like

three weeks before you start shooting.

You go the agencies and you say, look who has a job now

and who not and then you will make an offer to somebody

who knows he will not get a better offer for a movie

starting in three weeks.

And this is a good strategy if you basically don't give a shit

who's in your movies. [laughs]

- You know, shouting at the makeup girls for taking too long.

[laughs]

He just, he was used to a smaller guerrilla style, I think

and things moving faster and you know, he had to

adjust to that but once he saw the product, I think he

calmed down a little.

- He came around and it was a bit challenging for him

because he expected a crew of 40 or so and not a crew

of 80 to 100.

So that was different.

Once he sort of embraced that and got into the,

you know the efficiencies that we have in making films

in North America, he fully embraced it

and became quite successful with it.

- He is a great producer, he's great at getting money,

he's getting people to invest in him, it's easy for him.

He can just get millions and millions of dollars,

and he's done it, to make movies.

Directing?

He likes being the director,

not so much doing the directing job.

- And party time!

[playful music]

The way she will cut this into the movie,

I'm sure I can use it for my private but... [chuckles]

- Okay, cut. - Cut!

[snickers] [muffled chatter]

- Oh boy, I worked with Uwe Boll on Blackwoods.

I went up to Vancouver and worked and had

a really good time.

I was in Blackwoods, I was in Home Room.

House to the Dead was the first time I saw Uwe

in full Uwe Boll form and it was an amazing experience

to watch him.

- Ah, so did you get a good peek there, Kirk?

- I'm wanna give this to ya.

- Uwe is [chuckles], he's larger than life, you know.

I mean, a lot of directors, I think, don't have as much

personality as Uwe does.

Like Uwe almost should have been an actor,

you know like a star.

He's really loud and very opinionated and he says

whatever he's thinking, like there's just no filter.

- Don't ask what your country can do for you,

and don't ask what you can do for your country,

ask what you can do for me.

- You like, love him and hate him all at the same time.

You're like, you hear him talk and I would be like,

"I fucking hate you".

And then like the next, you know, night

we're drinking beers and talking about something stupid.

- Love him or hate him, I think, he definitely, like,

leaves an impression.

So, I mean, I love the guy.

I've also just like fucking hated him, but like...

[chuckles]

- There's still a weirdo in there that like, you know,

I understood and got along with.

- You know there are some directors will show up on

the set and they want to work with the actors and bring out

the performance; he's not like that.

And a lot of that is bullshit, you know, he's not one of

these you guys who say: Are you okay, are you alright?

Do you want another one, can I get another one?

He's not like that, he goes: "Okay, we got it, moving on.

"Okay we're moving on. Move your fucking camera, come on,

"get inside the cave.

"I don't want, no, we have enough of this."

You know, he's not one of these gentle guys.

- No, no, no!

Now, keep it in your hand

like this, hold it up; both hands hold it up.

So, he moves back, you go here, you move forward.

He moves back because he has the advantage now.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

You stop here, boom, he pulls out the knife.

The guy comes from behind, boom!

Yeah, wait, so it sprays in his face distracts him quick.

She turns back with, hits the guy, right?

So, the guy is knocked out on the ground now he attacks

with a knife, wham!

He goes on his knees, whack, impaling.

Yeah.

So work on the timing, Larry, but this is the work.

- He's upfront, I mean, you're never wondering

what he's thinking because it just comes out of his mouth

whether he wants it or not.

And, you know, if he does something you don't like,

you can say "Fuck you, Uwe!" and he's okay with that.

You know, you don't have to tiptoe around the guy.

So, you know, there's a transparency that isn't there

a lot in this business.

And I think people appreciate that.

- I love that Uwe is opinionated

and I love that Uwe speaks his mind.

[screams] [suspenseful music]

- Cut!

What are you doing; that's not scary.

Action!

Oh god, that sucks. - Sorry.

- Action! [suspenseful music]

Cut; really Shiza?

Shiza, Shiza, Shiza.

- When something doesn't work, he'll go: "This is shit!"

Or if somebody is taking a long time trying to do their craft

to get the shot right, he'll notice "Why aren't we shooting?

"We shoot now".

That's one of the reasons why I like him.

I liked the fact that he is candid and I liked the fact that

at the drop of a hat, he'll call a spade a spade.

- I don't have a lot of respect. in general, to other people.

That means not I disrespect people, right?

But I also never see somebody above me.

You know, I can, I will not say, you're Will Smith,

you're above me, or if I meet Tom Cruise, I would tell him

like how stupid Scientology is and what a fucking retard he is.

So, you know, so like I insulted a lot of people in my career

because I didn't respect their authority.

- A lot of people he has no respect for.

There's a small amount of people that he was doing these movies

for and the other people can...

Who gives a shit?

- I was never really an outgoing person, a person who wanted

to live in Hollywood and go to all the parties or something.

This was like, the opposite to what I always wanted.

So I did it the way I wanted it, yeah!

And I think, a lot of chances to be more in that studio system,

I left.

- It's unclear to me, even knowing Uwe as well as I have

for the last 20 years, that when he's, when it's honest and true

and when it's a bit of a game for him to get some press.

So it's hard to know when he's playing the villain card

and when he's being sincere in his tirades.

Eli Roth making the same shitty movies over and over again.

If you really look at my movies, you will see my real genius.

I'm the only genius in the whole fucking business.

You use your fucking brain to what makes sense or not?

You could omit the whole fucking Bible.

Michael Bay, the new Transformers movies showed

again that you have no fucking talent at all.

All the dialogue is retarded.

You lead your actors like fucking stupid idiots.

I will make that movie 10 times better as you.

- Uwe, if this is were Michael Bay, and who says it's not,

what would you do to him? - Yeah, let's see.

[chuckles] - Hello, Mike.

No, I would-- [thuds]

- Oh! [yells]

- Tony Scott, for example, I think, is a guy who made

totally crappy movie because people get sloppy, he's a loser.

I had an agent for three weeks

and then, I said like, fuck yourself.

I cannot believe that not more people agree with my opinion.

- Well, he's this tough belligerent guy,

but he's likable because he's so blunt.

And, you know, this is a town full of phonies, L.A., so

a guy like Uwe who is so blunt and tells you what he thinks,

is refreshing.

- Action!

- Sir, sir...

- Oh no, no, no, no!

What the fuck are you doing?

You have to wait for him till he says the lines,

then you pull out the key and you show it to him.

And then you keep going with it.

- You know, I cannot let things go.

Like, if people are pissing me off or betray me or whatever,

I try to go after them.

I don't forget things.

And I am, as a filmmaker, focused on moving the story along,

moving the shoot long, getting like, being efficient too,

like using things, what setups to the maximum point,

you can use it.

So, in a way, I'm a producer- friendly filmmaker.

That has to do with I am my own producer.

So, there is no personal message in Alone in The Dark,

BloodRayne, In the Name of the King, Far Cry, you know.

That is the thing.

It's like, I think I did, as a filmmaker, maybe 10 movies

that are really close to me and really like my message

to the world and I did 22 movies, I just did because

I had the opportunity to do them and was able to do them.

- I think there was a period of time where he was making

those kinds of movies and that just became his identity

and what people knew him for or these sort of big, rambling,

sort of huge set piece movies that like, really sort of were

a hard follow in their plot.

- He didn't navigate Hollywood in the normal way and you know,

I tried and tried but Uwe was challenging for me

in that he's got such a strong vision in such a unique way

of working that it meant that things wouldn't always work

within the normal Hollywood system and I think he

embraced that, he didn't like the normal Hollywood system.

He didn't like the normal sales and distribution systems.

So he created his own.

- I mean, listen, he delivered.

He was borrowing money from, you know, film funds

and borrowing money from people that invested in movies.

But hey, Uwe will say, you know, his movies grossed around

the world X amount of dollars and that's really what

the game is about.

- I was always basically full responsible for my movies

from A to Zed and they never had anybody who could actually

veto something, what I said.

So, that sounds like great.

You have all the responsibility, you get all the blame,

you have all the financial risk and financial responsibility.

And that is, of course, troubling, right?

So it's like nerve-wracking and it's different to

your hired director, you don't pay the bills and this kind of,

it's a different world, basically.

- He is a, he's a guy that is, thinks way ahead of

what he's doing at the time always, he's always planning

his next day, his next movie, his next decade.

He's always got something on the go.

- The actual shoots, I never had a problem.

You know, like, I mean, every daily problems

we solve and, for me, shooting a movie was never this kind of

nerve-wracking experience what most of the people had

because I felt the hard part to raise the money or whatever,

I did that.

Yeah, so I went through hell to make it happen

and then, when I finally made it happen,

I felt good. [chuckles]

- He's an amazing businessman and I think, producing-wise,

that's where his talents lie.

So he was always thinking, like, how am I going to fund

my next film, how am I going to get money?

And that's where, you know, he's brilliant.

- That main goal I had in life, making movies,

I totally achieved it.

I just focused on it and went...

Went for it and made it happen.

And that is a lot of times, not really the...yeah.

A lot of people cannot do this.

We started with House of the Dead and

House of the Dead actually worked and made money,

so that made us making more of them, you know, so more

video game based movies, trying to get bigger licenses

from games that were more successful, you know.

And um...but it not always, as we know, it doesn't really

translate a lot.

- Cut him loose.

- No, I cannot do that without sedating him.

He would kill everyone in this room including me.

- You're making brainless monsters--

[zaps] [screams]

[suspenseful music] [thuds]

- They're very much their own medium.

Their own narrative structures, how they're structure,

character development, and playing games,

working in games you get to see like it's a very different

rhythm which means you have to come at them at a little bit

differently when you want to translate into anything.

- He felt he had a kind of an in with video gamers and there

was really nobody that's going to be able to do a good movie

about a video game.

Video gamers are very passionate and they'll eat you alive,

and they did.

- Again, you know how opinions are.

Everybody's got one.

Especially the guy who ain't doing it.

- If bad films were crimes, Uwe Boll would be

public enemy number one.

- This is it; this is the apex of shitty movies

that we've seen.

I've tried every week I come in here and try to find

a silver lining, there just isn't one and I hate being this

unmitigated cynicism around a film, but this is unwatchable.

- Like, the movie starts and I'm like, I hate it.

I hate it already.

- Why don't you try, in the future, making a movie

that's worth a fuck!

I hope you are laughed straight into your fucking grave,

you miserable piece of garbage.

You're trash, Uwe.

- Dude, your movies fucking suck and you are a horrible,

horrible, if not the worst, director of this era.

- Why the fuck is this guy a director, seriously?

I mean, whatever he touches fucking falls down.

This guy's a fucking hack, he is a piece of dog shit.

Somebody should knock you the fuck out.

- Fuck.

Fuck.

Oh, fuck that movie, man, fuck that movie.

This was literally one of the worst, no, is the worst fucking

comedy I've ever seen in my fucking life.

Fuck you, Uwe, suck on my dick.

[dark foreboding music]

- You know there's guys that are out there that have petitions

against you making video game movies.

Is that, do just say okay, well, I don't care, I'm sorry?

- Look, I've come from nowhere, I make independent movies

since 1991 without money, I'm not a part of the Hollywood

system and so I'm basically a lot like a film geek

and I look into the message boards, I look into the critics

and I want to convince the game fans.

But if you play a game, week after week, whatever you built

your own movie in your head, it's tough to convince this

special fan of that video game, that it's a great movie.

- And one night we were all just sitting around drinking

and a couple of the guys I was with had actually worked on

some of the IPs that had been turned into movies.

So I thought, well hell, I'll just jump on and I'll just write

a quick petition and I'll send them to send over to these guys.

So nothing else I can see like, hey, you know, a written

middle finger to this guy who had kind of just taken an IP

they'd worked on and just run it through the mud.

And, all of a sudden, I get a phone call from a reporter

from New York Times and so, this reporter had to

walk me through, he's like "Oh yeah, this horror film site

"was interviewing him and mentioned it and he offered

"challenges that if it hit a million signatures, he'd quit."

The last I looked at the petition, he'd maybe had

a couple hundred signatures and here, all of a sudden,

I'm pulling the petition up and it's got 100,000 signatures.

And that was just, it was surreal, in the moment.

And at that point, I talked to New York Times,

Harper's magazine called, various independent blogs

and like horror movie sites try to get ahold of me

and I had no idea what was really going on with this

and here it was causing this chaos.

- Yes, there was an online petition to stop,

I should stop making movies and it got so many people

signing because you got free chewing gum.

There was a chewing gum company sponsoring it.

So you've got a free pack of gum if you signed the petition.

When I did the pro ball petition, we got way less votes

but we also had nothing to offer, so [chuckles]

you know, so yeah.

But it was also another PR campaign saying basically

for the Boll haters.

[slow pensive music]

No, I think I was not under the radar of critics till

House of the Dead.

They really didn't care about me, didn't write about me

that they didn't recognize me in America.

And then House of the Dead was the first real release,

a theatrical, and then they hated the movie

and then they looked out for the next movie what I am doing

and that was Alone in the Dark and they hated that too.

And then it started.

And yeah, I mean, in the beginning, you laugh about it

and you're saying it's idiotic.

I still think it's idiotic but what happens then is,

that was the trademark.

I mean, I make the worst movie possible so that the next movie

can be only better; it's a the strategy.

That was the reason I got better and better and better

because I started so low.

- His movies are shit; he'll admit that the quality is,

you know, maybe not quite up to speed but so is his competition.

He doesn't understand that, why the studios can make shit

and get away with it and he makes shit and everybody

jumps on it.

- He's an enigma because he's a great student of film.

He loves movies, he can critique any movie,

he knows what's good about movie, what's great about

a movie and what's bad about a movie.

And his problem is he doesn't seem to be able to implement it

in his movies.

And I just, there's a disconnect there from what his knowledge is

and what he can do.

- Now, in a town where everyone wants a nomination,

here's one no one knows.

- The award show dedicated to movies as wasted two hours

of our lives.

- I have gotten a lot of awards but I've never

been selected the worst anything and I got worst supporting actor

in a motion picture.

- So what do I get this for? - For Daredevil and Gigli.

- You took an ad out in the Trades, yes.

[laughs]

- The Razzie Awards are the opposite of, I like to say,

the 357 other awards that happen every year.

We're at the other end of the scale.

It's the worst achievements in film and, I must say,

we have a lot more choices than the other guys, most years.

[laughs]

The first time that Uwe was nominated was

Alone in the Dark.

- Edward! - God, I missed you.

[punches] [grunts]

- I thought you were dead, you asshole.

- I believe he was nominated for worst director four

or five times.

And then he did also win a worst career achievement award,

which he very humorously accepted.

He did a video that he sent us from some film location

in Africa.

[slow drum music]

- Ah fuck, you found me.

Yeah, dear Razzie assholes, you see, I moved actually

to Darfur, Sudan because you finished me up, you destroyed

my life, my business, everything, with your shitty

Razzie nominations.

Go back to your fucking stupid Starbucks in West Hollywood,

you prick.

- I have to say, of all the people who's films we have

nominated and awarded over the years, I think he's just,

he does not display a talent for camera placement,

for directing actors, for script, for plot, for dialogue,

for casting, for any of the things that directors should

know how to do.

- All my movies always were technical well made.

That is the same when they're always said like amateurish,

BC movies, Ed wood blah, blah, blah...it's just not true.

Everybody who worked on my movies in the technical crew,

they're all from Vancouver, top block people.

So, you know, it's completely absurd to say, they do X-Men

and then they do BloodRayne and now they're turning into

a total idiots who doesn't know how to put a light up or to edit

a movie or whatsoever.

The fact is that all Uwe Boll movies are shown, basically,

on every country in the world and not a lot of movies are

getting sold to Japan, Korea, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil,

Poland, whatever, right?

And I sold all my movies basically everywhere.

Why?

Because they're so shitty from the worst director ever?

I mean like that is the thing there are thousands of movies,

they stay unsold in any territory and getting posted

on YouTube instead.

Yeah, so, it's of course completely absurd to think

I'm the worst director ever.

- I would say my reviews of his stuff were all over the place.

I mean House of the Dead is just terrible and I think

that's the first one everyone saw and I think he has ambition

and he has a point of view in mind, which makes him a better

filmmaker than some other bad ones.

He just, genuinely, isn't very good.

- Game over, fucker.

And I think, like a lot of student filmmakers,

he convinces himself that it's good enough and that

he's done the best he could, but there are still some

glaring problems a lot of times.

- Usually, on a movie set, there's an argument that

goes on between the producer and the director.

The director wants more time for more quality.

He wants to be able to look for the nuances and find

the little nuggets.

The producer is saying, "We don't have time, we don't

"have money, you gotta shoot quicker."

Well, that conversation happens inside of Uwe's head

and the producer wins.

So when in doubt shoot it, and when in doubt,

do it as cheaply as possible, it doesn't really matter.

Uwe doesn't screw things up himself on purpose.

I mean I think it's Uwe's...that fight with the producer/director

and trying to do it for the dollar and then he realizes that

a lot of movies aren't that good and there's a quality issue.

It's better to make one that's just okay

then wait around, wait around and wait around and to try to

do something brilliant.

- You know, I'm always about the script and I think the ones

where we had the better scripts are the more solid projects.

The ones that were, some of them didn't even have scripts,

they just had a treatment.

Which is a nice experiment but the outcome is not always

that satisfying.

- My uncle, he's a sailor and he once told me of a place

where people play all day and the trees grow fruits

in every color of the rainbow and the sunsets

set the whole sky on fire.

Doesn't it sound wonderful, Rain.

He'll send for us soon, I know it!

- I got a call from my manager saying there's a guy who wants

to make a movie based on a video game about vampires.

So I, literally, wrote something in a day, just a treatment.

And he liked it.

So I'm like, okay, now I'm going to write this movie.

I was about two weeks late delivering my draft and

that meant that Mr. Boll called me and just screamed at me,

"You lied to me, this is disgusting, I'll never believe

anything you say!"

I was like "Uh, wow, that is the last conversation

"I'm ever going to have with this man".

Writers deliver screenplays like a year late.

Two weeks is nothing.

But, I did deliver it but what I didn't know

was that he had an entire crew in Romania just waiting

for my first draft.

I was just like, it's what, you're going into...

It's a first draft!

Like that's, like that's sort of like the naked onstage

in your high school kind of dream that you have.

Like somebody actually takes your first draft and makes it

into a movie.

And then, the day before the premier, the producer called me

and he said, "I just want to warn you that

"there's been some rewrites. [chuckles]

"Uwe took a crack at it, no, Uwe did a rewrite,

"and then he let the actors take a crack at it."

Which is like saying "And then, the Dolly grip was like, hey,

I got an idea".

Like, it's not like a communal process, writing a screenplay.

So he just warned, he warned me, like, you know,

just be prepared it might, you might not, there might be

some things in there that you didn't write.

[whispers] What?

Really about 20% of what I wrote ended up on the screen.

And hey, Billy Zane, what the fuck are you doing

in this movie?

That's a character that I did not write and did not exist.

It's like Billy Zane was in a bar in Romania and they were just like,

hey Billy Zane, wanna be in this movie; here, put on this wig,

say some random shit.

But it actually makes the entire plot of the movie make no sense.

It was hanging on by a thread anyway but there was

a logic to it.

Gone!

People did not like it, people did not think it made sense.

People continually speculated about me as a writer.

I don't know if you know this, but I won a Razzie.

And I'm like, you know what, if I'm going to do something,

I'm gonna go all the way.

I got an award for that shit.

But I got paid all of it, all at once, wired into my bank,

which, I have to say, was also a deciding factor.

[chuckles]

He should care more about the script and the story

and he doesn't.

He just, he gets the idea, he gets the property

and gets the money and just starts right away.

So I don't, I haven't worked on a Uwe Boll movie yet

that the script's been ready, even Postal.

I did that, was my first draft and we shot the first draft.

- The structure of the German investments was very limited,

in a way, you had to raise the money and spend the money

in the same year.

So you just don't have the time to prep and write 18 different

versions of a script.

So you were kind of stranded in, okay, you have a script,

you'll maybe revise it within a week or two, but then

you have to go and prep, you have to start shooting.

Otherwise that the investors would never get the tax loss

on it, and then the whole investment would totally

fall apart.

- Uwe Boll would just set up a couple of cameras and

he would shoot it in one and the idea being, well,

we'll keep it fresh, and keep it alive.

Well, what he's really doing is just shooting fast.

A couple of things I've worked on, you know, just if they would

have just been a little more nuanced or maybe just had

a little more care taken to them, they would have been

quite a bit better.

- The cinematography, he calls it combat documentary style

which is okay, but there's no, like, beauty shots and you know,

camera angle, and lens size, and camera movement,

can sometimes impact the story and impact the audience.

Uwe doesn't believe in any of that because he believes that

the material is of enough weight.

- Whether a sequence or a movie needed handheld,

everything was handheld.

And I just felt, actually, that's kind of genius

because, you know, if it doesn't really matter.

I mean, I don't think that because it was handheld

that alone keeps a movie from elevating.

You have a little more resources, if you have a little

more money, you can fix a few problems as you're manufacturing

and Uwe doesn't really go that way.

You know, Uwe, in fact, one time Shawn Williamson,

it was on House of the Dead, Shawn Williamson went up to Uwe

and said, "Boll we're a little ahead of schedule and this is

"in preproduction and we're doing great, we're doing great with

"the budget; how about we have a writer, we bring a writer in

"and do some rewrites, maybe punch it up a little bit because

"I think some of the actors were kind of complaining that

"maybe the material needed some work."

And Uwe said "No, the script is fine."

And... [groands]

You know, it was House of the Dead.

[chuckles]

- When we were shooting House of the Dead, at one point,

he threw the script out and said, we're shooting

the video game, we're not shooting the movie.

It became a very unique situation that you don't see

very frequently in independent, in any cinema, really.

[gun fires]

- Some of these maybe aren't as close to his heart,

you know what I mean?

There's, like, less, he has less stock in them to be good.

In a lobby once after work, he yelled at me.

He was like "You're ruining my movie!"

[laughs]

And I was like, "Uwe you're ruining your movie, man."

Like, I can't direct this for you; like, you know what I mean?

We're all out here, we don't know what the fuck we're doing.

[thuds] [screams]

- Who are you; I'll fucking-- [screams]

This is what I do, tell me who you are!

- Say it! - Eagles Nest.

- Eagles Nest,

- Oh, the safe word.

That have could have been bad. - Yeah.

- Uwe was doing a shot in Blubberella, you know,

he's got video village, he's standing there he's got

a monitor, he yells action, he's reading a boxing magazine.

He's reading like the European version of Ring magazine.

And I'm watching him because I'm not in the shot.

He reads the boxing magazine, he calls action.

His eyes do not lift up from the magazine; the scene plays out

now, he can hear it.

He's maybe 20 feet away from the actors, so he doesn't look up

and see the image, he doesn't see the scene.

He yells cut when the dialogue finishes, he asks Mathias,

"Was it good?"

And he yells print.

And the man did not look up once from his boxing magazine.

So, whether that's confidence or absurdity, I don't know what,

but Uwe's full of it.

- It's hard to point to one thing at any of his movies.

It's a death by a thousand cuts.

There's pieces here and there that are just shy of where

it ought to be, and a madman's trying to assemble the puzzle.

And it just doesn't play out.

There's very little redeeming or actually entertaining

in his films.

Most other bad filmmakers, at least you can have some fun

laughing at their shortcomings, their ineptitude.

American audiences adore Ed Wood.

And in part, it's because of the sincerity

of his oafish filmmaking.

Uwe Boll was kind of like somebody who walks into a room,

punches you in the face and then says,

"What'd you think of that?"

- Trying to navigate Hollywood with him proved challenging

at times, yeah.

Uwe's got a very, very strong sense of who he is and where

he thinks the world is, and he's not shy at all

about expressing that.

And 99% of what Uwe's views, I completely share it.

Ninety-nine percent of how he gets it across, I disagree with.

So I'm very Canadian; I always used to say I was the U.N. guy

with him, so I'd be wearing a blue hat trying to navigate

the war zone and he was creating the war zone for me often.

So when you're trying to deal with agents and convince them

to put actors into movies and they've recently read

an email thread or watched a video of his,

it presented some challenges in casting,

or in packaging or finding money or distributors and things.

I had to be a bit more delicate in what I did when we're trying

to attach cast.

- Today we have, [clears throat] the bordello steam room scene,

very erotic scene.

The actresses doesn't want to be naked in front of everybody.

It's always very hard to convince female actresses

to get naked.

They are all super prude; it was funny with Tara Reid on

Alone in the Dark like, she goes almost naked to every party.

She goes to, [chuckles] with dresses on where like

her tits hanging out but, in the movie, a bad scene was where

she loses her bra, like impossible,

but she doesn't want to do it.

So, this is absurdity of a lot of, especially American woman.

- Why are you not naked, we are on set?

You were not in one fucking movie completely naked.

- That's wrong, I have. - Where, in what movie?

- Um, I have done a nude scene in millennium, the TV show.

- In what? - In millennium, my first job.

- But that's TV. - Yeah, it's TV but still.

- I was like...

And then this Indie film that I did in Spain.

- Spanish, Indian--

[laughs]

- This is what, I represent the majority.

I did a lot of research the last 10 years, I know what

the majority wants to see, at least on DVD.

[laughs]

We show tits and violence because this counts,

this is what the fans want to see.

- I agree.

- And look, more dialogue is not good for the movie franchise.

- He approaches his art in a way that he would like

to make everyone the most uncomfortable.

I don't know where half of these ideas come from,

but I know half of them are specifically designed

to piss people off.

- I think because, the money, for the movie comes from

Uwe's film fund, he has no boss.

You know, so he doesn't have that alternate point of view.

- We had that BloodRayne scene where in the middle

of scene where we needed basically girl's playing topless,

like hookers, basically.

So and in Romania are really everywhere hookers

on the streets, right?

So they're like 10 bucks basically, you know,

so I felt like, why not hiring them and saying here are

20 bucks and you just lays there on the bed with meatloaf?

Yeah, I said you just go and get hookers.

You know, and that we did, and then of course Hollywood

flipped completely, everybody wrote about it because

it's unthinkable for them because prostitution is not

allowed in L.A.

I am totally against censorship, they're saying that if you are

18 or older, you should decide what you want to see

or what you want to play.

And that, I think it's totally absurd that the some five

older people or whatever, whoever is in the rating

commissions make a decision what can get sold or

what you can distribute.

I know, it's like you cannot do this; who says this is?

Then, it's already...you're wrong!

You can't say whatever you want, right?

So that is the thing, you have to break the taboos.

And I was always like this, right?

So that is the thing, it's like, but I don't retreat,

that is the difference, right?

So, I am not sorry if I make a joke on the costs of

a retarded person, of a handicapped person,

of a black, white, Chinese I give a shit.

You can say n-- [bleep], I give a fuck.

You know, that that is the thing that people have to

get it in their brains, that is language, that are words.

And that, that is what, basically, my whole life,

I didn't accepted this.

- Uwe says fuck you, I have my own money.

You can't tell me; what, you're not going to let me

spend my money?

You know, and that might've been the biggest problem is that

it was his money and he answered to no other authority

than his own.

- There was no one telling Uwe, you can't make a joke about

the gold teeth pulled from, you know people in Auschwitz.

It's not funny.

You know, but Uwe would say "I can put it into a movie

"because I am the boss!"

But yeah, he offended some people and he thought that

they were offended, was funny.

- And I want to explain a little about the financing of my movies

and also from Germany was where money comes from

because you know, they're all the rumors out that my movies

are financed with Nazi gold.

And what should I say; it's true.

But somebody must do something with the money.

I get a little horny here on stage sometimes.

If there is a crowd and all the children.

- Are, you fucking kidding me?

- I don't have like any lines in a way that I feel,

I cannot say that word, I cannot do that in insult.

I don't, I'm not scared to offend people.

- Moving into Africa and controlling it and the six means

I can do it again.

- Off the board, that shouldn't count.

- Doesn't matter, it's flat.

- I think in a satire,

you can do everything and you should do everything.

- That was a tough one, I didn't want to be black-face

in that movie.

He wrapped me at the end of the day, I was actually done

the movie and I was changing my thing, I thought I was done.

And like, he kind of pulled me in, he came into my trailer

and he's like, I've got one more thing, I want you

to do black-face. [chuckles]

No, Uwe, like, no.

I don't know what to do with that.

And like, why, you know?

It's not going to be funny.

I mean, I'm just not prepared for it, you know what I mean?

Um, and I don't know, he's just got, kind of, a really

convincing way about him.

Somehow I ended up being in black-face.

- Uwe Boll doesn't seem to have a clear sense

of what's funny. [chuckles]

Um, every five or six minutes, there was something that you

just went, oh wow, did he really just say that, did he do that,

did he insult that person, was he that tasteless?

- I passed on Postal and I think Uwe held it against me

for a little while because I just felt like I read it and

went, "Ooh, I don't know, I don't want to have to go

"into government hiding or something."

[laughs]

I felt that one maybe crossed the line a little bit.

Uwe has a unique sense of humor.

- Cut!

Wonderful, just wonderful!

- The children being shot in the big shoot-out

in the middle of the show is horrific when you tell people

the story, but when you see it, it's hilarious.

So there's something about that, even when you hear

of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center,

it tasteless when you talk about it but really when you see it,

it's quite funny.

- But he was trying to push buttons in that one

and he succeeded.

And, it's not necessarily funny to me.

It's funny in some cases how ham-handed it is,

so that's not what he intended but

he's not, he's not like Howard Stern where he's saying

offensive things in the service of a larger point and,

you know, he's the fool that has some classic fool

that tells the truth.

He's not that guy.

He's a guy who thinks he is and can't quite get there

but you can feel him trying.

And his idea of comedy and my idea of comedy

didn't always mesh.

So, Postal was a film that we both found challenging,

you know, together on in that, his vision of what he thought

was awesome and funny, wasn't my style.

And so, as we collaborated on that film, it became

one of the more difficult ones for us to work together on

because it was recent, it wasn't too long after 9/11

and I thought that we should be somewhat more sensitive

to situations and he felt it was exactly the right time

to put all that in everybody's face.

- Uwe definitely has his own idea of what's funny

[chuckles] and what isn't.

And, uh, you know, a lot of it, I think,

he likes to provoke and sometimes,

misses the mark.

- You know, no matter what, film has to be entertaining.

I think that is the saying, whatever you is show,

it cannot be boring.

That is the main point, it can be shocking,

can be funny, can be horrific, but it shouldn't be boring.

- I think that there were times when he should've focused

on directing and less on writing perhaps, and less on producing

and just go and direct, or go produce

and let somebody else direct.

But Uwe, he liked to do it all.

[slow pensive music]

- Three movies in one because I had the second world war

setting in Croatia.

I had the trains, I have the tanks, I have like the army

stuff from the second World War and and so to combine it

to make three movies in a longer shoot and save more

as half of the production budget of every single one

of that movies.

I think that was very clever.

- What's up brothas?

For Blubberella, I didn't know until, literally, weeks before

we got to Croatia that we were filming two movies at one time.

And then, two weeks into filming, he added a third film.

- It's amazing, like, so we did three movies and I think

they were in like 16 days.

Auschwitz, I didn't even know about until like the day of.

I think he was like, Brendan, like do you want to come and

like play, like, a Jewish captive or something?

I was like, "What are you talking about?"

In what, like, I had my plate where I was doing BloodRayne

and doing Blubberella and even Blubberella, we didn't even know

what that movie was necessarily, either.

So, I'm just trying to wrap my head around doing those

two movies.

I mean, I was just like, no, Uwe, I don't want to be

in Auschwitz, it just seems like

the most irresponsible, like, you know what I mean?

How are you going to do BloodRayne and Blubberella,

this spoof movie, and then also be so serious and tackle

such a hard subject as Auschwitz in the same vein and have us all

switch in between those tones and those movies?

But that kind of shows you kind of how Uwe thinks.

- The first night we got to Croatia, we went out to dinner

and he said he didn't get BloodRayne 3 funded without

telling them that he could do Blubberella and deliver

two movies for the price of one.

- I think BloodRayne 3, actually, turned out very good.

I'm very happy how the movie turned out in the end

but Blubberella, the comedy on BloodRayne has 25 minutes

hilarious scenes and 60 minutes

like things what we had to shoot in half an hour.

[belches]

- This is an honor.

- Your camp is too dark.

- I trust you've received my communiqué.

- The doctor is in his lab!

- But that never worked because we were, in a way,

behind and they couldn't had BloodRayne 3 suck.

So I could not have like, not enough shots.

- So, first our primary purpose was to do

BloodRayne Third Reich, so we would do a scene

with a vampire, a zombie and I'm like, you know,

operating on it.

- I believe it was a gypsy at one time, but who's to say?

- I've never seen one. - Which is why you're alive.

- And then when it was time to do Blubberella, it was,

Uwe said "Okay, roll cameras!"

There was no rehearsal, there was no, I had written

something down but it was fake it, you know.

- I believe it was a movie critic at one time but

they don't get out much.

- Yeah, I've never met a movie critic, hmm.

- Which is why you're alive.

- Every single shot in that movie is pre-visualized.

We have mood movies from everything, storyboards

but we just don't show it to anybody, you know.

- He sends me BloodRayne 3, I made, I'm not joking,

like written notes in the, whatever, columns of the script.

Not on every line, just like, oh, here is something funny

we could do, here's something funny we could do.

Send it back to him.

So I assumed that the writer of BloodRayne 3 was going

to write this untitled, he started calling it

the untitled superhero movie.

So we all sit down and they pass out the scripts

and it says "Untitled Superhero Comedy" and I open it up

and it's literally BloodRayne 3 with my notes.

Basically, I told Uwe, 90% of the way through filming,

I'm like, you're not going to get an entire film.

They would film BloodRayne 3 and then, I would,

they would call me to set, once, because we're obviously using

the same location, the same set, the same set up and I would

get there, I would get maybe one time to block it through,

and then we would shoot it, and then that was it.

So we never, I mean, I know we never had more than

two takes.

And so what happened though, was we started running out

of time, so they would, bring us a set, and bring me the set,

and um not being able to film my part, my version.

I will go back to the hotel and they would just cut it.

So the film, you know, was running short

and it didn't make sense because there were chunks of it

that were missing, right?

So, I told Uwe, you're not going to get a separate movie

out of this, there's just no way.

And he was like, I just have to get to 77 minutes

or something like that.

- Yeah, you know, it's like, it didn't, didn't,

the concept of Blubberella was not really like to be

a high-end comedy.

It was really like being trashy and I said that,

we definitely fulfilled.

- Like to work on an Uwe Boll movie means you really have

to be on your toes, a lot.

Like especially with the Rampage movies because they were based

on six page treatments, not a lot of the dialogue was written.

We shot those movies in six days.

So some, and it was all one set.

So like some days, I'm just like, run through like

the entire movie, you know what I mean?

Knowing that like, fits good and it'll be in the movie,

if it's bad, it might still be in the movie.

[laughs]

Probably will be because we were shooting it in six days

and we just need the material.

- And it got to a point where he was, he just wanted to tell

a story and move on.

And directing is, it's about directing what's going on

and he lost sight of that, for sure.

[slow pensive music]

- He's not the only person who would have made a bad movie

out of those video games; there are plenty of other people

who could've done the same.

It's just the incompetence combined with the belligerence.

It's kind of like, oh yeah. [laughs]

Bad reviews or a bad comment,

usually it's a "fuck you" and I carry on, you know,

I just move on.

And I never say it to their face because that is just throwing

fuel on the fire.

In my mind, I'm saying it.

The best way to, to sort of distance yourself

from a conflict is just don't respond

You know, that's Uwe's problem.

Sometimes people will take a shot and Uwe responds.

And...that's his card.

- What like, Internet nerds and jealous wanna-be-filmmakers

are signing the competition and I was able to track

a movie down, what they actually did.

And here we are.

It looks like they shot it in the public toilet in the school.

The whole light is completely off and, but, whatever.

What I say, I cannot imagine that somebody from that

anti-Boll petition signers have any clue what light is.

This is the kind of quality the people are doing

and they have like, let's say, under the nicknames

of the internet, have the balls to criticize my movies

or to write like how stupid my movies are.

You know, when they don't like what you do, it hurts.

You know, and even if in your heart of hearts

you think that you've done something great,

if they don't like it, it hurts.

- Uh, if you get like from lot of people almost the same

response for it, then it's not about the movies,

then it's about me as a person.

And I don't think that people, they know me as a person,

dislike me.

I didn't have a lot of fans, let's say this way,

I didn't have a lot of people supporting my movies.

I think it's hard for him to find somebody whose critique

he respects because he says, you're not so smart.

He's not a schmoozer.

He says, you don't like my fucking movies

then don't watch my fucking movies!

- When I think I triggered this kind of bashing

because I bash back, the whole time.

- He could make a really amazing film and people

would completely bash it, just 'cause it has his name on it.

Like, he would almost have to make a film, I actually pitched

this to him, I was like, you should make a movie that

you're passionate about and release it under like a,

you know, like a pen name because they see Uwe Boll

and they immediately go, "this is going to be bad."

You know, he'll never have a shot as long,

his name is so tainted, you know.

- Well he, you know, he traded on the notoriety.

He, in a sort of schizophrenic way, he embraced it but,

at the same, time he professed that it pissed him off

but he kept coming back to that circle of people who were saying

fuck you.

Um, if it really bothers you, you're not going to keep

coming back to the place where they gave you

the exploding cigar.

But is that an act?

And that, I guess, is the core question of Uwe Boll:

Is it an act?

Is he really as angry, is he really as incompetent?

Is he really as obnoxious as he comes across?

And I would think, only Uwe Boll could answer that.

- Yeah, he probably does take it personally, you know.

And, but he'll say so himself, he's like,

"Well, fuck you man!"

Like yeah, so what, this movie didn't work,

you didn't like this movie but like, look at all these

other movies I'm making, like, look at this.

Like, this is good, don't tell me that this isn't good.

Like, forget Dungeon Siege, I'm tackling, you know,

issues that Hollywood won't even touch.

- I think that, really, obviously it doesn't help, it just

fans the flames of his insanity and his craziness but,

like I said, Uwe is a little off, you know.

I mean, he's really aggressive and really opinionated and

you know, I don't think he's quite all there.

- I can reach people, if I'm the Uwe Boll they think I am,

right, this kind of bashing,

a crazy person who is the worst director ever

and then if I do something what fulfills that expectation,

they are more willingly to listen to it.

- Being the guy who is just known for throwing people

the bird and being that asshole, had its own kind of cache.

And he really seemed to know how to work that really well

because, yeah, he'd make a bad movie but a lot of people

made bad movies but he would make a bad movie then go on

a press junket, throw the middle finger at huge swaths

of the audience that he, are kind of hoping would

come see this movie.

And they would just, you know, the Internet would blow up.

Like, well, eff this guy, oh, what an asshole.

But then they'll all go see the movie.

- Yeah, in this business you really have to grow

a thick skin.

You really can't engage with critics or the press to,

especially nowadays on Twitter because then it just blows up

into a huge thing but, back then it wasn't really like that and,

frankly, I respected Uwe that he actually genuinely

thought that he had made good movies and was ready to put

his fist where his mouth was.

[dark ominous music]

- Are you ready?

The event you've been waiting for has finally arrived.

Legendary German director, Uwe Boll, will be putting on

his gloves and stepping into the ring.

He's challenged critics worldwide to stop grumblin'

and start rumblin'.

- Look guys, if you're right, you want to kick me in the balls

and you want to hit me and you want to kill me,

let's do it in a spot somewhere, let's do it in a ring,

let's do a boxing match.

I saw myself branded now, as the worst director ever.

So I was very mad about it and I felt like, okay,

let's invite some reviewers who were like hating me

or whatever and let's challenge them to a boxing match.

- I was the announcer, I was the guy who said,

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Teutonic Terror,

"the German, you know, machine."

I've brought out Uwe.

The Raging Boll, the Deutschland Destroyer,

the Teutonic Terror, Dr. Uwe Boll!

- It was funny because these critics thought they were

very cute and going to tease Uwe but once they stepped

in the ring, you know, Uwe beat them up.

[crowd clamoring]

I don't know, when he boxed this critics, I don't know

if that's as much about him, like fighting back against

his critics that don't like his movies and more just wanting

to like, beat someone up.

[chuckles] Like, for fun.

- You know, it's amazing that he boxed the critics,

it's also really amazingly stupid that the critics decided

they were going to take him up on it.

I mean, come on dude, if somebody challenges you to box,

that's an indication the guy knows how to box.

I don't know what he was trying to prove because

beating up a couple of nerdy critics doesn't mean that your

movies are good.

I was shocked when I got selected but when I did,

it was like, okay, this may be dangerous, this may be

bad for my health, but it's a free trip to Vancouver,

so how do you say no?

[laugs]

- Well, all I can say is that I'm sure that, that there were

a bunch of fans who could appreciate that.

It's a way of handling things and it's a lesson

in be careful of what you get yourself into.

I mean, if you don't know what you're agreeing to,

[laughs]

you better ask somebody, you know?

[laughs]

- Yeah, this German movie director who said he was gonna

fight any critic of his movie, was that, is that right?

And you said, okay, I'll fight you.

- And me being naive, you know, I thought it was

just going to be a PR stunt because who in their right mind,

you know what movie director would actually say, yeah,

I'm going to beat up my critics, saying, I thought it was just

going to be a goofy kind of thing until I--

- Oh, you thought the fight was just gonna be like a PR stunt,

like a comedy funny, stunt.

Boll is like an amateur boxer.

- Yeah, they didn't tell me that until the day of the box.

No, it was after the match-- - So they flew you out.

- He had been boxing for 16 years.

- So they flew you out there just to kick your ass.

- Yeah. [laughs]

- That sucks.

- Uwe would train every day.

- At lunchtime, he'd go for a 5K jog with his dogs

and come back and then we'd just work again.

Yeah, it was really, it was great because we knew

he was going to kill everyone, yeah.

We knew how good he was, right, so.

- When you're not used to it, you cannot handle the violence.

Like, everybody has a plan till you get hit in the face.

- I spent the whole day in the Amsterdam cafe

in Vancouver, smoking weed.

I was so high when I got into that ring,

I barely felt any of the blows.

[crowd clamors]

- Jeff Schneider, he actually, before, he said,

he'd never watched a Boll movie, but he doesn't have to

because they're very bad.

I think that he said that in an interview or whatever.

I mean, now that is the worst.

I mean, it is like basically the most absurd thing, really,

you know, to have this kind of opinion.

As a reviewer, at least you should do your job and then,

he got actually pummeled worst in the fights.

I think he had the biggest damage, he had to go

to the hospital, he was throwing up, pissing blood.

- I collapsed on the ground about 50 yards

from the locker room, I vomited everywhere.

Sure enough, I'm in Wired magazine there's a photo of me

surrounded in a pool of my own vomit with my "Hi mom"

wife beater on, yeah.

Not, how you imagine you're going to be in Wired magazine,

but hey, I'm in it.

- I think when your reputation is so far down

that there's nothing else you can do, a publicity stunt

like that is great.

If you have any kind of good reputation, no.

I mean if Spielberg challenged someone to a fight,

it would hurt him.

It would be very bad for him.

- I think it's silly. [chuckles]

You know, it was amusing but I don't know,

I mean, it's just another provocation, I think.

It's kind of a deal with the devil, if you want to be famous,

you're going to get shit thrown at you, no matter who even,

I'm sure there are people who hate Tom Hanks, for God's sake.

He seems to have an attitude at a certain point in his career

as though he could bully people into liking him and that just,

that's not going to happen, that just makes it worse.

You look like even more of a buffoon when you get mad

and throw a temper tantrum or punch a critic in the face.

You know, I think he took it too far with the critics and,

like I said, it didn't do anything to help him, you know,

don't challenge people to a fight, you know, kind of thing.

I think, at the end of the day, don't cry about not being

taken seriously and then challenge your critics

to a boxing match.

- That whole event that he created almost just like this

PT Barnum Circus, you now, selling the sideshow,

I mean, he's a good showman and that is what has sort of

endured as far as his cinematic legacy.

- And to put so much effort, so much work in making movies,

I think you have to take it serious, you have to be

emotionally involved to go through this endless,

no sleep, shooting night times, like physically hard situations,

risky situation, whatever, like, I think you need to be

emotionally involved.

- You know, I think Uwe does have passion as a filmmaker.

Uwe does.

He is creative.

It's just, he doesn't quite have a handle on

the western film making process.

He's not lacking passion.

You know, after the fact, people can pick on his movies

or they can see that maybe the quality is not quite as

up to par you know as other projects but goddammit,

he's made 'em.

- I don't think that he makes movies and that sort of

middle ground, you know, they're extreme movies.

- He's one of the hardest working men that I have ever met

or worked with.

Whether it's campy like Postal or House of the Dead

or BloodRayne or Political like Rampage

or Assault on Wall Street, he does have a cinematic vision

for where he wants to go with the story.

It's just his process is quite unique.

I don't think Uwe went into the movie business

to just make money.

Part of where Uwe was torn is the movies he wanted to make

were too controversial to be profitable.

So he's always been trying to balance, okay, I made

the video movie for the money and make everyone happy

and then I make my political movie and I'll make some kind

of social observation.

[instrumental music]

- I found an article about me but bigger magazine,

and he wrote, like about the last movies that I got

more and more vigilant, bitter and cynical

and all my heroes killing people, like Rampage,

Assault on Wall Street, whatsoever right?

And he said, it's so sad, right?

And, but that is the thing, it's like, no, it's not so sad,

that is a good thing.

I actually make movies or may try to make movies

or talk now on my podcast about the only things that matter.

And that is what the people don't get.

And that is the thing, like, most of the movies out there

getting featured for Oscar nominations are actually

unimportant, boring, and have nothing to do with the reality

we are living in.

- Please. - Are you going to do that?

- Are you just going to do that to me?

- Please, just take it easy.

- Are you going to let that happen right now?

What happens if that was you?

What happens if it was your wife and your kids!

- I have orders. - You have orders!

- If that was you your wife and kids and you're going

to let them be!

Shoot me.

Shoot me!

- We cannot ignore what's going on on the planet.

Everybody's on the same page like cheating over

the population.

You know, nobody wants to say the bad news, basically,

and then we have to drastically change the way we live together.

You know, so, and I will also not change it

but I also don't just want to be just a bystander.

- I mean, I spent five weeks in Croatia in the middle

of the winter with the man, so I can, I got to see like

what his passion was and his passion isn't doing

BloodRayne movies, you know, like his passion was doing,

like, Darfur, the Auschwitz movies, like, I think he's this

this serious filmmaker that got trapped in this

video game world.

- He's got very strong views about these things

and he had a voice with his films and whether you like it

or not, people watch them and people do enjoy them

and the people that enjoy them, get it.

The people that don't, don't get it.

Uwe was a visionary who, you know, was very very strong

about what he was trying to achieve, cinematically,

and his process was so outside the box that he upset people.

Critics, the industry, agents, the studios,

so that doesn't help.

He didn't make a lot of friends in that world while he went

about his sort of renegade process.

- One of the things people don't realize in this business is that

likability is a big factor.

I think, even though he did get better, no one was willing

to give them a shot 'cause there's only so many movies

by a guy you watch, after which, you say, no, I'm giving up.

- As a society we've become

less mindful of each other and each other's efforts.

Then, whether or not we can dog somebody and put somebody down.

You know, and ultimately, who does that make feel good?

And especially because most of those people, frankly,

don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

You know, they wouldn't know how to make a film,

they don't know what it takes to make a film.

And so, you're dogging somebody for making a bad film,

but you can't even make a home movie.

- Filmmaking, to a degree, is part of what the Razzies are,

but I don't, I'm not sure how to address your question

about whether I'm a filmmaker, I don't.

I would certainly expect Mr. Boll would argue I'm not.

- I don't know if they're that clever.

You know, certainly none of them have ever experienced

what it is to actually make a movie from development

to distribution and understood the number of moving parts,

and the number of people that you have to work with

to get that movie done.

That's the old thing against critics, it's like, you know,

when have you ever risked anything to make anything?

Like, how can you sit here and judge other people,

when you're not making steps to do it yourself?

So, Uwe has put himself out there, you know.

You could definitely say that.

You know, if Uwe found the right material

or if the right material fell into his lap and it was a story

that resonated with an audience and it was a story that,

you know, Uwe could tell, I think Uwe could be

a really good director.

Uwe has got a lot of good ideas and a lot of good instincts

and also too, pace, pace, pace, I mean movies are about doing it

for the dollar.

- You know, he's making tremendous effort

to express his point of view.

And, you know, you may not like every painting

in the gallery but a lot of is not haphazard.

Is Uwe Boll the worst filmmaker of all time?

- Absolutely not.

Uwe is far from the worst filmmaker.

He may be the most unappreciated filmmaker

and the most controversial filmmaker,

and he might be very offensive but he's not the worst.

Is Uwe Boll the worst director of all time?

No, not at all.

And I've made much worse films with other people

than I have with just Uwe.

- I don't think that you can classify Uwe Boll into one

type of movie that he has made or, you know, judge him by

some of his failures because of all the success that he's had.

- He also somehow who manages to raise all that money.

So, there's people who are shitty filmmakers who also

can't get any money because nobody will give them money.

So he's doing something right, he's talking people into

being in his movies, he's raising all this money,

he has done it over and over and over, he gets points for that.

[sighs]

- It's art, ultimately.

And we're so busy looking for, you know, perfection in all

the wrong places.

You know, you can say a guy's a bad film maker because,

you know, it didn't make $150 million in the first weekend.

Is that a bad filmmaker; is that a bad film?

[soft instrumental music]

- So when a young filmmaker now coming to me and say,

you did so much, you have great tips for us or whatever,

I, look, the first thing I say I'm out of the business because

the business is over, because movies are shitty investments,

they are super risky.

I would say going into a casino and gambling a million bucks

on red is a higher chance to make money as to make a movie.

Japan paid you a million bucks for a movie 10 years ago,

they pay you now $10,000; I mean, that is the market.

And I cannot be clearer, right, so that is the reason I'm not

the good inspirational speaker to film students because I just

don't know how, otherwise, I would keep making movies.

With the dissolve of DVD revenues in rental, Blockbuster,

Rogers, was my refinance possibility over.

I'm just like, it's impossible for me to get the money back

if I make a movie and sell it.

For me as a producer, all this, is very bad.

[soft instrumental music]

- He's been a foodie for as long as I've known him.

And so, for me it seems like it's such a natural transition

for him to become a restaurateur from filmmaking because

he has great passion for it.

[soft instrumental music]

- I was 50, I saw my movie career goes to an end

and I needed something else too, right?

So, it's like I cannot expect, I can live from the movie

royalties or revenues from my old movies until I'm 80.

So, I felt like I need to create another income.

So it was eight months of renovations and, I mean,

we had to put new floors in, new, I mean, there was an empty

gutted hole here.

You can break it down like here behind me, I like around

100,000 dollars, the wine.

Then you have around $600,000 to $700,000 is the kitchen.

We're not only going to be the best food in Gastown,

we're going to be the best food in Canada.

So we're really going for do what is complicated.

If a dish takes three days to do and to prep, do it!

So it wasn't really a big decision to say,

let's do it for real and not like

an ultra-low budget movie. [laughs]

- He loves food, he loves wine and so, I think he cut his teeth

filmmaking to allow himself to realize, if I'm going to start

something new, I'm going to put my best foot forward.

I'd say he's living his best life.

He just does whatever the fuck he wants to do.

And he doesn't apologize for it.

- I think that is one of my positive aspect but it's not

really, a lot of times it's not really helpful, that I'm able

to basically retreat myself and see like ice cold, the truth.

You know, even if it's totally in my disadvantage, you know,

and you reevaluate what happened in the last 25,

30 years or 50 years, if you start from scratch and I think

the main point is that you don't start lying to yourself.

You know, I'm not this guy who said I will do everything

the same way like, you know, a lot of people they say that,

"I don't regret anything".

I regret tons of stuff and I know exactly where I made

huge mistakes and what you want to do, cannot rewind

the time and do the Groundhog Day or whatever,

like it is what it is.

So you have to, at least for yourself, be honest and explain

why some things happened the way that happened or why

some mistakes happened, you know.

I destroyed so many bridges.

I think it was a big mistake when I was like on the peak

with theatrical releases in U.S., wide releases,

why I didn't get a manager, an agent in L.A. who could

now bring me jobs, right, because it would build

that relationship over 10 years, now, nobody will take me.

- Yeah, no, the retirement thing.

Listen, Uwe likes to make films.

And, first of all, when I heard he retired, I thought that was

pretty silly because, come on, he's going to make movies,

you know?

He's just a little frustrated right now.

You know, I'd love to see him come back out of retirement.

I can't believe that he's retired, I think he's just

waiting until he can raise money for his next picture.

[laughs]

- I think he's just hibernating.

I don't think we've seen the last of him yet.

Yeah, like I stated before, I'm waiting for his return.

I would like to be a part of it.

He's still got a filmmaker deep inside and he's still going to

have that drive to be creative, so, we haven't seen

the last of him yet.

- It's really hard for me to imagine that he's going to

put a cap on all of these ideas.

He's too much of a maniac.

He's got too much to give, you know what I mean.

And, and at the end of the day, he just loves to stir the pot.

So, I don't think that he's just going to be

a quiet restauranteur.

I don't see that for him at all.

- I went through it all, so I mean,

I'm used to, you can have a really bad year, you can

have a really good year, you know, you can have something

what looks good and then, a month later it turns into

a total nightmare.

So, for me, it's sad but it's also, in a way I cannot

be whiny; I made a lot of movies, you know,

and that is the thing, I have to just accept it, how it is.

[slow pensive music]