It's impossible to say goodbye to someone when they don't go away, so it came as a relief to many in the movie-going community this month when we finally bid farewell to Uwe Boll - at least, for now.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Mr. Boll's name, perhaps you've heard of his work. Boll directed Alone in the Dark,"" ""BloodRayne,"" ""House of the Dead"" and 10 other affronts to film so far. Three of his films reside safely in the depths of IMDb.com's ""Bottom 100 Films of All-Time"" list, and most of the others aren't available widely enough to warrant consideration for the list. He even once got into a war of words with Wired Magazine reviewer Chris Kohler, who gave his film ""Postal"" a bad review.
At one point, Boll wrote (with his spelling errors intact): ""His whole goal is to destroy my business. If he cannot see that scenes are genius in that movie - then there are 2 possibilities: he is dump and has no idea what movies are or he hates me and is dissappointed about his own shitty career.""
But there's no need to worry, because Boll has officially declared he is through with making big-budget movies after his latest film, ""In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale,"" flopped miserably at the box office.
But those of you who expected a Nixon-style ""You won't have Uwe Boll to kick around anymore"" speech are sure to be disappointed as well. When asked for comment about his cease-fire on the medium, Boll told The Hollywood Reporter, ""In the future, I will focus on small films such as [video game adaptation] 'Postal' or [Vietnam war film] 'Tunnel Rats.' These are films that represent my true passion, and they can be done with small budgets."" Of course, Boll didn't feel it was important to acknowledge that the German government, which had subsidized many of the native German Boll's films, had just officially pulled all of their funding.
I can't quite say what the moral of Boll's story is, and that's most likely because I don't understand him completely. Is Boll so blind to his defeats that he can't tell the end is near? Can he see his obvious defeat but hopes that we can't? Or is he just too proud to admit defeat and vows to soldier on despite this mishap?
For what it's worth, I see Boll as a tragic victim of his own vanity. He is, like Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks' ""The Producers,"" a man drowning in failure in a society demanding success. Sometimes the only thing a man has left is his pride, and Boll deserves his just like any. He, like a million other middling Hollywood people, was a filmmaker who someone saw talent in once, but that supposed talent has yet to be put to good use.
Maybe this new ""low budget"" Boll will finally make good on his promise. After all, when you've been kicked in ""the Bolls,"" sometimes the only thing you can do is lie down and wait until some of that pain subsides.
If you would like to make a case for 'House of the Dead' or would like to see Boll take his retirement a step further, let Brad know at Boron@wisc.edu.
