erin_broadley

Uwe Boll is squinting at his Blackberry, reeling off for me the names of some theaters that have just agreed to screen Postal, his new extremist-skewering comedy. It wasn't supposed to be this hard. Up until a few weeks ago, it was thought to be settled; Postal was going to open on 1,500 screens across the nation. Then exhibitors got their complimentary look at the film and most of them balked, leaving the infamous director treading water. For those who haven't had the pleasure of Boll's latest, here's a taste: Postal begins with two terrorists in the cockpit of a passenger aircraft, arguing about exactly how many virgins they are guaranteed in the afterlife for crashing the plane into its intended target. A quick airphone call to Osama bin Laden confirms that, in fact, they are only 20 virgins, not the 99 they were promised, so they decide to bail on the plan and land the plane safely in the Bahamas. That's when the cockpit door bursts open and a group of screaming passengers crowd in, grabbing the controls and ditching the plane directly into a building. And that's hardly the most controversial scene.

SuicideGirls caught up with the director to talk about going Postal and the current state of filmmaking.


Ryan Stewart: What went wrong? I thought it was set for 1,500 screens.

Uwe Boll: In the beginning, Regal said, "We'll play it" and then AMC and Cinemark said, "We don't know, we want to wait a little, blah blah blah." Then Regal, at the last second, said, "Oh, we don't think this is good for our audience." Then I wrote back to Regal, to Ted Cooper, "What is 'our audience'"? There's no Regal audience; there's only the audience that goes to the movies. It's completely absurd. I think they got a little scared.

RS: The 9/11 stuff.

UB: Yeah. But the point is, and I've had this discussion a few times already, that they don't even play in Miami or Washington, so in New York City it's a little different than across America. The other thing I don't get is that I think the audience should decide. They don't have to go, right?

RS: Yeah, but that's not the point. The theater chains could still take heat from the press. I can see it now: "AMC Theaters Courts Controversy With 9/11 Comedy."

UB: If they played it alone, yeah. This was the point, I think, why Regal stepped back, because they felt that, "Oops, in the end we are maybe alone in playing it and we cannot do it." I think you should offer it at least on one screen in Manhattan, for example. Then you see what would happen, if people are coming or not. You can still take it out after a week. This is for me the point, that it's kind of political censorship. The question is, is it really the September 11th stuff, or is it saying that Bush and bin Laden are buddies in the movie?

RS: You got your R rating already.

UB: Exactly. I said, "If the MPAA would X rate it or NC-17, then I understand why you don't book it, but see the MPAA rating also as a quality stamp." They got that it is a satire. But this is what I think is shitty now, that there are theaters or towns that are completely controlled by the big three, where you have no other screens at all.

RS: Do you think there's pressure coming from Hollywood to lock you out? You're out there fighting with A-list people. That can't help you, can it?

UB: No, I know that this doesn't help me, but the Michael Bay stuff or whatever, happened later. It was already clear at this point that they don't want to book the movie. So even if Michael Bay called everybody --

RS: -- He is close to Spielberg, though.

UB: Right, and Indiana Jones is the same weekend! Look, Indiana Jones don't have to be scared. It's funny that a lot of people actually took it totally seriously when I said we would beat up Indiana Jones, he has no chance. They think I was serious! So I'm completely out of my mind, yeah? They do not get it, that of course it was kind of that strategy, to have the most ridiculous movie of the year against the biggest movie of the year. I thought this was a better idea, compared to going out on a weekend where four normal movies are starting. I felt it's better to have only one competition, but this is the biggest movie of the year. I still think if you see the programs, what is running at the AMC, the Regal or the Empire, the E-Walk or whatever, they have nothing to play. They're still playing Nim's Island and 88 Minutes and Vantage Point -- movies where nobody goes anymore. This is the point. Saying, We have no space ... they're not getting out of it with that excuse.

RS: Pretty soon it's going to be just PG-13 movies, anyway.

UB: Yeah, exactly. Kung Fu Panda, and this kind of stuff. The Adam Sandler movie coming up, Zohan -- you see the trailer and it's funny. I'm 100 percent sure that there are 25 hilarious minutes in that movie. But then, if I'm not totally wrong, what will happen is what happens with all the Will Farrell movies, what happens with all the Adam Sandler movies and Ben Stiller movies, since 10 years now, is that they get in this kind of sentimental thing. Where did the ruthless comedies go? That's one of the main reasons to do Postal -- it was not only about making political satire, it was also making a movie with no borders, where you think, Time for Blues Brothers again or Naked Gun. The kind of movies where they were straightforward to the bitter end. We're not trying to go for a date movie. If I look at Naked Gun, as I did accidentally a few days ago on TV, and my wife was at my side and she hated it but I was laughing my ass off. It was completely absurd. It was way above morality. That's what Leslie Nielsen delivers, without any hesitation. This is not existing anymore.

RS: How important is the theatrical release in your business model? If you don't get it, it will suddenly be very hard to get name actors, and to secure the budgets you need, right?

UB: Absolutely. The thing is, the theatrical release always drives the DVD. For example, In the Name of the King, even though it was a total disaster at the U.S. box office -- five million in total -- on DVD it performs now like a $50 million box office movie. I think the reason is that if you have that theatrical awareness then people think differently about the movie in general. Even if they don't go and see it, they pick up the DVD because they know, Oh, yeah, this was that movie and I missed it and I'll see it. This is not existing with the direct-to-DVD movie, this effect, where the people actually think, We missed something. But after all the video game-based movies, I felt like Postal could be, for me, kind of a turn-around, in the point of view that everybody sees me [in.] Postal could clear it up and turn the career a little.

RS: In terms of what genres you're capable of?

UB: Yeah, different genres a few people saw Postal -- they hated my other movies -- but they actually liked Postal. This was my hope and I think Postal is a movie where word of mouth could kick in and word could grow. But if you don't have the right screens, you grow nowhere because nobody goes. It will not happen. We have the same problem, of course, in almost every city. We are happy to have screens. We have the Laemmle in Santa Monica and the Five Star in Culver City, but in L.A., to make the real money, you have to be in the AMC Century City. We are in Austin in the Alamo Drafthouse theaters in midnight screenings. It's good that it's running at midnight screenings and I gave these guys the print, but I cannot expect that doing the midnight screenings, that I come up with sensational results. If you have 100 people sitting in a midnight screening, this is already very good.

RS: By the way, switching gears, did you know the trailer for Tunnel Rats debuted online last night?

UB: No.

RS: I saw it Nice ending, with the shiv through the guy's neck.

UB: Yeah, it's brutal! This trailer we cut on our own. I was sitting down and thought about how do I get the message across? The funny thing is that it gets out in Germany in the theaters and they showed the trailer to the exhibitors and the exhibitors said, "Oh God, we cannot show it." Because of that last shot, through the neck. And now we felt like, God, okay we'll cut the last shot out because I need screens, right? It's the same thing. This we cannot show to the audience!

RS: I thought Europe was more lenient on that stuff.

UB: It depends on what it is. They're very picky in Germany, with violence. There you can do the sex, but you cannot do the violence. For example, what the people in Germany hated in Postal was the whole Auschwitz stuff. They think, "Oh, fuck. What if people see that in America? They'll think we are all still Nazis." They hated me for this. And the 500-pound wife getting banged from behind. They don't like that in Germany. They think it's completely dirty. I read where Monty Python's Sense of Life came out and it was the same thing; they hated it. Now it's a classic. If you read reviews of some movies that you now think are classics, you'd think, How could they ever think that about that?

RS: 2001: A Space Odyssey got bad reviews.

UB: Yeah, and A Clockwork Orange. Ridiculous, absurd, shitty movie. Then 20 years later everybody is like, Yeah, this was a real good one. It's funny. Of course I hope that Postal will do a DVD smash I hope also that a lot of people see it, actually, and give it a shot and say, "Okay, this is something I enjoy." It's, of course, more a guy movie.

RS: The Germantown scene in Postal, the Nazi stuff -- was that your way of saying, "If I as a German can make fun of Nazis, you guys should be able to laugh at America"?

UB: Yeah, I wanted to be an all-sides offender. For me it was important that we're not blaming one side or one religion or one nation. It should be like, We are all idiots. This was a very important point to put in. The movie is not an anti-Bush movie or an anti-Taliban movie; it's an anti-everything movie. I did some interviews and for example, the New York Times guy didnt take the movie seriously at all. He said, "Yeah, it's a trashy comedy, whatever" and I said, "Of course it's a trashy comedy, but because it is so dirty, you don't take it as a serious movie." I said "Show me one other movie that nails the absurd politics we are in since eight years, better than Postal." Is it In the Valley of Elah? Is that so much more intelligent because it's a serious movie because it's about a guy who gets killed and then Tommy Lee Jones is running around? I think In the Valley of Elah fails completely to nail down what the real situation is. Or Stop-Loss. All these movies show is the poor troops, the poor soldier, he is an individual getting thrown into a battle and now he's fucked.

RS: So you think the formulas have grown too familiar.

UB: If you see The Bridge, from Bernhard Wicki, a German movie what won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for 1954, he showed eight young Germans defending a bridge and they're getting all wiped out -- the war is already over and nobody told these guys. The Russians and the Americans both come in and they even yell it, "It's Over!" and they're like, "No, we defend the bridge." Then they all get killed. Over all the years, a typical war movie is an individual or various people getting trashed in the garbage can. Then they are broken and they're coming home, like that Jon Voight movie, Coming Home or Born on Fifth of July. I felt like this was not the right approach. I felt it's way better to give that a complete twist, that maybe comes way closer to the reality, that Bush has Osama on the hotline and they're like, "You have to go away from there, we're looking for you in that cave." This kind of absurd stuff, I don't think it's so far away from reality, actually. You never know what's going on. And with regards to the pilots and the whole terror attacks, you cannot justify the absurdity of religious fanatics. This is what I think. It's kind of a brainwashed, totally idiotic mentality. For example, I had in Germany big discussions, because there are so many Turkish people, and I was in previews for Postal and there were Turkish people sitting there blaming me, "It's anti-Islam" and I said, "Yes." They were totally shocked. I said, "Look, I'm not this kind of filmmaker who sits here and tries to say, 'I accept your religious feelings' and 'I'm also pro that the woman can teach German school classes with that' ... what's the thing on the head?"

RS: A burqa?

UB: A burqa. It was a big lawsuit in Germany. A Turkish woman, she's a teacher and she got forced to put the thing away by the school director, right? So she sued the school and of course they said she can have it on! She got the judgment. I think it's completely absurd to accept a culture what tries to destroy democracy or other religions or other people and we accept it because we're so liberal! We do nothing against it. In Germany, they filmed these guys praying, Kill all the Germans, kill the Americans and kill everybody! It was basically that everybody who is not Muslim should get killed. And nobody is doing anything, because it's a church. You cannot stop it. This is a moment where I, as a human being, say, "I don't tolerate this." When I make a movie, I do whatever I want. I make gags about whatever I want. If you have a fucking problem with it, go back to Mecca. That's what the guy said, yeah? Run around your big, black box. From time to time, it's time to step up and say the truth about something. Which means not that I'm pro-Bush like, Let's start a war against everybody. That's also completely wrong and absurd, but sometimes defending freedom is important. You say, "We have to tolerate this and we have to tolerate that" and sometimes you say, "No. You guys are two hundred years back. You didn't accept the fucking facts. You should wake up. It makes no sense, what you are doing."

The Koran is a book. The Bible is a book. These are all books, written by people. Who knows what drove those people to write it? You'll never know that. But it's a book, like Harry Potter! You can make a whole thing out of it or not. We have that state of mind where you say this and think about it, and I think this is worth defending against backwards politics. This is why I criticize America so harsh, because here we have all the information. If you're brainwashed in Kabul in a Koran school and you turn into a suicide-bomber, you had no information. You never had a chance to look at TV or movies or read books. Here, you have that. This is why I blame the USA and Bush government harder, because there are other options. They could have took him out of the Presidential seat four or five years ago, if there was a judge or a jurisdiction thinking, Look, they lied in front of the UN. They infiltrated the CIA. This is all criminal charges. For example, if a political guy tries to infiltrate the police to fake evidence, you're history. You would be out of office immediately. What they did in the bigger scale is exactly the same.

RS: If you have this desire to be taken seriously as a satirist, does it hurt to base your work on video games? A lot of people automatically won't look past that.

UB: Totally, totally. It's one of the biggest mistakes. In Germany and also to the New York Times, I said, "You think that because it's based on a video game you don't have to take it seriously. This is the biggest mistake and it will all turn around in history." I told John Schwartz from the New York Times and Paul Brownfield from the L.A. Times, "Look, in 10 years from now you will see what movie was important. You will see that Postal was important." It is way ahead of the times. It may be coming out too early because it gets banned or boycotted, but it will get around. I'm a big film geek and I look at all the movies, and it will turn. There are always these movies that have it harder in the beginning, but then later you say, "This was a real movie. This was a good movie." This is the only justice you have, as a filmmaker -- you know what you did and stuff will turn out different after a while. I hope this happens with a few of my movies.

RS: No one cares about what the source material of any movie is 10 years after it's released.

UB: Right, this is what I said to Vince Desi. He told me, "Don't say anything about politics, just sell it as absurd comedy" and I said, "You don't understand your own game." Postal is not a great game but the aspect of the game that you can play, for example, non-violent, or you can play Bush and bin Laden, you can play bin Laden as a child, bin Laden as an adult, bin Laden as a businessman, you can kill him in all these various things. This makes it interesting and this makes it, in a way, a genius satire even if the technical aspects of the game suck. This was the important thing, to make not a movie like they would prefer, like House of the Dead, non-stop killing of people.

RS: What other games have you grabbed up and not developed yet?

UB: Fear Effect, from Eidos, I had but I didn't make the movie. Hunter: The Reckoning I had, but I didn't make the movie. I'm still excited about Hunter: The Reckoning because we had a good script. Everything was set up, but then the game company wanted another payment So it fell apart. Now video game companies are contacting me, like, Work with us on something. On the Vietnam War movie I did, 1968, which will come out in November, we have also a game, made by Replay in Hamburg, based on the movie. We turned it around, basically. This is also another option for the future, to have a game company making games out of my movies. It gives me more possibilities.

RS: Why did you hand off the sequel to Alone in the Dark to someone else? Do you have a short attention span when it comes to this stuff?

UB: Absolutely. And I only did the BloodRayne 2 movie because I made the rest up. I made a totally different movie and BloodRayne 3: WarHammer will be in Second World War, so will also be totally different. I have fun doing a second part if it's really something else. To do the same again makes no sense, with the House of the Dead movie, for example, or Alone in the Dark I think Alone in the Dark was the worst-received movie I did.

RS: I always like Christian Slater. He's great.

UB: I think he and Stephen Dorff were good. Tara Reid was shit. I did, a short time ago, the director's cut and I cut out in the director's cut. It's the only director's cut that is maybe almost shorter than the original. I put in more action, more gore, but I took Tara Reid almost out. She has no sex scene with Christian Slater anymore, for example, in the director's cut. They don't sleep together.

RS: She wasn't naked in that sex scene to begin with.

UB: I know. This was actually funny; I had a big dispute with her. I said, "Lose your bra" and she said, "Oh, I never do that. I have to call my agent." I said, "You're fucking losing your tits out of your dress if you go to a party! And now you don't wanna?" But this is a typical thing. You have these L.A. sluts, right? A lot of the young actresses are sleeping their way up in Hollywood, but when it comes down to nudity, it's over. They cannot do it. I think they don't do it because they are all scared that they're not getting hired by Disney. I have no clue. It makes no sense. In BloodRayne 2 there is no hot sex scene, because Natassia Malthe would never do it. In the end, it was not a big deal, but of course I would prefer that she have a real sex scene like Kristanna Loken in BloodRayne 1. She would not do it. I said, "Okay, I don't want here a harmless thing where we don't see your ass and we don't see your tits, so we won't do anything." It's kind of an absurd thing. So, I did a commentary for Alone in the Dark and I was sitting there seeing the whole movie and doing the commentary and I felt like, This movie is totally entertaining. It plays easy forward and you can see super creatures and there's a lot of action. Slater and Dorff are good. All the actors are good, besides Tara Reid, and I felt like, How is this movie voted in the bottom hundred? There are so many movies out like Elektra -- that was a movie I got angry at.

RS: Why were you angry at Elektra?

UB: What pissed me off was the whole ending. She is with a boy or a girl, a child, saying goodbye, and then there's the other guy, Lance Henriksen or whoever, and there's like a Lord of the Rings 25-minute ending. With Lord of the Rings you had like 10 hours of film before, with three episodes. With Elektra you have 70 minutes. With a movie like this or like Ultraviolet, it makes no sense. But nobody goes off on those movies, totally. What is it about Alone in the Dark that can make people hate you?

RS: Look at all the material you're cranking out. You must be like, Cut, print, move on every minute. Do you have fun working?

UB: Yeah, it's fun. I enjoy most the shooting of the movies. And I like to support the actors in a way that we move quickly. I always shoot three or four times with two cameras. There are two worlds, basically, and I'm happy to be in the Clint Eastwood-Steven Spielberg world, because they also shoot only two or three times. Then you have the world of Ron Howard, 17 or 18 times. I actually talked with Ron Howard about it because Clint Howard, his brother, is in a lot of my movies. He saw Heart of America and he really liked it. I said to him, "Why do you shoot 17 times or 20 times?" He said, "First of all, we have the budget and second, sometimes something surprising will happen that's better." So if you have the luxury to shoot for five months, it's totally different. I could not do it, but my mentality is also not like the Stanley Kubrick effect. I asked Leelee Sobieski, she was in Eyes Wide Shut, and if you see her scenes they were not really massively complicated and she said, like, 70 takes. She had two and a half shooting months on Eyes Wide Shut -- she's in it 10 minutes, max. What the fuck was he doing? I think Harvey Keitel stepped out and Sydney Pollack took over his part because Harvey Keitel is used to independent filmmaking.

RS: Remember the big urban legend that he was asked to leave the production because he offended Nicole Kidman in a dropped scene where his character masturbated in her presence?

UB: Ha! That would be actually funny. He, as a method actor, would tell her, Look, I have to do it! But I think he couldn't get along with Kubrick because of that approach. He couldn't get what he should do better. I think that if you do a take five or six times, as a professional actor, you keep going, no problem. But if you have to do something 30 times, you think, What the fuck? What do you want? Director, what the fuck should I do different? If you have a very technical actor like Ben Kingsley, he comes, he delivers, he's there. That's it. Or you have a method actor who is totally emotional and he wants to get it out. He wants to play his ass off, basically. But both are not working 50 takes. That could drive you completely crazy. The energy goes away. I see that, actually, in the movie with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. They look like they're both falling to sleep. I can't imagine if you sit on your bed and you have a relationship talk and this you shoot for three weeks instead of one day? It makes no sense.

RS: You enjoy the process of working with actors?

UB: I like working with the actors. With Christian Slater, I met him in L.A., we went to dinner, he went with me to Paramount, pitching that they should acquire Alone in the Dark, so he helped. He was really good. Very good character, also. Stephen Dorff can be nice, but he can also be a prick. The crew hates him, for example. But he's a good actor. Jason Statham -- no problem to work with. Ron Perlman -- no problem to work with. They have no problems. Burt Reynolds and Ray Liotta? You have to pay full attention. They need you as a director. If you make a joke with Ray Liotta while he is in character or whatever, this turns him totally off. He reacts like the character and cuts you in half or something.

RS: If they gave you a Grand Theft Auto type of project, something with a $75 million budget or more, you think you could shoot the hell out of that?

UB: I think I could deliver a lot of movie for this amount. People would be surprised. In the Name of the King, my biggest movie, was like $55 million, but look who is all in the movie and what happens in that movie. This is like $120 million studio movie, for $55 million I think it's also different if you are your own producer; you push yourself forward. You think, Okay, this is what we have to do.

RS: It's your money.

UB: Exactly. Let's keep going here and let's try to lock it in, let's shoot it faster. When you're with Jason Statham or whatever, they love that. If it's a physically harder shoot like In the Name of the King, you keep going and you keep going and you keep going. They actually like that. If I was an actor, I would love to get through it fast.


Postal opens in limited release this Friday.