A Conversation with Uwe Boll

With the recent proliferation of videogame adaptations laying siege on cinema, I thought it might be pertinent to take an in-depth look at the ramifications of this invasion. Who better to provide the most cutting insight into the matter than Uwe Boll, arguably the genre’s supreme chancellor? I got a chance to sit down this weekend with the feisty German in his posh Los Angeles loft for a candid and surprisingly levelheaded discussion on the past, present and future of videogame adaptations*

Dave Micevic: First of all, Mr. Boll, thank you for sacrificing time from your busy schedule to talk with me today. I know you must be overwhelmed with the advance publicity for your upcoming film Postal.

Uwe Boll: (laughs nervously) I assume you’re referring to that “Indiana Jones” ordeal, right? I know you’re being facetious, but see it as I do; you have a film as volatile as Postal and you have to sell it on that supposed volatility. It is aimed at a particular audience that responds to that level of indecency and it follows that stunts like this only further solidify the film’s potential cult reputation. Know your audience; play to their values and, in doing so, if you manage to scrounge up an occasional attendee based on irony as you yourself claim you will do, even better.

DM: Fair enough. You know, Uwe… may I call you Uwe?

UB: I have no problem with that.

DM: I must say, after getting a feel for your personality from interviews, director’s commentary and, well, the generally maniacal nature of your films, I must admit, I’m a bit blindsided by how calm and articulate you are in person. It’s almost as if someone else were speaking for you.

UB: (laughing jovially) I get that all the time. For me directing films is not simply a matter of shot construction, lighting and fundamental theories on narrative sequencing; there is an element of showmanship built into the structure. Creating a filmmaking persona is just as important as creating the film itself. I see Orson Welles as the perfect model for this theory…

(At this point I snicker slightly. My insolence does not escape Mr. Boll’s attention)

… Was fällt dir denn eigentlich ein? I know what you’ve written about me and I do not care. Achtung, Herr Micevic, I’ve boxed greater men and — more importantly — critics than you; do not test my patience.

To give you an idea of what I am getting at, allow me to name a few names: Tom Shadyac, Steven Sommers, and Paul Anderson. Together they are responsible for Bruce Almighty, Van Helsing and Resident Evil. Herr Micevic, surely you recognize the movies and the awful qualities ascribed to them, but you probably would not know their directors by name. So, in my mind, if you are selling an inferior product anyway, a good strategy for hyping it is to find a new angle, such as an outrageous off-screen persona. In addition, it does not hurt to gain a little notoriety in the process. Fame arises on both ends of the spectrum, why confine yourself only to one path to stardom?

DM: Well, this is a really intriguing revelation for me, perhaps at a later date we can go into this in further detail, but I really wanted to move onto our primary topic: videogame adaptations. I ran across news that they’re making an adaptation of Castlevania. This rubs me the wrong way. As much as I disliked your films, I can’t say I was totally offended by them because you didn’t attempt to tackle games that many consider bona fide classics, like Castlevania or Super Mario. For me, this adaptation hits a bit too close to home and I equate it to the other great videogame disasters, namely the aforementioned Mario Bros. film and the reprehensible Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

UB: Das ist mir auch aufgefallen. To make myself clear, I agree and disagree. I guess it depends on the quality of the direction and the faithfulness of the screenplay to the source material. In the correct hands, Mario Bros. might have been a passable film. With both of the films you mentioned what ultimately sank their chances in regard to the screenplays was their loftiness.

Us Germans have an expression Bei ihm fällt der Groschen pfenningerweise. Literally, “for him the dime falls more like a penny.” It is like an idea came to mind, much like in your cartoons where a lightbulb appears overhead, but it shines so dimly that it hardly results in a truly groundbreaking discovery. The makers of these films each had this unrealistic desire to break from convention and disassociate themselves from their source material. However, their efforts were dulled over by a lack of thoroughly developed ideas about how to do this. In the case of Mario, the concern was how to realistically adapt a game that involved such simple dynamics and a lack of coherent narration; for Final Fantasy the decision was made to allow the sci-fi element to eclipse the “fantasy” suggested in the film’s title.

I think on the surface, directors feel as if it is an either/or situation. Either you try to appease fans of the game or you pull the other way and focus on appealing to connoisseurs of filmmaking and the storytelling that comes with it. Obviously with advancements in the gaming industry, the distinction between the two has become increasingly blurred. Still, the problem remains that if you lean too far toward one, you run the risk of offending the other. It requires a great deal of strength of mind. Not many, if any, directors have ever really succeeded at it. There you have it. Da liegt der Hund bergraben.

DM: A little self-deprecating of you to suggest that not a single director of videogame adaptations has yet to crack the code.

UB: I am aware of my credentials, and I never said I wasn’t up to the challenge. See it this way, with House of the Dead I was pulling too much in one direction. I took the novelty of adapting a videogame too literal and, in a way, it failed on both sides since film snobs will disparage it for its lack of technique and videogame fanatics will attack it for not living up to the experience of actually playing the game. The same is true of Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill. You take it too literally, and you beg the question, “why not simply play the game instead?” On the flipside, diverge too greatly from your source and the question then becomes “why even bother affixing the film content to a game in the first place?”

Say what you must about the quality of my films, by the time Bloodrayne II came about I had learned that the best approach to fully realizing the potential for adaptations was to bridge the gap between the two — cinema and gaming. Not that it was an entirely successful formula, Bloodrayne II‘s straight-to-dvd status gives you some indication of that, but it suggested a maturation for the genre.

DM: It’s fitting that you mentioned Paul Anderson earlier. He was originally set to direct Castlevania, but has since stepped down and is now solely involved in the screenwriting process. The new director — hold on, let me look him up — yes, Sylvain White, his credits include Stomp the Yard and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Together, their filmmaking history does not bode well for the quality of Castlevania.

UB: Excuse me for a moment, but I think you meant I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer.

DM: Oh, you’re right. I get the various incarnations of the series mixed up a lot.

UB: I take no pleasure in deriding the work of others, I leave that line of work to you. You are obviously smug and condescending enough to carry it out.

DM: A little uncalled for, don’t you think?

UB: I do not see it this way, considering the things you have written not only about me but others. It is our duty as filmmakers and just recourse against the likes of you. Need I remind you that while you are on the outside looking in, we are in the trenches taking the brunt of the attacks from people like yourself who are too afraid to lay their creativity on the line. You can mask your envy with all the hyperbole and sarcastic remarks you see fit, but the only damage you’re really doing is to yourself and your reputation. Also, you should be more mindful of typos, it realy breaks up the flow.

DM: This is actually starting to get a little too surreal for me… or is it therapeutic?

UB: It is done out of necessity, Herr Micevic.

DM: And wait a minute, did Uwe Boll just tell me to be mindful of my reputation?

UB: Whatever the case may be, to get slightly back on topic, the very nature of adapting a videogame for the screen invites scrutiny and criticism. I am not willing to accept that it is necessarily an impossible task, but it is definitely not easy. It’s unfair to look at it simply as a quick way to make money. In some cases, yes, that might be true. But I have not made money on a film in years, so what is my motivation? Everyone, yourself included, is quick to accuse me of lacking passion for filmmaking, but have you ever stopped to consider that it might in fact be a surfeit of passion that keeps me going in spite of my shortcomings?

Look, art will always have its critics, that is an immutable law. But we cannot merely approach this in terms of determining what possesses artistic merit and what does not. To the creator, the work is always art. You cannot tell me that House of the Dead was not an artistic act of creation for me; you can, however, refuse to acknowledge it as art in regard to your own mind and soul. The artistic quality is there, depending on the perspective from which you choose to view it, but that quality does not disintegrate objectively, it instead fluctuates from person to person. In other words, the artistry is obscured, covered over by criticism and piercing verbal assaults. I would say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I do not want to draw myself into tired cliché.

The point I would like to leave you with is that you can’t necessarily dismiss something based on broad generalizations and a certain amount of precedent, no matter how consistent those results have been over the years. Filmmakers, even those who work exclusively with high-concept narratives, are still capable of surprising us. Someone like yourself may have already — and might I add, unfairly — passed judgment on films like Postal and Castlevania, but that does not mean they have no real potential to anyone.

DM: Wow. I have nothing more to add. Thank you.

*Conversation may or may not have actually happened.

Tags: All-night pizza party in my parents' basement!, Castlevania, Dave Micevic, Paul Anderson, Self-deprecating blogs, Uwe Boll, Videogames