By UWE BOLL (BearManor Media; 2024)
This, the long-in-coming autobiography of Uwe Boll is exactly what you’d expect from a filmmaker who’s often called the modern day Ed Wood: grammatically suspect, often uproarious and downright pissy (as Boll is well aware of his none-too-exalted reputation and not at all happy about it). It’s also great, juicy fun.
Certainly, there are many things to admire about Uwe Boll: he’s one of the 21st Century’s few truly independent filmmakers, and has weathered a highly unstable industry for over three decades. Boll understands the nuts and bolts of show business better than most, turning out a string of features on time and on budget, and, on occasion, enjoying a healthy financial return.
What he tends to neglect is quality control. Boll’s movies, which include notorious bummers like HOUSE OF THE DEAD (2003), BLOODRAYNE (2005) and IN THE NAME OF THE KING: A DUNGEON SIEGE TALE (2007), tend to range from below average to outright lousy—something Boll, for all his otherwise praiseworthy frankness, seems unable to comprehend. He dubs his 2007 film POSTAL “the harshest and most accurate political anarchy comedy to date in the totality of film history” and proclaims his 2009 effort STOIC “nothing short of a masterpiece.”
POSTAL (Trailer)
STOIC (Trailer)
As recounted here, the German born Boll was a poor student who became obsessed with film and physical fitness, boxing in particular—which led to Boll making headlines in 2006 when he publicly challenged his critics to boxing matches (“so that I could hit them in their fucking faces without getting sued”). He claims to have published 5,000 film reviews—a number that stretches to 6,000 in a subsequent chapter—in his early years, and worked an assortment of teaching jobs prior to directing his first feature, the comedic GERMAN FRIED MOVIE, in 1992. He subsequently helmed over 30 features, most of them no-budgeters featuring actors like Michael Paré, Clint Howard and Dominic Purcell.
GERMAN FRIED MOVIE (Trailer)
Boll’s recountings are informed by a quintessentially Germanic bluntness that extends to the many famous folk he’s encountered. They include Tara Reid (“She’s not an asshole, but she gets drunk every night”), Billy Zane (an “arrogant self-promoter”), Ray Liotta (“a drama queen”), Michael Bay (“the biggest idiot with his mega-big action films, not because he makes the films, but because he thinks they’re really good and character driven”) and Bryan Singer (“It’s amazing how some directors keep getting jobs even though they are absolute perverts, idiots, and/or drug addicts”).
Similarly unforgiving verdicts are provided about Comic-Con (“All these nerds who go to Comic Con and other conventions think the stars or studios are really interested in them. In reality…The stars and directors and studio heads are very rich and see these fans as losers”), Gen Z (“they have stupidity, ignorance, envy, resentment, laziness, and, worst of all, absolute entitlement”) and the future (“the war and the disintegration of democracy make me think that neither my children nor myself will die of old age”).
The final chapters are given over entirely to bitterness and envy. Boll isn’t too enchanted with the state of the film industry or his place in it, and rages against more celebrated German directors like Uli Edel, Wim Wenders and Doris Dörrie. They, for those who don’t know, are talented filmmakers who generally turn out quality films, something Boll would do well to emulate.