No doubt one of the most entertaining Saturday Nights I've had this year, the Raging Boll Boxing event managed to live up to all the hype surrounding it's announcement back in June. Ego's verbally and physically assaulted, the infamous Uwe Boll proved that he can beat his most volatile critics into submission, he just had to aim for their Gut.
Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka from Something Awful, Ain't it Cool's Jeff Sneider, Rue Morgue's Chris Alexander, and Boll Hater Nelson Chance Minter equally taunted and talked enough smack to win the crowds praise, but soon after were served up a beating only a Raging Boll could provide. Champion Uwe Boll boxed his way to success with relative ease and hardly any resistance from the four flamboyant haters. Lesson learned, talking shit may put you in the ring face to face with the film director...and he'll make you respect him.
Prior to the actual boxing event which got underway at 8:30pm, I had the opportunity to meet the world's most hated film director Dr. Uwe Boll. Having only a limited time to conduct my interview I tried to cover as much as I could before he was swept away in preparation for the match later that night. However, I really didn't know what to expect from him. Everything I've read about the man has either been negative or hateful or both to say the least, painting him in the most unappealing light. I wasn't sure what kind of personality I'd be dealing with, so I prepared myself to meet a stereotypical vicious cold and robotic German madman who had lost touch with reality. After his response to my first question it was apparent that he wasn't the man the critics had previously made him out to be. Their claims of a Director who couldn't speak much English, who lacks intelligence and a sense of humor was quite frankly the opposite. Boll has a grip on the English language enough to call his critics cowards and the F-word and to get his point across. The dude's funny, has blunt opinions and feels that gaming and movies do not influence violent behavior, citing boxing as a means to deal with "issues" specifically for youth in troubling socio-economic situations. (An opinion which gamers should agree with.) He even joked about fighting Jean Claude van Damme on Pay-per-view, Mandalay Bay, for 1 million dollars. Don't believe me? Read on suckas...
Everything from gaming to his movie making, I think I managed to get some great answers out of him that any reader would find interesting. Armed with my ghetto (non-digital) voice recorder and aging digital camera, I tried to get as much footage as possible with my limited SD Card. Sorry about the shitty video footage and excessive watermarks, the compression software I used is pretty wack and my cameras video capabilities aren't that great... On with the interview!
*Yes these are actually his words. His mastery of the English language only goes so far. I asked him about the influence of the recent school shootings at Dawson College and the affect its had on the production of Postal, he had this to say:
Video games are always getting blamed for school violence and massacres. It's completely stupid. Hundreds of millions of people playing video games. And if every year 20 people run amok in a school, I don't think this is actually an indication. Normally then you would have thousands of school shootings and video games would bring you to that level of violence where you flip out and start killing everybody. I think it's completely absurd... is that not the easiest excuse always to blame video games, comic books, and horror movies. For if a guy runs amuck and then you say its all about the video games, but they live in a fucked up family and the teachers don't give a shit about the kids... it's the easiest way of politics to handle it this way. It's hard to get everybody socially integrated but in a way it's the family and the school system that must change for people who are not so talented and they don't have great family backgrounds. If they turn to violent mood, they should get treatment or people should take care of these guys. And you know what I think also Boxing is a very good thing to get kids from the street and they can get their aggressions out in the ring and not with guns in the neighborhood. A lot of people think that fighting sports are primitive or whatever, but I think it's a direct form of confrontation and you are like totally on your own. This is a good thing I think in a fighting sport, you cannot hide behind the team like if you lose a soccer game and blame a teammate.
Boll: Yeah too bad, they took the money from the rented space. Violence is way over the top, super violent in Postal, but I think the idea is that this is already funny... Outrageous, No censorship and really harsh. A Baby crashes into the Postal truck when her mom overreacts when she sees it approaching... no matter what violent scenes we do, it's always funny.
REZ: You said before that game developers were never interested in being involved with the movies you make, is that the case with Postal? Is the team behind the Postal video game involved with the creative process of the movie?
Boll: Yeah they were very involved, this time too much involved, I wrote the script, it's their baby. They liked the treatment, but they didn't like the approach of some stuff, they thought it was too funny, but I said the only way to tell a story like Postal is to do it funny let people laugh. I don't want a movie like Taxi Driver where a guy is killing everybody, too many movies like that. Postal is a movie where everybody is running amuck everyone has good reasons to run amuck from the Welfare office guy to the Police officer. Coming up in two to three weeks, they will be really happy, like our cast... I think it will be hilarious.
Boll: I got from 2 French guys a script where they said that the game company approved it, and uh so I said ok this is very interesting for me but we have to buy the license, something must happen. And then Hideo (the guy who made it ) said there is no deal, there is no script, there's nothing... so the French guys actually made it up. They had no contact to Konami and then they hoped that I'd take the script and I actually go then to Konami and they'd be excited that the script is already made. It was turned around in the press against me. They approached me, I never made an offer or something.
REZ: What do you think of Halo the movie, would you want to direct the film?Boll: No, because Doom was not so surprising and I think Halo is a very very complicated game, as a game its great, but I don't see where the movie can be extraordinary special. So you spend $200 - $250 million make it "optical" very interesting but I don't think that this is a great movie. I think Metal Gear Solid will be a way better movie because of the good story and character and Far Cry will be very good, what we do next year.
REZ: Are you a Gamer?
Boll: I play a lot of video games I don't have a lot of time to play, now I'm playing Postal for fun. My favorite game is Silent Hill. This is absolutely a property where I tried to get the rights, and I talked to the producers and I like the movie. I think there are a few points where you can discuss it (the flaws), but overall I like the movie.
REZ: What would your approach be if you had Silent Hill?Boll: I think my approach would be a little more, (they did a lot with the creatures and delivered gore also like where she gets ripped apart this was gory), I would try to do it a little more scary, it was not so super scary, it was like 30 min scary and the rest wasn't so scary it was more like a chase. So I think that Silent Hill the whole game lives from the sound and the insecure feeling which you develop if you play the game.
REZ: How much training did you do prior to this event?Boll: I box before but the last ten years I didn't box, but I go jogging everyday with my Dogs so my cardio is very good, then I went back to the boxing gym 4 months ago in Germany and sparing on set with our stunt coordinator so I'm not really scared. I was not expecting that the critics would step up to the plate and do it. I hope they are prepared and actually give me a fight and not run away. I started boxing when I was 17 doing amateur fights and then I stopped boxing when I was 29.
REZ: Why keep making Video Game adaptations?Boll: I keep doing video game based movies because look why not? All the comic-book get made into movies, even comics that sold 2000 copies there are movies out from it, why like big famous video games shouldn't turn into movies.
REZ: Why do you suppose your movies are always attacked by the critics?Boll: If you do horror movies like BloodRayne you cannot expect to get a great review in the NY times. What I don't get is why even horror critics are even flipping out on it they should be happy that someone is making these movies. I think it's a little like they're shooting their own leg, in a way. I also made Seed which is not video game based.
*Boll also briefly mentions that Kristianna Loken will be arriving in a few minutes.
That pretty much concludes the interview with Uwe. I had a few more questions in mind regarding his tax shelter financing but my time ran out! (Originally it was stated in press releases that this boxing match would take place near the end of filming. It turns out that Postal has only completed 2 weeks and has plenty more to go.)
Before the actual boxing took place, we were treated to a martial arts demo by a local school. It totally reminded me of the Karate Kid... They were called Cobra Kai! It was pretty bad (not badass) so we all couldn't wait till Uwe took center stage.
All four critics were introduced prior to Uwe's arrival and had a chance to taunt the director once more. Excerpts from their obviously preplanned speeches included: "the Uwe Boll investors should use their money for the starving kids in Africa." "We're gonna put him to bed for House of the Dead!" We're gonna feed him to the sharks for alone in the dark! He's gonna be feeling pain for making Blood Rayne! Dr. Boll is the anti-Christ!
Pretty soon the shit talkers were taken down one by one. The crowd loved it and with every punch Uwe threw the people went hysterical chanting "U-we-U-we-U-we-U-we!" (pronounced "Oooo vah")
While the critics played around in the ring, Uwe was totally serious the entire time delivering plenty of jabs and hooks, and taking only a few hits from his opponents.
This was the place to be on a Saturday Night. Uwe didn't disappoint and really isn't that bad of a person in actuality... He knows what he wants out of his films even if fans don't like it, well, he could honestly care less. Bad movies, Good Boxing.
The only critic who came away from the fight with no hard feelings was 17 year old Nelson Chance Minter, while critics like Kyanka complained that the Boxing match was too much like a "real" Boxing match. Really, for someone who talks so much shit, did he really think that Uwe wouldn't actually try harming him? The critic's knew in advance of the Boxing event and signed up voluntarily. Even if no boxing training was provided by Boll, don't you think they should have gone out of their way to get in shape... especially if the critics really wanted to beat Uwe up. This was a publicity stunt, but everyone in the audience expected to see actual Boxing. They paid to see fists fly and they got just that.
Watch the Boxing Match on Wavelit.com
3 comments:
Wow! Sounds terribly exciting! You're obviously passionate about this. c",)
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You are correct, boxing is a primitive sport. But I don't think we should easily dismiss its primitive nature by stating "its a good way to avoid violence on the streets". Many people (mostly male) who stoop to violence to resolve problems are rarely educated by seeing people beat the hell out of each other. If anything, studies at Harvard, Yale and UCLA indicate that watching violence, no matter how controlled and constrained, tends to make such people more aggressive. For evidence, check the history warrior Indian Tribes verses peaceful Indian Tribes and the history of the gladiators and the murderous Roman conquests during and after their time. But more importantly, if people are taught the golden rule and the basic axiomatic premise that it is the weak who initiate force against other people, then perhaps we can teach our children conflict resolution instead of lashing out at each other. It's what Social Psychologist such as Drs. John Carlson, Chris Aable and Elaine Hatfield call emotional intelligence. Physical force should be defended, but for every defender there are offenders, people who have been taught to beat down others because they "feel" disrespected of offended by someone else's freedom of speech. We have to keep reminding them that truly sticks and stones can break our bones, but words can never, never hurt us - and if you let words hurt you, then you are weaker than those who verbally attack you, no matter how unreasonable their verbal attacks are. A non-physical action should never give rise to a physical one. That's call escalation, something we should teach our children as well as our government leaders, who now suffer from the lowest approval ratings in U.S. History, not only from the people in American, but from the world over. As Chris Aable notes:
"Those who live by physical force instead of the rule of humane law often find it's just a matter of time before someone with greater physical force descends upon them." - Chris Aable, "What is Self-Evolution?"
Very well stated, Terry. I see from the www.self-evolution.org website a beautiful piece of wisdom (paraphrased):
"A person has a right to defend force with force, but verbal abuse is not force because short of physical force no one can make us feel anything without our own permission."
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