Australian Gamer Feature :: EXCLUSIVE Uwe Boll Interview

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EXCLUSIVE Uwe Boll Interview

Matt: The postal series was always pretty controversial, is that something you’ve particularly gone for, is that one of the reasons you chose it?

Uwe: Absolutely. I had looked into it, and I had in the beginning a big fight with the game guys, with Steve Wick, because they thought I should do more a movie like Taxi Driver, like with the hardcore run amok guy that goes postal. I said “Look, there's not only Taxi Driver, there’s also Falling Down, and in a way Natural Born Killers”. We know a lot of movies where people go on a rampage and flip out. And I said, of course, we have to have that in the story, and we HAVE that in the story, but we can make with Postal something bigger, where you use your options, that you have Bin Laden, that you have Bush in the game, and that we bring it in with the cat as the silencer for example. We spent $50,000 for a cat animatronic to do that gag in the movie! But this is stuff that we have to do, and I think the movie will work best if we don’t do that so serious, because then you can be way harder in everything, and people swallow it it’s not so disgusting.

Yug: I gotta be honest I never got a Taxi Driver story feel from playing the Postal game myself, it was a lot more humorous than that, a lot more comedy.

Uwe: And that’s why for me it was a big surprise, because Steve Wick and Vince Desi, these are funny guys, you can have good dinner with these guys, but then they came to the set later and I think they laughed at it. Vince Desi is playing in the movie also, he is playing basically a big, living penis. It's a "crotchy doll", and he's, like, he’s in a doll costume, and he wants to kill me because I ruined his game, and I think he had a blast with it, and now they love it! They really saw on set for one week, that we really go for it, and we only cast people who were super radical. For example, Rob Schnider, who normally plays every dirty shit, he passed on it because he said the script is too harsh. We offered him a part, but then we got Dave Foley for that part, and he turned out really really good. And all the actors we have in it are more comedians, and this pays off, because they can transform all those crazy characters to be super believable AND crazy. And at the same time, they are entertaining. This is really a great cast, and its funny that all our terrorists are played by the guys who played the terrorists in Spielberg's Munich movie, so they played it there for real and in our movie for fun and comedy.

Matt: I’ve noticed from looking around a little bit on the internet, you reuse a lot of actors, particularly your main actors. From Seed alone, Will Sanderson, Ralf Moeller, Michael Paré, Michael Eklund. Is there any particular reason for that, are they just actors you like working with?

Uwe: Yeah, if I know an actors, and I know how he works or whatever, then I’d like to work again with him. If the part fits. Like for Ralf Moeller, you need a special part for example, he’s a big guy from Gladiator, but Michael Eklund for example can play almost anything. However right now it looks like Will has stopped acting. He’s in Seed, a killer in Seed, but this is his last movie. He studies medicine now, he started as a child actor almost, so he told me its over for him, Seed will be his last movie, even though you never see his face in Seed. He was in a burning bath as a child so his face burned down his skin, and this is the reason he has kind of a mask on the whole time, to protect his face.

Matt: You were talking about doing a cameo in Postal. Postal 2 the game was pretty famous for a cameo by Gary Coleman, did you end up getting him at all?

Uwe: No, we actually ended up replacing him with Vern Troyer, Mini Me from Austin Powers. He plays his part, and funny enough because Gary Coleman's agent told us that he don’t want to swear in the movie. And we said 50% of his lines in our movie are “What the fuck?”, so it’s ongoing. I was shocked! But he said he didn’t want to swear, and we’d have to change the whole dialogue, and so Vince Desi called him to ask him what was going on. Because in the game, he plays not really a clean guy, so yeah. It was too complicated. So we went for Vern Troyer, and he had no problems with it.

Matt: I think Vern Troyer is a little bigger then Gary Coleman isn’t he

Uwe: No, he’s smaller. Vern Troyer, is reaching you through your knees, not higher, its unbelievable. In the movie, its perfect though.

Matt: Our friend Mick Gordon is working with you on the score for some of your coming movies, how are you finding working with Australians?

Uwe: The composer, Jessica de Rooij, she is working with Mick, close together, and she is totally excited. She got 15 people approach her to help her out and do cues for the score, and she said by far the best stuff is coming from Mick. I heard his stuff also, he did a crazy Taliban rap music, and he did more rock stuff also that works very good. So, we are all really happy with what he provides. I also have another guy Trent, he is doing all my websites, he is also in Australia, so all of the Dungeon Siege websites, everything, it comes from Australia.

Matt: Mick also did the music for our Podcast introduction, we were really happy with that, he’s a great composer.

Uwe: Yup

Matt: We heard a bit of a rumour that you’re making a game based on Guitar Hero, is there any truth in that?

Uwe: A game based on what??

Matt: Guitar Hero, one of those rythm games based on the guitar.

Uwe: No. No.

Matt: Judging by the fact that you haven’t heard of that, I suspect that’s not true.

Uwe: No, that’s not true. But what we do right now, we are in preparation for a movie called ‘Tunnel Rats’, about the Vietnam War in the tunnels. And I want to do a video game based on this, because this could be a very cool game. Like the viet congs they had in the war, 260 km tunnels where they were fighting for 3 to 4 years against the Americans, and they were hiding there, they even had schools there, all the children were in the tunnels, and Americans they went into the tunnel system and got attacked by spiders, rats, traps – they could float the tunnels and they would drown to death, they had tunnels with flame thrower traps, and all that stuff. We will make a movie out of it, and it could be a very interesting game. I’m trying to get a game company right now, a few are interested.

Matt: Is the movie from the Viet Cong point of view, or from the American?

Uwe: Basically, I think we are more neutral, so we will show both points of view. We don’t want to have that ‘hero’ kind of war movie, or the poor soldier getting killed from the viet cong in the tunnels, we don’t tell a story like this, it will be more … more in a disturbing direction, put it this way.

Matt: Its too easy to just say these are the bad guys, and these are the good guys, but life isn’t really like that.

Uwe: Exactly, and I think in times like now you cannot make movies like this anymore. And its one of the reasons that all those war movies, like Wind Talkers, the Bruce Willis movie, the Mel Gibson movie … they aren’t really adequate movies about the war. And the great Vietnam movies like Apocalypse Now, they were all made in the 80’s also, and they showed more like the craziness of it, and I think theres an option in Tunnel Rats to portray this, that its so completely senseless.

Matt: Do you see movies and games growing closer together? I mean it sounds like your looking at doing both at the same time soon.

Uwe: Absolutely, I mean Hollywood has not yet answered to the changing audience, and the studios are always doing the same movies, the only things that change is they are making them bigger and bigger, they spend more and more money in marketing to draw people in, and this is not the solution to make movies. And I think to make a game out of a movie, or a movie out of a game is one of the opportunities to make it more interesting. And I think the next step could be that you find some answers in the game that you didn’t get in the movie, or the other way around. It may be still awhile to go, but with the download possibilities now on the internet with the movies, we’re coming to a different kind of entertainment industry. It’s always great to see a movie at the theatre, but overall it will loose. And the same with the video stores, I think from 10 years there will be no Blockbuster anymore, you have all your video library online, and you push a nob and you have every movie you want. And there is a real opportunity also as a film maker … film cost a lot of money, its not that easy to get the financing together, and the main point is to get the money back for a movie. Now, major companies spend almost 30 – 35 million dollars for the big theatrical releases, even for movies they know up fron it will make 20 million dollar box office. It’s stupid! It makes no sense, and I think they loose a lot of money the way they do it.

Matt: Out of interest, Postal and Seed, when can we expect to see them in theatres?

Uwe: I tried to get Seed out Halloween, and I tried to get Postal out as soon as possible, but we are still need for both movies. In Seed, we have one very very complicated CGI shot, and even after 6 months, its not done. It’s a 4 minute long shot. It’s the show we’re waiting for and then its finished. But Postal, we are still doing CGI work, we are doing sound, Postal needs another 2 and a half months before its finished, but we will try to get it out as soon as possible. Dungeon Siege will be in September it comes out in US, Canada and Germany at the same time. Maybe some other territories, so far we don’t have a deal for Australia.

Matt: We tend to get things a bit late.

Uwe: Fox was releasing it here, and they bough Bloodrayne for Australia and 15 other territories, but Bloodrayne was only a DVD release, but I hope also in Australia they’ll do a theatrical release of Dungeon Siege.

Matt: Well, we’re really grateful for your time, its been really great to talk to you, we might leave you to get back to some work now.

Yug: We really appreciate it.

Uwe: Yup, thank you!

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