If you asked yourself for only a second, “Uwe Boll, wait, who is this guy?”, you must have been living on mars for the last 5 years. Yes, he is that guy, doing all those game to movie remakes. Infamous filmmaker of titles such as BloodRayne, House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Dungeon Siege and just recently Far Cry, Tunnel Rats and Postal, Boll is the man featuring already six movies in the alltime bottom 100 movies at IMDB.com.
Ed Wood
Recently he has gained somewhat of a cult status, with critics calling him the Ed Wood of the 21st century. Critics and haters started petitions on the holy internet, trying to convince Boll to just give up. In fairness I have to point out, that his very bad reputation has led to some loss of objectivity, concerning honest ratings of his movies. In my eyes some of his movies are by far not as bad as they are rated on IMDB. Uwe is making no fricking art here, but who is these days?
No matter how you think about his movies – rumours are that there are even a handful of loyal fans somewhere – the website avant*garde features a 50 minutes interview with Boll. Use your chance to meet Boll, already a legend while still alive (which is remarkable, if you think about all those death threats he gets every day).
Arthouse, Popculture and Mutiny on the Bounty
The interview features topics like Uwe Bolls idols, for instance he is talking about Orson Welles, Tarantino or Scorsese. He is a big fan of Scorsese’s early movies, like Taxi Driver, missing the drive of those films in Scorsese’s latest works. He is talking about the topic of arthouse movie making, especially concerning european filmmakers. Boll points out that all those more or less famous arthouse directors like Godard made one or two great movies, the rest being boring crap that really nobody wants to see (popculture vs highculture), even if those movies may be interesting from an artsy point of view. As a positive example for an interesting great arthouse filmmaker he mentions Buñuel – whom I personally love too. He 
concludes that arthouse filmmaking is just to expensive, considering the fact that only very few persons enjoy those often hard to understand and challenging to watch kind of movies.
Only few movies today tend to produce interest for Boll. He loved the original part of Matrix for instance but hates all that big blockbuster stuff like Batman etc. His favourite film is Apocalypse Now, that shows the pure absurdity of war like no other movie. According to Boll he tried to achieve something similar (!= the same) with his new film Tunnel Rats whichsoever he claims to be anticommercial, portraying war as something containing absolutely no hope.
Boll started dreaming about movie making when he was only 9 or 10 years old, after watching Mutiny on the Bounty. What drove him at this point was his illusion that for making Bounty, the filmmakers really sailed on a ship as real pirates.
Boll versus Bay
The interview also sheds some light about Boll versus Michael Bay. Boll explained why he openly criticised Michael Bay, even leading to threats for legal action from Bay. Boll feels frustrated about the fact that he has to raise all the money for his movies by himself. After the film is in the can he feels like it is just too hard getting big distribution for his independent flicks, not to speak from nearly nonexisting promotional work from the distributors. Meanwhile Bay makes movies for 100-200 mio.$ even getting another 100 mio. $ for advertisement. In Bolls eyes Bay makes horrible sucky movies for that kind of money. Hence Boll lacks the understanding why Bay is still getting big money from studios after so many crappy movies like Pearl Harbour for instance. In Bolls opinion Bay fulfills the typical hollywood cliché as a choleric director, who thinks only in greatest terms of himself, meanwhile not even being able to speak with others persons while looking them into the eyes.
Boll also hates the fact that the european and american audience seems dumber and more undemanding than 20 years ago, only caring about those big and heavy advertised 
blockbuster films, “falling” for the tricks of the movie industry. Interesting enough, because Boll seems to target exactly the same moviegoers with most of his flicks. Money > all. Alas!
Actors and Stoic
He also talks about working with actors like Michael Madsen or Ray Liotta. He characterizes them as great actors, at the same time very difficult persons to work with. Personal, psychological problems of named actors according to Boll always brought tension to the set while actors like Udo Kier were always good for some jokes and a joy to work with.
Boll also presents a teaser for his most recent work Stoic, inspired by real events in the prison in Siegburg. The movie seems to be really hard and heavy, most lines of the movies were improvised by the actors which according to Boll even slept in the prison cell set. Besides all that Boll shows the viewer around his house and garden, presenting some old filmmaking gems from his own filmography stored in his cellar.
Boll Bashers
Finally he talks about all those critics and haters. From the beginning Boll saw filmmaking as a fight for him, nobody wanted him to make movies in germany. I can only second that, the industry in germany is somewhere between an exclusive club of boring pseudo-arthouse idiots and nonexistent. On his way to Hollywood he had to overcome many obstacles. Raising his own money making those movies was never a walk in the park for Boll. He came a long way, he takes the many bad reviews and haters only as another one of those obstacles.
Conclusion
It is good to see that Boll never lost his humour along that way. As controversial as his films may be, it is interesting to see who this guy Uwe Boll really is. It’s great to see that 
he gives the viewer none of the typical Tinseltown PR chitchat. He talks out of the box and funny thing is: he seems like a straightforward and nice guy. I am not a great fan of his movies at this point, even if i watched alot of them but I am starting to become a fan of this person. What most critics seem to forget: he did this all by himself. His career never went the easy short way but he had to work hard to become what he is today: a filmmaker in hollywood. So no matter what people say: keep up that work Uwe, just do what you have to do.
Overall very interesting. Highly Recommendable. Watch this!
http://www.ws-avantgarde.de/visitinguwe/
(HD and SD)
Goodbye Cruel World 