Where do you go when you’ve reached the top of your profession? How does one reconcile the attainment of the highest peaks of your skill set with the realization that you still have time left on this Earth? We now have the answer, at least if your skill set is “making movies so shitty, even bad movie aficionados take a hard pass.” In a new interview with Toronto Metro, Uwe Boll announces he’s officially done making movies, thanks to a completely unfair state of affairs in which the international market has tanked, combined with his general inability to make anything someone wants to put in front of their eyes.
“The market is dead,” says the man whose contributions to 99-cent bargain bins probably accounts for at least 20 percent of that death. “You don’t make any money anymore on movies because the DVD and Blu-ray market worldwide has dropped 80 per cent in the last three years. That is the real reason; I just cannot afford to make movies.” Strangely, the opinions of the German investors who gave the director money to lose for tax write-off purposes do not seem to be taken into account by this assessment of the market, even though it would presumably only aid their money-losing plans.
But perhaps that’s because Boll swears he’s been making films only on his own dime for the past decade. “I’ve been using my money since 2005 and if I hadn’t made the stupid video-game-based movies I would never have amalgamated the capital so I could say, “Let’s make the Darfur movie,’” a reference to his well-thought-out film in which he had actual rape survivors reenact their experiences on camera. “I don’t need a Ferrari, I don’t need a yacht. I invested in my own movies and I lost money.” It’s a slightly different stance from the man who only a year ago was telling everyone to “go fuck themselves,” promoting his belief that “We have to fucking kill the rich,” and simultaneously bragging he has “enough money to play golf ’til I’m dead.”
Still, this means we’re only left with the efforts of Tom Six to provide cinematic experiences no one wants to look at. (Whither now, O human centipede?) But at least it will force people to reevaluate his work and make a more positive assessment, he thinks, just like how we now all agree what a great President George W. Bush was. “Now when I don’t make any more movies, maybe they’ll find the time to actually watch the movies, starting with Postal in 2005, the movies of the last ten years. They will see they were a lot of very interesting movies and a lot of movies that I think made sense and said a point about things.” Indeed, anyone who gave his films bad reviews will be forced to take a long hard look in the mirror, and admit to themselves that, yes, Uwe Boll’s movies had a point.