Steven Spielberg is not the only legendary director with a film release this weekend. German filmmaker Uwe Boll — frequently labeled the "worst director in the world" — most likely will prompt passionate reactions with his latest film, a satirical comedy called Postal.
The video game-inspired plot centers around an unemployed American who tries to stop a New Age cult, al-Qaida terrorists and Nazis from getting their hands on a supply of deadly avian flu.
Boll, interviewed recently in Los Angeles, is perplexed by his long-standing title.
"If I would be the worst director ever, why this is the case?"
Although they have taken different paths, Boll's and Spielberg's beginnings were not so different: Both imaginative young boys inspired by the likes of Orson Welles and John Ford, they spent their play time making 8mm home movies.
But at some point, Boll began to take a markedly different path. Rejected from a prestigious German film school, he produced his first film, German Fried Movie (1991), with a little money and a lot of moxie. The movie was an homage to the 1977 cult comedy classic, Kentucky Fried Movie.
Then he found his calling — adapting video games such as BloodRayne (2000), House of the Dead (2003) and Alone in the Dark (2005).
What propels his creations toward worst-movie lists?
The short answer is that video games make horrible movies. The long answer — at least Boll's version — is that he's been the victim of a systematic campaign by Internet critics to destroy him.
He expects that "Internet geeks" will tear into Postal.
"No matter what I do, they're not even interested in what it is," Boll says of his critics. "They trash me to ground."
He takes his critics seriously. A few years back, he challenged them to a boxing match in Vancouver. The fight earned him a new moniker: "Raging Boll."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDYwMzgxODUyMDE2MzQ1Nzg1MTRlNTA2Yg000))