A Good Cause

As a fan of genre movies, one of the most biting statements I use about a film is to say "that money could have been better spent". But being one who judges movies on how well they do in their genre, and don't hold them up to some gold standard in a completely unrelated area (say comparing Doomsday to Blow-Up to name two films I've seen recently) There aren't very many films I say this about. One that comes to mind most readily is House of the Dead. It was a complete abomination of a film, and I am not saying that about the zombies in the film, I'm talking about the film itself.

At first I thought that the director had a bad script. That maybe the budget ran out during filming and they had to pull some Plan 9 from Outer Space-like actor swaps mid-stream. Then after casting about for a reason that such a monstrosity could exist in the known universe, I discovered the cause: Dr. Uwe Boll. Please don't let the sedate Wikipedia entry fool you: I believe that the man's not quite right. (What other film directors have actually challenged their critics to boxing matches?)

This week, Slashdot and Digg reported the story that Boll has declared that should 1 million people sign a petition, he'll stop making films. Since then, he seems to be characteristically waffling, as Wired reports here. The serious note behind all this is that because of some tax incentives to encourage local film production (his films are financed in Germany), Boll can continue to make films that never do well in the theaters or on DVD and not get fiscally penalized for it.

So the German taxpayers are getting the shaft here, and lesser directors without the kinds of financial connections that Boll has are left out. Granted, there are some who do benefit from it (the crews and actors that he hires) but as this Slashdot comment points out, that's not enough:

As someone who actually works in the film industry, I'm not too quick to complain, since all of his films generally result in people working....

But on the other hand, his films are some of the most cynically exploitive junk you've ever seen. He uses a provision in the German tax code to get tax credits and free money, and uses those to bootstrap foreign distribution pre-sales and video-game tie in deals. In effect, he's made money before he even starts rolling the camera, and so the quality of his film itself is irrelevant as long as it cuts a good trailer, will have a good poster, and has enough "bankable" stars in the project to stimulate box office. It's essentially the Roger Corman model, just without the class and punk authenticity.

That's just wrong. And so I urge you, gentle reader, to take the time and sign the petition here.