Raging Boll – Hotdog

Hotdog is in a tiny gymnasium in Vancouver, dominated by a boxing ring and littered with punch bags, with Uwe Boll saunters in, kitted out in boxing gear. “Are there any press here?” he enquires, apparently without any trace of irony. It’s funny he should ask, because of the 20 or so people present, pretty much all of them are members of the press in one capacity or another, and there are five video cameras trained on him at that very moment – at least two different documentaries are being filmed about the bizarre publicity stunt that’s about to take place.

Over the last couple of years, Uwe Boll (pronounced “Oovah” Boll, for future reference) has been making something of a name for himself. In 2003, his movie adaptaion of Sega arcade game House of the Dead enraged fans of the game and of horror movies alike; by the time he’d followed up House with Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne, online petitions were drawn up to prevent him from “ruining” more games with his films. The merest mention of his name on a website’s message boards would be enough to clog them up with misspelled, caps-locked rants against him which inevitably seem to degenerate into threats of actual bodily harm. In less than two years, he’d gained an unenviable reputation for being one of the worst filmmakers of all time.

Boll decided he’d had enough and issued his now infamous challenge. He’d fly his five harshest critics to Vancouver to go three rounds in a boxing ring with him. “To be eligible,” the rules specified, “you must be a critic who has posted on the internet or written in magazines/newspapers at least two extremely negative articles in the year 2005.” The challenge was plastered all over various movie-related websites, and numerous posters bragged about having signed up – though sadly for Boll, none of the high-profile names he directly challenged (including Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino) took up the gauntlet.

Boll beat the first challenger, writer Carlos Palencia, in Spin at the beginning of September; the other four are in the gym, two days before the real fights on Saturday night, to watch Uwe spar with director and outspoken Boll critic Brooke Burgess. They’re also being fitted with protective mouthpieces and getting a chance to work out a little, but they’re mostly here to be intimidated by the beat-down Boll administers to Burgess.

After a particularly vicious-looking moment where Boll backs Burgess into a corner and punches him back against the ropes, Burgess finally ducks out, claiming to the ref, “That’s fighting dirty!”

“This is boxing, not chess,” is the ref’s response, but Burgess isn’t having any of it, and leaves the ring. We don’t see him again for the rest of the weekend. In the uncomfortable moment that follows, everyone registers that Boll was once a semi-pro boxer, and doesn’t seem to have lost his edge. By comparison, one of the competitors has been boxing for six months; another has been in training for a month since hearing he’d been accepted for the challenge, and the other two have maybe half an hour’s preparation between them. In less than 48 hours, they might regret that.

The next day, Boll invited the four challengers to be extras in his new opus, Postal. Despite their alleged hatred of his movies, most of them take him up on it, and Hotdog gamely tags along, letting Boll’s wardrobe and makeup people transform us into “trailer trash.” The main scene being filmed involves the Postal Dude going appropriately mental, though the call sheet gets changed several times over the day; scenes are added and summarily abandoned until it’s too dark to film any more. Only occasionally do we glimpse the infamous director, always talking animately into his Blackberry. On his shirt is the legend “Say No To Uwe Boll”.

The uneasiness of the previous night returns when the liability release forms for the fighters turn up. Boll claims they’re standard forms, which may be the case, but nonetheless they require the critics to acknowledge that they may suffer various injuried – from concussion and broken bones to paralysis, AIDS, or even death – as a result of the fight.

Yet when Saturday evening rolls around, they seem remarkably unconcerned. Two of them get excited when they spot David “Arrested Development” Cross; meanwhile, at the ringside, one of the challengers bounds up to Hotdog to show off the baseball cap from event sponsor GoldenPalace.com he’s sporting. It feels like handing over a litter of puppies to be kicked repeatedly in the face by an angry German.

Immediately before the fight, the challengers are introduced to the audience and invited to give a short speech. The first, Lowtax from SomethingAwful.com, clowns around yelling that Canada is guilty of harbouring “a known terrorist, Uwe Boll!” Jeff Sneider from Ain’t It Cool News (standing in for Harry Knowles who, among other reasons for not showing up, would never have met the 140-190lb weight limit) challenges Boll to make a good movie or else donate his budgets to starving children in Africa; Chris Alexander of Rue Morgue magazine rolls off a thoroughly pre-prepared speech, whilst the final challenger, 17-year-old Chance Minter, merely thanks his friends and family for supporting him.

The bravado hardly falters; Lowtax repeatedly says he’s too stupid to be afraid, but the expression on his face when Boll’s fist first connects with his head suggests otherwise. The press seats are uncomfortably close to the ringside, and immediately behind Hotdog is a table full of Boll’s friends, including Kristanna Loken (star of BloodRayne), Zack Ward (Postal), Ralf Moeller, Andrew Jackson and Michael Pare from Seed, as well as several of Boll’s German lawyers. They’re baying for blood, and when Lowtax hits the mat, they all boo at him. Boll is soon declared winner by TKO in the first round, and the next critic, Sneider, steps up.

There are chants of “Harry Knowles! Harry Knowles!” from the audience, designed to spur Boll on since Knowles is one of the main targets for his rage; conversely, the table where the critics’ families, friends and van drivers are seated yell “Stay down!” every time Sneider is knocked down. This happens a lot. He makes it to a second round before the towel is thrown in. Once backstage, he vomits his guts up and spends an hour being attended to by a paramedic with an oxygen mask.

Next to face the Teutonic Thunderstorm is the only one of the contestants to actually meet Boll’s original criteria. Chris Alexander arrives wearing an elaborate costume of bat wings and a silver Mexican wrestling mask – all of which he promptly has to remove in order to get into the ring. His penchant for the dramatic doesn’t end there. Between rounds, he slips a sachet of fake blood into his cheek, and breaks it open the next time Boll punches him in the head. For a moment, Boll seems genuinely taken aback as Alexander snarls with a mouthful of crimson, and the ref is about to intercede before Alexander admits it’s fake. Boll isn’t pleased about being fooled, and the match doesn’t last much longer; a few more blows, and you can almost see the cartoon birdies circling Alexander’s head as he staggers around, determinedly fighting on despite the now-real blood on his face from a cut above his eye.

The final fighter has been touted as “The Best Contender.” Nelson “Chance” Minter, who’s been an amateur boxer for about six months, approaches the ring in a robe that makes him look freakily Palpatine-esque. He’s not a kid you’d want to encounter in a dark alley late at night. Minter is also an aspiring filmmaker, and has been ambitiously making the most of this opportunity to get on a real film set; he’s even managed to cajole Boll into promising him an internship on Far Cry next autumn. Considering his admiration for Boll, there’s something almost perverse about the fight. Boll is declared winner by TKO in the first round.

Bizarrely, the Boll fight isn’t the headline act of the night. The programmes as adorned with homoerotic pictures of kickboxers, and only maybe the bottom quarter mentions anything about a film director. The outdoor boxing arena contains around 600 people – God knows what they made of the Boll fight. From a spectator’s point of view, the critics didn’t put up enough of a fight for it to be fun, but there’s a constant buzz of cheering. This also might be due to the number of family, friends, and, of course, media present.

An after-party is being held at a local nightclub, but the abysmal music forces Hotdog to find somewhere else to toast Chris Alexander’s “success”. Jeff Sneider understandably opts to go home to bed instead, and since Chance is underage we have to leave him behind, too. Alexander’s eye looks like it’s preparing to come up in a spectacular bruise, but he’s in good spirits, eagerly watching taped footage of the bout.

As Alexander had predicted, he’s developed a twisted kind of respect for Boll, despite continued misgivings about his movies; in Hotdog’s encounters with Boll, he’s demonstrated a sense of humour and fun that’ll undoubtedly be ignored in other reports about the way he knocked out four puny internet critics. Although the boxing match has attracted the press attention he’s after, it isn’t going to change people’s opinions of his movies. If anything, it’ll probably make them hate him even more. All the glorified handbag display does is tie Dr Boll closer to his critics. But these people need each other: Boll wouldn’t exist as a public entite without the furore created by the internet, while his furious reaction acknowledges his pale-skinned nemeses, granting the online community – often dismissed by the industry and the press – a validity.

Chris Alexander interrupts Hotdog’s reverie. “C’mon,” he grins, “eat some nachos! Did I tell you Uwe’s taking me and Chance to brunch tomorrow…?”

PLAYER PROFILES

Player 1: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka

Position: Webmaster/CEO of Something Awful

Age: 30

Height: 6′1″

Weight: 155lb

Special moves: Pratfalling; extreme sarcasm

In his own words: “Honestly, I don’t have Boll, I really don’t care about him either way. I thought the trip to Vancouver, along with the sheer silliness of being involved in the event, would be fun.”

~

Player 2: Jeff Sneider

Position: Writer for Ain’t It Cool News

Age: 22

Height: 5′9″

Weight: 170lb

Special moves: Projectile vomiting

In his own words: “I have resigned myself to imminent failure. I am not training or taking any boxing lessons. I am there to be his personal punching bag, on the off change that I can get one good shot in.”

~

Player 3: Chris Alexander

Position: Writer for Rue Morgue; radio personality

Age: 30

Height: 5′11″

Weight: 180lb

Special moves: Spitting fake blood

In his own words: “You’ve heard of the Thriller in Manilla? The Rumble in the Jungle? Well, we’re calling this the Manoeuvre in Vancouver. My chances are slim… he’s a beast and I’m a slim-jim sub-amateur.”

~

Player 4: Nelson “Chance” Minter

Position: Amateur boxer, IMDb poster

Age: 17

Height: 5′7″

Weight: 155lb

Special moves: Quite possibly shooting Sith-style lightning from his fingertips.

In his own words: “I like to think I’m sticking up for the kids who were called out by Boll. Also, I feel he’s giving film critics a bad name since he can’t take negative criticism.”