I've known for weeks now that there is a petition demanding that Uwe Boll stop making movies (like Bloodrayne, of which you may recall my review.) I've also known that Boll himself has said that he will indeed stop if enough signatures are collected. Most of you probably know this already too, but apparently until I post the news, you'll keep emailing me, so I'm caving in. And now my thoughts on the matter: My dad used to warn me about sucker bets. "I bet you I can make that cat play the piano," was the example he often used, followed up with the statement: "Never take this bet unless you really WANT to see the cat play the piano." He never explained how it would be done, or how the weasel-words would cheat the sucker out of his wager. He just laid it out as a truth. Uwe Boll has proven to be a masterful manipulator of publicity AND a masterful filmmaker. In the case of publicity, he's turned negative news into name recognition, and in the case of films, he's taken fine (Oscar-winning, even) talent and churned out deplorable tax-shelters. I don't LIKE what he does, but I have to give the man credit: he's got me convinced that the cat can play the piano. What will happen if there are a million signatures on that petition? I suspect that Boll will either weasel a way into demonstrating that there are NOT one million or more signatories (and I'm sure there are enough of us signing several times to make the case for him) or he will find a way to take this list of "one million people hate me" to the bank for some marketing endeavor or another. Or, worst case, the petition will top out at around half a million, and it's like we ALL went boxing against Boll and got our noses bloodied. Maybe he was speaking rashly. Maybe your signature really will end his torturtous treatment of our favorite video games. But where Boll is concerned, I'm always ready to expect the worst. I've been tempted to rent "In The Name of the King," just to see how bad the film is, but I realized that if I do, Boll wins AGAIN. I'm not even allowing myself the privilege of enjoying the bad reviews, because that's just another kind of cat playing the piano.
