Hollywood Babble On & On #1063: Think Before You Donate...

German director/writer/and producer Uwe Boll wants your money.

You shouldn't give him any money.

You need more details?

Fine.

If you're not familiar with his oeuvre Uwe Boll is nicknamed the "Auteur of Awful." His films are generally reviled by critics, and mostly avoided by audiences outside of a handful of brain-dead soulless cinemasochists.

Now you're probably wondering how a filmmaker can pump out dreck and lose money but keep on making films.  Well the answer is fairly complicated because it involves investors deliberately losing money. During his peak filmmaking period of the late 1990s and early 2000s Germany had a loophole in its tax laws that made losing money a winning proposition for investors.

Here's how it goes. The German government said that an investor didn't have to pay any taxes on any money invested in film production, and only have to pay taxes on any profits. So investors would borrow the money they would invest in Boll's films at a low interest rate, make a really shitty movie, then when it tanks at the box office, claim the money it lost as a deduction on their taxes.

With a good accountant and a tax lawyer an investor could pay off the loan and make a little extra on top just from their tax refunds and deductions.

Now the law changed in 2005 because it had done more harm to the German film industry than good. Boll's output in quantity and budget (but not quality) has dropped considerable since then, which is why he's now going to Kickstarter.

Boll is looking for donors to pay for him to make a sequel to his failed lowbrow comedy Postal, which itself was based, like many of Boll's films, on a video game.

Now there are many independent film projects on Kickstarter that are infinitely more deserving than Boll doing Postal 2. 

Boll had his chance, at his peak he was working with budgets well over $50-$60 million, and he still put out inane unwatchable dreck. Money is no substitute for talent. So why give someone with a track record of having only one talent, and that's punching critics, money better spent helping get something potentially worthwhile off the ground.

Some might give him money out of masochistic irony, others might give him money because they're profoundly stupid, all I can say is DON'T BE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.

If you have the money to give to film, find someone new, who has the benefit of the doubt at least because movies won't get any better if you keep knowingly supporting crap.