How the ‘Stop Uwe Boll’ petition got started in the first place

A couple of weeks ago, I reacted to a petition that was being pushed by various film magazines and websites — you can read my article on whether one million signatures should stop Uwe Boll making movies here. The article elicited a response from the original author of the petition, who wanted to set the record straight about his intentions when creating the petition. Here’s what he had to say:

I’m Bert Harvey, the writer of the “Stop Uwe Boll” petition circulating out on the Internet. I’d like to share some background and hopefully clarify a few things. First, I work in the games industry. I work day in and day out with the folks who put in long, crazy hours making games. It’s really a labor of love, since the hours generally suck and the pay isn’t wildly exciting. But you get to create things, turn ideas into playable experiences and entertain an audience. A lot of man hours go into creating a game and when it finally hits the shelves, folks feel pretty invested in it. That’s who the petition was for originally: the folks who don’t have any control over what happens to the property they work on, but care about it all the same.

Second, I’d edit the hell out of it if I could. What I wrote in the petition wasn’t accurate towards what I wanted to achieve. I don’t want Dr. Boll to stop making movies; I want him to stop making video games into movies. I believe there is a market out there for the style of movie that Dr. Boll makes. Look at Ed Wood, a man who’s famous for making remarkably campy, bad movies. The big difference is that Ed Wood took his own ideas, as odd or bad as they were, and applied his passions to them and got them made. Dr. Boll takes other people’s ideas, good or bad, and makes sub-par movies with them. If possible, I’d re-phrase my original petition to ask that he stop making video games into movies and focus on taking his own ideas to the screen since I don’t believe that anyone should be censored from expressing themselves or doing what they love.

I actually liked Blackwood, which he co-wrote and directed, and I would hope he would create more films like this, as well as his other original film Heart of America. While not a great director, he can tell a good story. I just wish he’d tell his own instead of badly telling other folks’.

So there you have it.