By Christine Colby

On April 1, the New York City Horror Film Festival hosted the Manhattan premiere of infamous director Uwe Boll's Postal at the prestigious Tribeca Cinemas. And?no April Fooling?Boll himself was on hand, along with Vince Desi, the creator of the Postal video game, which is currently banned in the United States. They both tackled questions and comments from the crowd and mingled with fans and friends well into the night.

The screening was late in starting, so we were ushered into the bar area. A little booze didn't seem like a bad idea before seeing a movie that already, before its release, has garnered a reputation for being perhaps the most offensive film in cinematic history. (We were happy to raise a glass to scream queen Debbie Rochon, who was in attendance, and rallying after having a brain tumor removed only a month ago.) As the crowd was finally let in to the small theater, Boll pitched in, helping to seat people. The overcapacity mob eventually found spots on the floor in the aisle. Before the film began, Boll, who directed, produced, and cowrote it, spoke about 9/11. Postal's opening scene takes place in the cockpit of one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Facing this roomful of New Yorkers, most certainly the touchiest audience for this subject, Boll defended the scene. He explained his disbelief at having seen an infomercial hawking a 9/11 memorial coin cast from actual debris from Ground Zero?"This is why I had to make this movie," he said. "We make fun of it, but the main point is, insulting is not to make satire out of something, insulting is that Bush used the September 11 attack against somebody who had nothing to do with it. But overall, it's a feel-good movie," he said, laughing. He also acknowledged his reputation for taking beloved video games and turning them into reviled films. He referred to most video games as being "bad and ridiculous?like my movies." For a review of the movie itself, click here. (Another way to get a sense of it is to read the list of key words on Postal's IMDB entry, which includes, but is not at all limited to, "Exploding Head, Midget Rape, Gay Kiss, Funny Nazi, Hit in Crotch, Cuckold.")

As the notorious 9/11 opening scene ran, there was near-constant laughter from the audience. It was so loud at times that it seemed like more of a release than just the giggles, as if Boll had finally given them permission to laugh at something so forbidden. There was even some applause after the plane crashed into the tower. Uproarious laughter continued throughout the whole movie, sometimes so loud I couldn't hear the lines. The guys behind me were literally kicking my chair in hysterics. They also enjoyed the close-up of the man-on-man kiss, commenting loudly, "Homosexuality is hilarious."

The crowd also loved it when Boll appeared in the film, playing the owner of a Paradise City amusement park named Little Germany. He lampoons himself, claiming that his films are financed with Nazi gold. Vince Desi appears in the same scene, asking, "What the fuck did you do to my game?" after which Boll is shot in the crotch and keels over, saying, "I hate video games." It was all clearly in good fun, though, as Desi was very obviously having perhaps too good a time, and turned the Q&A that followed into a surreal fracas?

How did you get so many big-name actors in the film?

Boll: We had a casting [call] in Hollywood, and a lot of known actors showed up. J.K. Simmons, Verne Troyer, Dave Foley, Larry Thomas (the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld); they wanted to be part of the movie. They said, "We are here against the will of our agents; we actually read the script and we want to be part of Postal."

Is there going to be any way for us to see the footage of the ?Raging Boll? boxing matches?

Boll: On the DVD later, the extra footage.

What is the budget for the film?

Boll: 12 million

Desi: He told me 18!

Boll: I had to underplay.

Desi: We'd all like to fuck the same bitches! [laughing]

Desi: You've got to understand the Nazi humor! [In fake German accent.]

Boll: I want to say something about the Little Germany Nazi thing. The reality is, I'm coming from Germany, and if you make a movie in Germany now, you'll get full support if you say how bad Hitler was.... Now, Germany hates me for that Mini Auschwitz stuff...I got very harsh criticism because of it. I said look guys, let's face it, in Eastern Germany, you have 25 percent votes for the Nazi party. This is a fact...the Nazi party is sitting in Parliament again, but you don't want the foreign countries to see that, right? I portray Germans as a sausage-eating bunch of Nazis! I said it's a....

Desi: [Interrupting] I can't get laid in an East German whorehouse! That's how bad it is.

Boll: But the point is, that you will never get here, the reality is all that German...

Desi: [banging his microphone on his crotch and making humping motions] I found one!

Boll: OK, forget it. I can't even say something serious.

Where can we see the movie?

Boll: We have to see who runs the big exhibitor chains, right? The Midwest, Texas, Kentucky; they are booking the screens, and it's not so easy with a movie like this. A good thing is that the South Park guys loved the movie, and I think there are plans to do a ?South Park Goes Postal? episode, so this will be good for us, having support from the South Park people.

How did you get Dave Foley naked?

Boll: We shot the scene, and he got up and was full-frontal naked. So we show him, like, you are full-frontal naked there, right? And then he does another take when he wiped his dick...so I said, OK, it will be in the movie, don't worry. When we delivered the movie to the MPAA for the rating, we totally saw it as NC-17. We got back R rating. I mean, we shot children, Dave's fully naked, so we said, ?How is that doable, that it is an R rating?? That was perfect for us, as I didn't have to cut the movie.

Boll: I wrote the script in a very bad mood. I wrote a horror movie, Seed, that comes out later this year on DVD, and that is very harsh. So I put a lot of the funny energy into Postal and the very bitter, depressed energy into Seed. Both movies turned out the way I wanted it; we shot them back-to-back. So for me...all the tree-hugging assholes, drinking the tai chi latte, they think they'll save the world with it, this was pissing me off. It's not like it's a movie against Bush, or a movie against a religion, whatever, it's kind of an anarchistic movie.

Desi: When we created Postal, we didn't look for a particular group to lash out at; we fuck everybody equally, and I'm being very serious here. Because I believe that we just generally fuck everyone, I never feel bad if I leave anyone out. And I want to say one thing...when Uwe first approached me about making a movie about Postal, I had been contacted by a few scumbag Hollywood groups...I was even flown out to L.A...and it was all bullshit.... But when I met Uwe, I said to myself, he's a fuckin' insane dude.... We prepare a treatment...full of death and rape, and he rejects it! He's like, "I wanna make a comedy." He had a fuckin' vision...he made a fuckin' comedy, out of my insanity?and give the man the credit! Now have a glass, have a drink, and suck my dick! Let's make Postal a fuckin hit! If anybody in this audience liked it, talk about it. And if you didn't like it, talk about it fuckin' anyway! I want you to talk about our movie!