By Christine Colby

FEARnet caught up with German director Uwe Boll after the recent Manhattan screening of the new Postal, another one of his infamous videogame adaptations. He talked about September 11, the influence of his critics, animal rights, and being a Nazi pervert?

How do you feel the Postal screening went?

I think the movie was received very good. I got very good feedback, and I think the New York Times guy liked it.

Postal opens with a scene portraying the 9/11 attacks. Did you expect a different response from a New York crowd than in other cities?

It's always a thing that people [must understand] right. I had a screening at a convention before, in Jersey, and there was a guy who came up to me and said that his father died on September 11. And he said the movie was good...and said he's not feeling offended. It's not something to make fun of, September 11; we make fun of the craziness of the terrorists, basically, and the whole suicide bombing absurdity and about the fact that Bush used the situation to start a war.

Are the politics in Postal your own, or were they just setups for jokes?

For me it was important that I didn't deliver a movie that is meaningless and that is only going for entertainment and fun. I think I went out there to make something that would have satire and political impact together with the absurd humor that we know from the Naked Gun movies.

I find your sensibility similar to that of Troma. Are you influenced at all by Troma films?

I actually like Lloyd Kaufman; he's a very nice person. Troma had their big time twenty years ago, and now they're getting trashed in the new market; there's no real space anymore for Troma, since everybody is able to make movies on HD video. That is sad, but let's face it?my movies don't have the size of the Troma movies; they're like eighty times more expensive.

The way I understand it, there is a German tax shelter that reimburses your investors if your movies lose money, like in The Producers. Is that true?

They did, in the beginning, leverage the tax loss in Germany in a major way so you were almost covered by the tax loss. When I started raising money, it was not the truth anymore. So with my movies they have to make at least fifty percent back to get the recoupment of the investment after taxes, so the idea that was written in the U.S. press over and over again was not true?the idea like Uwe is shooting movies to destroy the money. If you see the numbers, a lot of people on the internet are writing only about U.S. box office. If you see Alone in the Dark or Bloodrayne was like number one or number two at the box office in, like, 15 other territories, like Spain, Italy, Russia, Poland, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, Thailand. And now, In the Name of the King was nearly everywhere two to three weeks in the top ten, only not in the U.S. So this together with the DVD and TV revenues is not that the movies are a total financial disaster.

Do you have anything to say regarding Postal to people who have slammed your other films?

I think they should give it a new shot. Actually a few people who saw Postal and who had hated my other movies came to me and said, "I have to say, this movie is a good one. I consider Postal hilarious, and even though I didn't like Uwe, this time he performs." I got that from a lot of people.

Why did you decide to make fun of yourself a bit in Postal?

To show that I'm a little Nazi pervert. I think it was necessary to show that I'm able to laugh about myself, and I think it's important?we work in the entertainment business and we are not making decisions of life and death. We shouldn't take it too seriously.

There were a few times during the movie that I wondered how much your own voice was coming through, as opposed to the characters'.

Postal is like a general revenge, like my rampage against everybody. Against EVERYBODY.

When you were working on the film, were there any ideas you had that you decided would be too vulgar and offensive to put in the movie?

No, absolutely not. There were tons of people who tried to talk me out of stuff?said, ?Don't do this, don't do that, you should do this.? But finally everything kept going the way I wanted to do it.

Have you ever been influenced by a bad review to do anything differently?

In all of the game-based movies, we got better and better. We took the critics and the Internet into account, and we got better with the script, and we got better with the characters and the stories. If you see Alone in the Dark, and later Bloodrayne and In the Name of the King, I think there is a quality difference in everything.

Zack Ward isn't usually a leading man or action-hero type. Did you immediately see him as the Postal Dude?

He came and was reading for the cop part, that later Chris Spencer played. We went out for bigger names for Postal Dude in the beginning...until finally we ended up [thinking] the best guy would be Zack Ward. He was so happy and so thankful to get the part. I think there is nobody who could do this compared to what he did. I love him in the part; I think he carried it through the movie. He is the guy with the good punch lines, he had the energy, he had the character, the heart.

Do you have any behind-the-scenes anecdotes you can share?

Seymour Cassel, for example, pulled the fire alarm in Little Germany, and we had to evacuate the whole city. And we did a lot of funny stuff.... And [Dave] Foley...we have a lot of deleted scenes when he and Chris Coppola went on and on like stand-up comedy.

I noticed you have done a music video for Nightwish. Do you think you'll do more music videos?

I did a few music videos, but I couldn't really follow up on it anymore. But from time to time I would be happy to do another music video. My favorite band is Rammstein, so I'd love to make a video for those guys.

Is it right that you are a PETA supporter?

Yes, one-hundred percent of my Seed horror movie goes to PETA.

In Postal, a kitty is used as a silencer. How do you reconcile that with your support of PETA?

Oh, it was fake; it was made out of a puppet. It was actually $45,000 to make the cat animatronic. Crazy. I would not spend it again; it was so much money. The real cat was not really doing on set what we wanted so it took a long time to shoot the scene. But PETA had nothing against it, so they can laugh about it also. And it was actually one thing from the game that I really liked.

When can the public see Postal?

There will be a May 23 theatrical release. We hope we have a bigger platform release. We want to play at least in ten different theaters in Manhattan.

Are you aware that there is a petition online, signed by 18,000 people, requesting that you stop making movies?

Yeah, I know that. 18,000 is not enough to convince me.

How many would it take?

One million. Now we have a new goal.

Hear that, haters? A challenge!