Boll-ing for Dollars
I have yet to review any of Uwe Boll’s movies over at The Anvil & Sprocket – primarily because I have a low threshhold for cinematic pain. Although it won’t be long before I’ll feel compelled to actually go and review House of the Dead. I’m sure that my pain and misery will then provide much amusement for you.
In the meantime, there’s an interesting little article over at Cinema Blend about the man, the legend, the sorry excuse for a filmmaker, Uwe Boll. Stuart Wood has a theory. And that theory is that Uwe Boll isn’t just bad – he’s bad all the way to the bank.
Hollywood has a long history of sourcing international investors for projects. Often you will find that filming in a certain country offers incentives and tax breaks not offered in the US. Usually though, you’ll find that in order to be entitled to them, you have to meet certain conditions, for example filming in that particular country and/or employing a certain percentage of native workers as your film crew. Germany has these incentives but, crucially, no such restrictive requirements put upon them. Germans can fund your movie and you can make it wherever and however you like.
But crucially, the bizarre tax laws in Germany mean that any wealthy Germans who invest in a movie can write-off the production cost, delay paying their taxes and generally reduce their tax burden. When you disseminate all the boring legal business law surrounding it the bottom line is this – the German investors in a movie only pay tax on any RETURNS the movie makes, their investment is 100% deductible, so the minute the movie makes a profit, said investor has to start paying tax. Plus the investors can actually borrow money to put towards investment and write that off too. Assuming you’re a sharp enough businessman you have a potential goldmine in the making; a way to make money from investing in bad movies…
Enter a German by the name of Dr. Uwe Boll. (Pronounced “Ooo-vay Bowl� in case you’ve ever lain alone at night and wondered. I know I have.)
Frankly, I feel that calling Uwe Boll a modern-day Ed Wood is a serious insult to Ed Wood. But I guess that means I’m just feeding the monster.