In an open letter, printed in industry magazine The Hollywood Reporter, the much-maligned Boll targets George Clooney, Matt Damon, Mia Farrow and Hotel Rwanda director Terry George for refusing to back his film Attack on Darfur.
Angry Boll, the director of movie flops In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale and Bloodrayne, claims he has reached out to those celebrities who seem to share his concerns for the troubled African nation, for help in getting his film on the big screen – but no one wants to help.
He writes, “I have tried unsuccessfully for 10 months to show this movie to George Clooney, Matt Damon and many others. I have tried to get people with influence and conviction to watch my movie, because we couldn’t get normal cinemas or theatrical distributors to release it. We needed them urgently to get the word out.”
Boll claims to have had positive feedback from director Ron Howard, but Terry George, Farrow, Sir Richard Branson, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have all received screener copies of the film and have failed to respond to the German’s request for a response.
But he admits efforts to reach Matt Damon while he was shooting Invictus in South Africa were the most absurd, writing, “We invited him to the set. The Sudanese Refugees, who made up our cast would have been happy to meet him and (the) press would (have) come because of him, but Matt Damon never answered.
“The foundation that Matt Damon supports (onexone) said they would watch the movie and if they liked it, they would forward it to him… Three weeks later I called their office. Nobody had watched the movie.”
Several other efforts to reach out to Damon have also failed.
Boll insists he made it clear to the celebrities that he wasn’t looking for investment – just interest, adding, “All I was asking that these people take 90 minutes out… to keep this important issue in the spotlight.
“The end result is that my movie didn’t attract wide attention and will now come out only on DVD. More importantly, the rapes and murders continue in Darfur and nobody seems to care.”
