Hilarity does not ensue: self-described asshole Tucker Max fails to connect with a wider audience in new indie flick

Terry Ting

Tucker Max promotes his new film.

Some years ago, there was no fame or success to be had for the twenty-something-year-old who realized he was halfway through law school and hated it.
   Wandering through life with a beer in one hand and his friends by his side, law intern (or “junior paper monkey,” as he put it) Tucker Max got a little too drunk at a company event. In his inebriated state, he decided to live up to the old frat boy adage: “When in doubt, do it for the story.”
    After writing about what turned into no small fiasco in an email to a friend, Max decided to put the story up on his website. Turns out, there was no shortage of other hilarious stories already filed away in his head under “useless drunken stories.”
    Fast forward to the present and Tucker Max – still a self-described “narcissist,” “asshole” and “raging dickhead” – has put those stories to good use and is now at the helm of a mini media empire, having sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his book entitled I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.
    A new film by the same name opened this past Friday the 13. Cue the accolades – or so one might think. Actually, as it turns out, Max’s entertaining blog-style writings don’t quite translate all too well to the big screen. Having flopped in the United States, the film is getting limited play in its Canadian opening in only three cities – Vancouver, Calgary and      Toronto – and only on three screens in our city.
   Part of its lacklustre box-office performance and poor reviews can be attributed to a poor marketing strategy, but the other half comes down to a few weak acting performances
and the fact that Max’s highly entertaining “very self-involved first-person narrative” writing style doesn’t show through in the film.
   So, when Max’s politically incorrect and often offensive stories jump from the pages and onto celluloid, it’s tough to find any public sympathy for the film. Nonetheless, it’s still something he’s proud of.
   “Right or wrong, I am proud of the movie, and it’s very much what we wanted to do,” he said in a recent interview with Excalibur. “I think the movie is going to blow up on DVD. Whatever. We’ll see.”
   With a budget of $7 million USD, the film has only grossed $1.4 million thus far.
   According to the author and the film’s scriptwriter, the movie added a “new layer of depth to the book.”
    Yes, you don’t have to reread the last line. The book that is all about getting drunk, hooking up, being irresponsible and, at one point, defecating diarrhea all over a hotel lobby, has depth. In fact, the man who lived through it all in his twenties, and is now 32, has a message for the world.
   “The point is that if you wake up every day and you’re doing something you love, then you’re going to be okay,” he says.
     Before his book was published, Max never dreamed of having a message at all or a fan base this strong. He was just trying to survive law school at Duke University while trying to figure out how to avoid being chained to a desk all day doing “ultimately meaningless paperwork” as a lawyer.
    After gaining a small following on his website tuckermax.com and being pushed by friends to pursue writing, Max fought the urge to make it a career because “only idiots and pussies are writers.”
   He could not have been more wrong.
    Max was born into an upper-middle-class family with a father who owned a chain of popular upscale restaurants in south Florida, and the concept of family was not very central in his life.
   "You don’t get to be narcissistic without having parents who aren’t really there a lot when you’re a kid. You can’t get someone like me coming out of a two-person, loving, stable household. It just doesn’t happen,” said Max.
    “I don’t think my childhood was any worse than any number of other people who had parents who were nice people but just weren’t very good at being parents.”
     Having witnessed the seven divorces and numerous subsequent remarriages his parents share between them, Max has a pretty skewed perception of women and how a normal relationship is supposed to function. But hey, if life throws you lemons, why not make lemonade?
   “I turned it into something positive that has entertained a lot of people,” he said.
    Despite the movie’s poor showing, Max’s book has stood the test of time.
   Released at the end of 2005, the book is still popular today among a younger generation of college kids who subscribe to the frat-boy lifestyle and to those who just want an entertaining read.
    Against the backdrop of a failing print-media industry that can’t figure out how to make the internet profitable, Max has made the internet work for him. He had little other choice: after sending the book out to publishers who thought no one would read it, he had nowhere else to turn.
   Now, his drunken tales have spawned the creation of a new literary genre he claims to have invented. The opposite of women’s literature, or “chick-lit,” might be a fitting description,
but some are calling it “fratire” and others prefer to call it “dick-lit.”
   Max has a new book coming out called Assholes Finish First that was scheduled to hit the shelves November 2009, but, with the distractions of making an independent film, the release date is now unclear. Max said it will probably be released some time in spring or winter of 2010.
   But don’t expect the stories to keep coming into Max’s old age.
   “When I run out of stories, I’ll stop writing,” he said.
    For the throngs of fratire enthusiasts, hopefully this won’t be any time soon.

HOW IT FARES WITH THE CRITICS

“A tale of a bachelor party/road-trip gone wrong that the studio is clearly marketing for its superficial similarities to The Hangover, except it isn’t the least bit funny.”

- Toronto Sun

“Even the least discerning fans of lowbrow comedy will need to start digging in order to reach the level achieved by this American indie comedy.”

- Toronto Star

“While I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is not the worst movie of all time, it’s not for lack of trying.”

- National Post

“The Hangover wannabe is full of tasteless and offensive hard-on humour that’s disgusting without ever being funny.”

- Now Magazine