Yeah. He went there.

He starts opining about how he wishes he had a different strategy—like to start in one city, as Paranormal Activity did—thus ironically echoing the same ethos of The Man Running Hollywood that he later rallies against: find the thing that just performed really, really well, and try to capitalize on its success. Which, whoops, too late.

See, but Max doesn't think he's The Man. He thinks he's The Artist. He's one of The People Who Create. And the people who fucked up his movie chance to become the next E.T. are not. No, really:

Look, here's what people who don't create don't understand, is that once you take money from the machine, the machine owns you. And I was just never ever going to let that happen.

Kinda wish I were an artist, so my art could be 'relevant,' bro. He goes on: he doesn't hate on Big Movies because he's an Indie Movie Guy, because, you know, Transformers would make a stupid indie movie, right? So he's an indie guy. And there's no way he could've sold this movie out to be funny, no way. He just didn't let it go down like this, man. He would've had to stab someone if they put Seth Rogen in his movie. Not happening, no way.

This movie, if we had sold it to [FOX] Searchlight, they would've put Seth Rogen and Dane Cook in it, and they would've cut all the f*cking balls out of the jokes, and they would've brought in some sh*t bird to rewrite the script who would've had Tucker have a girlfriend and this and that, and then it's like they own everything, they may have fired me… I would've stabbed somebody if they had done that. They would've fired me off the movie because they own it — I don't own sh*t anymore, but then I'm the one who has to live with all their creative decisions.

Creative decisions! Like where to put the balls in the movie. Spielberg had the same problem with the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List, which he originally wanted to call Nazis Are Fucked Up, Yo. When you make a Big Studio Movie, you only get so much creative control over the ball jokes, you know? Max goes on to cite another problem as the opening of the film in small cities liek Carbondale, Illinois, a memory that provokes him to rage: "They just don't know the f*cking movies!" But he saves the best for the people of Darko Entertainment, Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly's production company, who produced the movie.

Now, come on. Donnie Darko's a great movie and say what you will of Southland Tales, but at least there's more to say about it besides "it sucks," something many movies (like Tucker's) can't move past. Why, Richard Kelly, did you let this guy into your house?

Well, hopefully, lesson learned. Especially after this bullshit:

Darko [Entertainment] gave us all the creative freedom we could've ever wanted with the budget we had, but once the movie was done, they made a lot of decisions distribution-wise that I would not have made. A lot of things.

How about: your movie is poop, the original product is started out as was poop, you are poop, and if anybody ever lets you work in Hollywood again, they, too, are poop? Nope. Because Tucker's got dreams, man. Big ones:

Another book, Assholes Finish First is coming out next year and then English release [of the film] is New Year's — UK release. Those are the next two big things.

1. Because the British don't think we're doltish enough.
2. Because, lesson learned, Assholes Definitely Finish First. In the race to the bargain bin. Which is where all Tucker Max material will continue to land.

Meta. Bro.

[Tells some story of this girl in a bar who totally loves him, like, so much, but doesn't know about the movie]. I mean, when someone who identifies themselves as a huge fan, who has read the book and passed it to their friends and self-identifies as this type of person, when the movie is IN THEATERS and they don't even know there is a movie at all…that is a complete failure in the publicity and marketing of the movie...
I don't want to go through it, because it'll just be depressing, but the failures in marketing were just…big. Unrecoverable.

I would have guessed "Because it was awful." But I'm no Tucker Max.
[Pic: Flickr]

Hamilton,

Damn dude. Why are you so angry? I have read some of the articles against Tucker Max, and I gotta ask, Who didn't love you enough as a child? You wrote some bullshit article about Tucker Max replacing College Radicalism. Just so we're clear on this, would that be the hippie, flower child love fest radicalism that was so prominent in the 60's? The same radicalism that bred children who voted Barack Obama into office? The same radicalism that took some pansy ass approach to terrorism leading to the attacks on 9/11? Dude, FUCK RADICALISM. How about we start promoting AMERICANISM. Stop your whiny bitching and try contributing something worthwhile to society. You are angry because college kids have read Tucker Max's "I Hope The Serve Beer in Hell". Why? Because you can't write for shit, and when someone can, you have to shit on them? That's what is so great about America. Anyone can prosper. Tucker Max appeals to fans because he hates the bitchy schoolgirl mentality that you possess. Get the fuck over yourself. You are garbage.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

There is probably nothing more enjoyable on the internet today than to contrast the movie I saw with the reviews of said movie by the only other people in America who saw it: the hardcore Tucker Max fans who frequent his message boards. Never let it be said that we don't provide space for differing opinions.

1. "The comedic value isn't what sets the movie apart to me, it's the fact that it actually has a soul. When I walked out of the theater I wasn't really thinking about how funny it was, I was thinking about friendships I've had in the past that I screwed up or have lost - it made me introspective."

2. "Much in the same way 'fratire' became a new genre, Tucker made this movie from a completely different mold. And, he deserves to be evaluated on that basis."

3. "Tucker and Nils could make 10 sequels to IHTSBIH and they'd still be funny so long as the dialogue didn't repeat. Because that's where the humor was derived: the fucking English language. Crazy concept, right?"

4. "I think you infused the right amount of slapstick, physical comedy (the shit scene, Dan pissing on the cops) into the movie. I like it when you can laugh at two very different levels of humor in the same flick."

5. "I've seen Tucker on camera many times, but it was weird to see him in a movie about him...with him not playing...him. And was it me or was he overacting that role like a motherfucker in the background of those scenes? Haha, nah, you were good dude."

6. "Expected more laugh out loud moments in the movie, but that was mostly from my high expectations. I rarely laugh out loud in movies, but I remember I did during the shit scene and the scene with Drew strangling Lara. A few of the one liners like 'You smell like you got buttfucked by a garbage truck.'"

7. "Take Drew. Not a single person who's criticized the Drew/Lara relationship has mentioned a characteristic of his other than that he "hates women," a fact that shows a deep misunderstanding of the character and relationship. Drew is bitter because he's fucking hurting. He is a very deeply moral character. He clearly puts a lot of weight on trust: he won't lie for his friends because Dan's fiancée trusts him and he will not undermine that. To not have that same trust reciprocated in a relationship as involved as the one he just got out of is fucking devastating.
To give someone your all, to buy them his and hers chairs to play video games in, to so let them into your life, only to catch them sucking off a fucking rapper on your couch? The damage that does to his emotional health is so palpable it's ridiculous. Some of the shots of Jesse reacting to Lara and the kid back at their house are priceless. Bradford does such a good job letting that pain and longing simmer. Chills."

8. "I loved the fact that even though I didn't find it funny, I was only bored during one scene."

9. "We've been so conditioned to see people dodging wrenches to practice dodging a ball, Asian gangsters in car trunks, and Jason Biggs sliding to home plate with a pie that when we see flaming Dr. Peppers we probably expected someone or something to catch fire for some cheap laugh. Instead we heard "So who's the slutty one?" said to a bachelorette party. The line – like the entire tone of the movie – is in your face and that artistic choice is so different the combination is unsettling to some people, but funny to nearly everyone."

10. "In a few years, when critics look at the IHTSBIH franchise as a whole, they're going to be eating a lot of crow. Not because they wrote bad reviews (this movie, like every other movie, has its flaws), but because they failed to miss the "experience" aspect all together. In the same way that George Lucas generated long-term success for Star Wars with cutting-edge movie-making technology, IHTSBIH will ultimately succeed as a franchise and a brand because it completely redefined what it means to "experience" a movie. That's why it's unfair to compare this to any other film. It isn't like them."

Remember: NSFW means "not safe for work," kids! So enjoy your weekend!

Box Office Mojo sez: It opened on 120 screens and raked in a total of $369K, for an opening weekend average of $3,075 per screen. That puts Tucker's movie eighth in per-screen revenue out of the nine movies that opened last weekend. Although he came close to matching the $3,100 per screen average of Blind Date (2009).

But sometimes critically acclaimed films don't have boffo box offices. It's just the nature of high art. Let's go to the reviews:

• Reuters: "the film is unfunny from first minute to last, and its half-hearted attempts at emotion merely underscore its general loathsomeness."
• USA Today: "This unfunny, über-misogynistic adaptation of Tucker Max's audacious best-seller of the same name is unlikely to please anyone."
• Chicago Tribune: "The result just might be the most hypocritical feature in the history of film as well as the history of hypocrisy, and along with serving beer, I hope they show 'I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell' in hell."
• San Francisco Chronicle: "That was epic, bro. You should make a movie ...No, you shouldn't! Put down the digital camera, step away from Robert McKee's guide to screenplays, and get back to ramming your head through Sheetrock during spring break."
• New York Times: "a mediocre gross-out movie that barely pushes the envelope."
• Boston Globe: "Ridiculously cheap-looking, smug, scurrilous, but fairly evolved for a project so fundamentally unevolved."

Onetwothreefourfivesix. Six emails in my inbox, from Tucker Max. Although none of them were anything worth writing home about. And then there was that time you wanted to challenge us to some bet about your movie, which caused Ian Spiegelman to unleash that epic, apoplectic rant, remember? That was funny.

Anyhow.

• "We made this movie for the same reason that we create all of our art; because we love it"
• "There is no number or level of success that would make me think, 'Wow, I didn't think that was possible.'"
• "My writing is authentic and whatever happens in my life is what I write about."
• "Now, I'm more like a smart missile."
• "We also wanted to make it feel realistic."
• "everyone just assumes it's going to be a success."

The ads were poetic ditties of white text on a black background. Like: "Blind girls never see you coming" and "Strippers Will Not Tolerate Disrespect (Just Kidding)."

But: Max, who seems to necessitate creative new suffixes being appended to words like "douche" on a daily basis—mostly by his fans—had his ads thankfully removed by Chicago's Transit Boards in a transit-based struggle that would make Rosa Parks want to rise from the dead to beat the piss out of Max for messing with her legacy of transit-based struggle.

Max responded in a release maturely and appropriately, handling the situation with the decorum and class we've come to expect from him: "Blow me," he wrote. Max was quoted as saying it was "the culmination of a two-month-long effort by angry anti-male groups." Also, this:

"...Women are not stupid. They would not support me if I hated them, and the fact that they come out in the hundreds of thousands to buy my book and go to my movie is proof that I not only love women, but my art is in fact pro-woman."

At first glance, less egregious is Tucker's intentionally inflammatory statement that his "art" is pro-women as it is as it is "art." But then, it all begins to make sense: this is performance art. Max's entire shtick is performance art. It's New Museum-level shit. In fact, Max probably knows exactly what he's doing, how people are going to react to it, and the exact amount of publicity it's going to generate. Which is why it's strange that, you know, he made such a shitty movie that nobody's going to want to see, and thus, make no money. So what would tie this all together?

The forthcoming revelation that Max is just a deeply-closeted homosexual, inching his way out by purporting the extremities of the most straight, blase, boring, stupid, and utterly predictable proto-male sexuality there is: his, or his act's. The kind given the treatment a "salon" of fellow "bros" out there could appreciate in the form of a book and its poop-like adaptation. Tucker Max could be the world's most interesting gay advocate out there if this thing comes full-circle.

Then again, he's probably just a dick. City of Chicago: good on you.

There are writers/journalists who've lead lives of reckless abandon and then written about it. Think of Marquis de Sade or even Hunter Thompson (writers whose works I have not read, but whose reputations precede them).

And they, uh, what? Go Gators.

There is really no news.

It was bad. It was really bad. It was not bad in the good way. It was not bad ironically. It was not bad in the "Let's go see it because we like to watch bad movies like Knowing, and laugh at them" way. I do not want to say the wrong thing here, that might convince anyone that this movie is worth paying to see, even for train wreck purposes.

This is the movie that happens when a narcissist—not an interesting one, though—writes an entire movie about how cool he is, and is given full creative control over that movie. Imagine someone you know who is an asshole. Now imagine that person being able to write and produce a movie about themselves, and how awesome they are. There you have it.

The plot of this film: Tucker Max and two of his bros go to a bachelor party, meeting various cum sluts along the way. Whore bitches can't get enough of Tucker Max's bad boy personality, which is probably why so many of these twats want him inside of their vaginas. Tucker fucks a midget stripper and the world loves him for it, the end. Other highlights:

• Close-ups of poop, coming out of someone's butt, a lot.
• There's a wedding scene in the end where the guests are all white and the servers are all black. There's not a joke to go with that.
• The best character in the film is Tucker's friend Drew, because he looks like he was just dropped in from another movie, and can't wait to get back. Drew is a misanthropic video game nerd who goes to strip club and meets a hot stripper who is also a video game nerd and falls for him and they rush home and sleep together and Drew instantly bonds with her son and they become a couple immediately. This is as close to a plausible male-female interaction sequence as this movie gets.

This movie is not, in fact, hilarious.
[Pic: Flickr]

Tucker gives Bitter Lawyer an exclusive sneak peek of his own opinion of his own movie about him:

BL: Do you feel like the hilarity of your written work translated well into a movie?
TM: Fuck yes. The movie is absolutely drop-dead hilarious. Wait until you see it, you will laugh your ass off.

There you fucking have it. Tucker also notes that he cast the actor that plays him based on his "likability and redeemability," for unexplained reasons.

An actual non-Tucker review of Alcohol and Fruit of the Looms Go Together Like Grilled Cheese and Mail Order Brides, TK.

[Previously: The script of this shitty movie, Parts One and Two. Pic: Flickr]

It's enough to make you suspect it was written by Tucker himself. But, as with the leaked clips from Max's film, it provides a service regardless of its authenticity: It baits Max's fratty target audience while giving everyone else a clue that they should run screaming from this movie, brah.

Prepare to have your heart melted:

It does justice to the script. That's all that needs to be said. Except for this, from Tucker himself:

Yes, the tickets are only $10. I know we could have charged $20 or even $30, but we decided that if the point of this is to reach out to fans and experience the movie with them, then we should make the price as low as possible to include as many as possible.

Why not $50?

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

We're reasonably sure this clip was provided to us as a promotional stunt by a production team convinced of its irrepressible awesomeness. Whatever; if the attached clip, and in particular the extensive toilet humor, doesn't make you run screaming from this film, there's nothing we can do for you anyway.

UPDATE: Max wrote in to urge we remove the clip:

That clip was not a promotional stunt, it was stolen illegally. Just take it down, you guys will be welcome to host the trailer as much as you want when it releases next week.

Tucker Max, filmmaker and asshole, was scheduled to speak at OSU last night. That's when WaARiR sprang into action! They decided to protest him, for fuck's sake, which just makes him feel more important.

Many protesters at the event held up signs with quotes from Max's Website, tuckermax.com. The excerpts included: "Really - consider my thought process. I was going to f—- her in the butt and film it without her consent."...

At one point during the event, a man with a whistle walked to the front of the stage and blew it in front of Max. The crowd chanted in response, "He's a virgin."

That was not directed at Tucker, btw. Hey kids, take it from us: fameballs with repressed sexual issues feed on attention. Just ignore him. We didn't, and look at our lives.
[The Lantern]

A cranky old Sixties guy in the Washington Post points out that in less than two generations, college kids have gone from "Steal This Book" to "Pretend Vampire Stories."

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the best-selling titles on college campuses are mostly about hunky vampires or Barack Obama. Recently, Meyer [the author of the Twilight series] and the president held six of the 10 top spots. In January, the most subversive book on the college bestseller list was "Our Dumb World," a collection of gags from the Onion. The top title in January was "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" by J.K. Rowling.

This whiny Sixties guy happens to be right! Even the cool kids today are still reading the same books that they wrote back then. This generation has jack shit, except an ultimately pointless internet fascination, on the one hand, and frat icons, on the other. Here's one "lit mag" undergrad editor at Kent State:

"People think we're really liberal," he says, "but we're really very moderate." Submissions to the lit mag so far this year are mostly poetry and some memoirs about parents. "The one book that I know everyone has read," he says, "is 'I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.' "

From Malcolm X to Tucker Max, just like that. Thank god Dr. Gonzo's not around to see this.