For whatever his character flaws -- unrepentant narcissism, alcohol abuse, casual misogyny -- lack of confidence has never been a problem for Tucker Max. Just about everything the Florida-born Duke Law School grad has done to distinguish himself has fairly reeked of cocksurety.
He became a minor media sensation in his mid-20s for www.tuckermax.com, the blog he started in 2002 to chronicle his hard-core partying and post-college sexcapades. Max's tales of drinking himself into blackouts, humiliating friends and insulting women, intermingled with vivid accounts of his sexual conquests won him legions of college-age admirers as well as the attention of Hollywood TV executives who began working with Max to develop a series envisioned as "Sex and the City" for guys.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, September 20, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 48 words Type of Material: Correction
Tucker Max: An article in today's Calendar about Tucker Max and the upcoming movie based on his book, "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell," said that the writer appears on the 2009 Time 100, a list of influential people. Max was only a finalist for the list.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, September 27, 2009 Home Edition Sunday Calendar Part D Page 2 Calendar Desk 1 inches; 49 words Type of Material: Correction
Tucker Max: An article last Sunday about Tucker Max and the upcoming movie based on his book said that the writer appears on the 2009 Time 100, a list of influential people. Max was only a finalist for the list. The story also misidentified Darko Entertainment as Darko Films.
In 2006, he crafted those stories -- which originated as e-mails of the "Dude, you are not going to believe what happened to me last night!" variety -- into the memoir "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell." And now the "fratire," in which Max rates women on a scale from "common-stock pig" to "super hottie" and declares himself a "professional at humiliating and 'debasing' people," has sold a million copies. It famously remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 100 weeks and earned the writer a spot on Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People list for 2009.
"I stumbled into it," Max recently said of his acclaim. "Creative writing was not only not an option for me, I looked disdainfully at writers. Like, 'Get a real job!' "
"Beer in Hell's" inevitable movie adaptation arrives in theaters Friday, not coincidentally just as negative outcry against Max has taken on new proportions. Although controversy dogged him even before the book's release, sprawling debates about the writer's merits -- or complete lack thereof -- are being played out in the discussion forums of such websites as the Internet Movie Database and rottentomatoes.com, where his detractors and defenders lay siege to one another's arguments with startling passion.
Since August 2008, the snarky media watchdog website Gawker has staked a brazenly negative position on "Beer in Hell" and has labeled Max a "sad piece of nothing" and "a thug, an unimaginative punk, and, at heart, a tiny little vapor." Taking umbrage at the trailer for "Beer in Hell," a reviewer for the satirical newspaper the Onion cast a personal barb at Max, telling him: "Your movie is just like 'The Hangover' but doused in buckets of beige frat boy vomit." Meanwhile, the main thrust of the blog Tucker Max Is a Douchebag has been to discredit the factual basis of Max's stories (he maintains all are true). And as the writer has crossed the country promoting his movie at college campuses, angry protesters have disrupted appearances, accusing him of promoting a "culture of rape."
