Rude and crude coming soon to movie theaters

From The New York Times:

When you have just watched a film comedy whose protagonist lusts after married women, little people and the disabled, who calls women every synonym for prostitute he knows and agonizes on screen through the effects of a laxative-laden beer, what do you ask the man whose life it was based on?

The nearly 600 fans of Tucker Max (pictured) , the 33-year-old author and blogger, who gathered on Thursday night at the AMC Empire in Times Square for a sneak preview of “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,” adapted from Mr. Max’s defiantly boorish book of the same title, had no shortage of queries.

Like: Were all the stories in the book and the movie true? How many women had Mr. Max slept with? Were any famous?

A young woman, one of numerous college-age attendees, asked if Mr. Max, a muscular man with a lantern jaw and close-cropped blond hair, would get her a beer. To laughter, he confidently responded, “I’ve got to look at you first.”

It is this unapologetic attitude that has propelled Mr. Max’s book onto the best-seller lists, and that pervades the film adaptation, to be released on Sept. 25, about a trio of friends (including a fictional version of Mr. Max, played by the actor Matt Czuchry) at a bachelor party that goes very, very wrong.

That attitude has also made Mr. Max, a graduate of the University of Chicago and Duke Law School, a contentious figure, even among his followers, who are unsure if he should be regarded as a role model or a cautionary tale.

One fan at the screening, one of several sold-out stops on a 31-date promotional tour for the movie, simply asked Mr. Max if he was happy with himself. (He replied that he had a best-selling book and “a movie that’s about to buy me a jet,” so he was doing O.K.) Another asked what he should tell his friends who find Mr. Max and his work despicable.

“When you talk sense to a fool, they call you foolish,” Mr. Max answered. “Don’t sweat it, dude.”

Published in 2006 by the Citadel imprint of Kensington Books, “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” grew out of a Web site Mr. Max created in 2002 as a repository for his seedy, sarcastic tales of post-law-school life. At the site, tuckermax.com, and in e-mail messages sent to friends, he shared his first-person accounts of alcohol-fueled binges and bedroom conquests.

In one chapter Mr. Max cannot decide whether to have sex with a woman who is pregnant with his child and has just learned she has ovarian cancer or with a married woman who recently had a miscarriage. In an appendix he describes how he rates the opposite sex on a scale from “common-stock pig” to “super hottie.”

Today Mr. Max makes no apologies for his behavior nor for a writing style that is fluent in swear words and vivid descriptions of bodily fluids. “I’m never going to be Tolstoy,” he said in an interview.

Though he considers himself equal parts performance artist and author, Mr. Max said he is not playing a character in his writing or at his promotional appearances.

“I don’t go out looking for trouble,” he said. “It just happens to me because of who I am. If this is who I am, then it makes sense that I should go out and be that person.”

Even before his book was published, Mr. Max was a sought-after talent in Hollywood. But his desire to retain creative control of his property, whether in television or in film, alienated many studios. Finally, last year, Mr. Max and a co-writer, Nils Parker, sold their screenplay for “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” to Darko Entertainment, the production company of the “Donnie Darko” filmmaker Richard Kelly.

Sean McKittrick, Mr. Kelly’s producing partner, said he was impressed with how Mr. Max and Mr. Parker had fleshed out the book into “a real movie with a real plot and real characters.”

“It was a completely, thoroughly thought-out film that showed the hilarity of what most of us in our lives have gone through,” Mr. McKittrick said. “Because we’ve all been the three main guys in this movie. That’s why I so related to it.”

On the road to success, Mr. Max has encountered his share of detractors. He is a recurring target on the gossip site Gawker (gawker.com), where “horrible piece of garbage” is one of the milder epithets that has been lobbed at him.

Other criticisms are harder to laugh off. In May a speaking engagement by Mr. Max at Ohio State University was picketed by a feminist campus group, Women and Allies Rising in Resistance, which said that his writing promoted a culture of rape. The Women’s Center of North Carolina State University staged a similar demonstration when Mr. Max screened his film there in August.

Mr. Max said he found these protests “weird.”

“It’s like they’re accusing me of a crime, but not really,” he said. He added that if anyone was guilty of sexist behavior, it was his opponents.

“The implication is that women can’t think for themselves,” he said. “ ‘Women shouldn’t be allowed to read my stuff or see my movies.’ I thought women can decide for themselves what they want to do or read or whatever.”

After the question-and-answer session, Mr. Max remained at the theater for several hours to sign autographs for fans and take their praise for the movie. (A scene in which his alter ego befouls a hotel bathroom and lobby had played particularly well.) Promotional T-shirts were handed out, including ones for women bearing the slogan “I slept with Tucker Max.”

After midnight Mr. Max was holding court at a back table at Dalton’s, a nearby bar, surrounded by newfound friends. To his left he was passing drinks to Vanessa Volpe and Tressa VanTassell, who had traveled from Meriden, Conn., to attend the screening. (“I’m trying to get you drunk so you can’t consent to sex anymore,” Mr. Max told the women.)

To his right was Michelle Angelino (pictured), a journalism student from Paramus, N.J., who asked if she could take a photograph with him. He agreed, and pressed his hand into her cleavage when a camera flash went off.

Ms. Angelino said afterward that the evening had satisfied her expectations. “The movie was good; I thought it could be raunchier,” she said. “And for the 30 seconds I got to meet Tucker, he seemed cool.”