I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

I wrote my review here months ago and it was not an overly positive review (basically, I thought the movie was meh, I didn't hate it, there were maybe 10-20 other people in the theater with very few times of group laughter, and I thought the best part, as said elsewhere, was what Tucker imagined Drew doing at the stripper's place).

I made a conscious decision to not post my review on the RMMB. My rationale is why would I go to someone's house and tell them that their taste in design is shit? It was cool that Tucker made himself accessible to respond to those who watched the film, but what point would it serve by my directly telling I did not care for the product. Not to mention that when people brought up valid criticisms such as the story having unrealistic elements (e.g., Drew going home with the stripper after just meeting her, the wife forgiving Tucker so easily, Tucker allowed to hijack the wedding) and relying on cliches (stripper with the heart of gold, the jaded boy finding true love, everyone is friends again at the end) they would get jumped on by Tucker's boys (I am looking at JoJo here) and told, nah dude, you just have lived a boring life and can't comprehend what alpha males do. Basically, any criticism was treated as not valid and the fault of the viewer, not the creator and perhaps that had something to do with the failure of the movie: Tucker's refusal to listen to professionals and insist that his vision was the true one (I am obviously not basing this on first hand knowledge but rumors of the fights the director got into with Tucker, Tucker's refusal to accept what one RMMB member who purportedly was a Hollywood insider said about Tucker's release strategy and optimism, etc).

I was impressed that Tucker was able to write a script, get it made into a film, and distribute it to theaters. I had hoped that it would be a success and allow more creative control to the creatives. I feared that we would never hear the end of it though and his ego would cause an eclipse of the sun and I was also turned off by all the "ZOMG, I am an ARTIST, and this will REVOLUTIONIZE things" but I gave it a fair chance.

That said, I do think group think is at play. RMMB was a great message board but it totally suffered from group think and I could cite countless examples. I am also sure I would have enjoyed the movie much more had I seen it in the premier setting in a packed house with everyone laughing. But I am kind of shocked how some people who absolutely raved about the movie later said it was not that great (not to single out Grind, but as they say, let's roll the tape).

 

The movie is what it is. Some people like/love it other people feel it has been dealt the hand it deserved.

The DVD is awful. There is no way around that. How there isn't at least a commentary track or bonus footage from the Tour Stops is beyond me. Ridiculous.

 

I don't give a fuck about each joke being explained. I anticipated an actual DVD release that would entice people that had already seen the movie to buy the movie. That is not what is.

I don't know what you were expecting, unless you wanted a blue print of the script as to how it was applied to the actual movie.

I wanted a commentary from Tucker and whoever he thought was necessary. Instead the DVD has outtakes in addition to the movie. Great Success. Why anyone outside the board would buy instead of rent is beyond me.

 

When I saw IHTSBIH in the theater, I had a good time. Actually I was a little pissed off at first, because I totally bought into Tucker's hype and was expecting a hyper-funny, genius, genre-defying super-comedy or whatever. But once I came to terms with the fact that it was just an okay movie, I enjoyed it for what it was.

Recently I got the urge to see it again, so I downloaded a torrent (I'm broke, and Jewish. If I see a half-smoked cigarette on the ground, I pick it up. No chance in hell I'm buying a DVD). This time I watched it out of order, and enjoyed it the way people enjoy watching really awful movies. I'm not saying that this movie is really awful, I'm just saying I amused myself noticing the things that were, well, slightly off about it.

Like, for example, the Tucker character himself. I mean goddamn, that was a really, really unlikeable character. I've heard Tucker say in multiple interviews that Matt Chuzry's version of him is more likeable than he is in real life. If that's true, the implications are staggering.

First of all, people who walk around smiling constantly are fucking creepy. But blonde, angel-faced young men who walk around smiling constantly AND say blatantly disrespectful things to everyone they encounter? If someone like that actually existed, he would get punched approximately every single time he went out. I don't think I've actually punched anyone since I was eight years old, and I would be the first person in line to punch that guy in the face.

I thought it was funny the way the minor female characters interacted with Czhurzry's Tucker. I kept noticing this sequence:

1. Tucker says something insulting, eg "fat girls aren't real people", and the woman gets offended.
2. Tucker then says something articulate, but not really that witty or enlightening, eg his "why my alcoholism is okay" speech. As Tucker speaks, the woman's eyes light up and her jaw drops as if she is watching David Blaine levitate off the fucking sidewalk. She is now deeply, deeply attracted to Tucker, until of course. . .
3. Tucker says something even more insulting. The woman walks away, and Tucker smiles like a dipshit who is waiting to be punched in the face.

And finally - I didn't laugh the first, second, or third time that I heard this - but for some reason, my favorite line in this movie has become "Touch me again and I'll carve another fuckhole in your torso." I wonder, when Tucker was still expecting the movie to make a billion dollars and completely explode into the public consciousness, if he was envisioning little kids running around the playground screaming "TOUCH ME AGAIN AND I'LL CARVE ANOTHER FUCKHOLE IN YOUR TORSO!" Or young men smoothly dropping a "Touch me again and I'll carve another fuckhole in your torso" to their date over dinner and wine. You know, kind of like a new "I'm Rick James, bitch!" Whatever.

 

Saw it today. Watched it alone and sober, still had some good laughs. I do agree that every time Drew spoke it felt really forced and by the end i just didn't want to hear him talking. I thought it was just alright. I mentioned the movie to a few friends, they seemed a bit more interested than i was, so maybe it's just me?

 

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert on film making, but I'm still trying to figure out what was genre changing in the movie? I didn't see anything that jumped out at me as particularly revolutionary, so if there was I completely missed it.

 

The thing that struck me most after watching it, is that most of the memorable lines came from Drew, and even then for the most part they felt very forced. However the scenes with him and the stripper having a verbal boxing match was relatively funny. What irks me some is that I remember Slingblade actually saying the majority of drew's lines, or at least a variation of on the rmmb, like the whole Pankwhich diatribe. I know that it is because Drew is Slingblade but therein lies my point. 90% of Tucker's lines fell flat, Dan was largely forgettable, it was only drew, or should I say Slingblade that held my interest, usually saying dialogue that tucker had nothing to do with.

Kinda makes you wonder what would have happened if he stuck around on the rmmb and took more of a role in writing the screenplay.

 

I was always under the assumption that the movie itself that was supposed to be all that revolutionary (besides the emphasis on having no over the top humor like The Hangover), but more the process in which they got the movie completed. I.E., the artist writing the script and having a lot of control over how it was made so that their vision of what they wanted prevailed. I always thought the goal was keeping the artistic decisions in the hands of the artists and not the corporate executives that run the big name companies in Hollywood.


Either way, I saw the movie once during the premiere tour and once again in the theater when it came out. I enjoyed it and will add it to my movie collection eventually, but it wasn't a movie that made me run out and buy it opening day. I'll help support it because I want to see them make a sequel now that they have a movie under their belt, and see the changes they make in the next one now that they have some experience.

He also had a little write up today that seemed positive for DVD sales:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ihopetheyservebeerinhell.com/dvd-is-out-some-notes-on-sales-and-the-future/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.ihopetheyservebeerinhell.com ... he-future/</a>

 

I think a lot of guys just had absurd exceptions going into the movie. I wasn't expecting Gone with the Wind here; I was expecting an hour of solid laughs. Sure, a lot of scenes could have been better executed if they had went with a major studio. But it had sufficient funny - I laughed my dick off - I had to literally bend down, pick up my dick, and re-attach it - and that's what counts.

I bet it picks up the slack in DVD sales.

 

"Greedy corporate executives" and "power to the artists" are nothing more than stupid fucking cliches and buzzwords for simpletons to try to make sense of a reality that is far more complex and intricate.

This "revolutionary" way of making movies is not only far from new, it was actually the Hollywood standard...all the way back in the 70s. Directors enjoyed extraordinary autonomy outside of the studios during that decade. It's just too bad that this wonderful Eden DIDN'T WORK, which is the entire reason things have swung to the other side.

With "Heaven's Gate" being the best example ($1 million gross on $40 million, bankrupted United Artists, one of the 3 biggest studios then), all too often these wonderful artists were painfully out of touch with reality, and made awful films that lost their studios tens of millions of dollars. It's great to call Hollywood greedy corporate types, except that when a movies fails, they're the ones losing millions and fired from their jobs and livelihoods, not those perfect artists that continue getting paycheck after paycheck.

There's a reason things are the way they are. For everyone criticizing the status quo, learn some history and economics, and see if your perfect state of affairs has already been tried before, and what resulted from it.

I'm not really directing this at anyone, just the stupid general misconceptions about artists and major studios, which partially obscured Tucker's vision, and may have forced him into some poor decisions.

Ouch. I really want to see Tucker succeed and continue producing more great comedy material, but I have to wince at some of the things he's writing there. 2 million DVDs? Has the reality of the domestic gross versus his predictions taught him nothing? Learn from your mistakes, man!

Tucker keeps using extremely unlikely, unusual outliers to support his beliefs. Personally, I think he has bought too much into Gladwell and Taleb, pseudo-intellectuals without math/science backgrounds that oversimplify far more interesting and intricate concepts.

As Biscuit noted on the old board, something like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was literally one in a million. You can't seriously pin your hopes on winning the lottery. Similarly, for the DVD run, "The Boondock Saints" was incredibly unusual.

Even there, it's not a good comparison, since action movies are more universal than highly subjective comedy, and Boondock never got any chance in its theatrical run, while IHTSBIH did, and failed.

Anyways, I wish Tucker the very best of luck, but I hope the guy tempers his expectations a little bit in the future.

 

Excellent post for the most part. Studios are for the most part concerned with profit. That doesn't prohibit them from producing "art" from time to time, but it does prohibit them from producing movies that they don't think will make much money. The major players in the hollywood world today are people like this guy, people who above all are concerned with profitability. What does that mean? The sophisticated pretentious movie buffs out there aren't going to be happy. But have they ever been?

But that doesn't necessarily mean studios aren't green lighting directors to take on risky projects if they've got the track record. In regards to Heaven's Gate, the only reason that movie was made was because Cimino did Deer Hunter two years earlier which was, and is, a phenomenal film despite its length and its artsy-ness. It wasn't like studios were just letting green directors run around with huge budgets filming 18 hour long piles of crap. I have to believe directors like the Coen Brothers or Scorcese could pretty much get the green light on whatever they wanted. Now sure they have more under their belts than just one spectacular movie, and things have certainly tightened up a bit, but there is still an autonomy out there for proven people. I highly doubt Cimino could have gotten a chance at Deer Hunter today though, even with that cast.

Now as to IHTSBIH, I don't care if Amazon sold out the stock of 20 DVDs it was keeping "just in case", once again he is not going to do the numbers he is expecting. Which is a shame, because like everyone I'd like to see him get another crack at it.

 

You know what's really funny? I obviously love movies and have very unique tastes, and hate the vast majority of Hollywood garbage...but if I was running a production company, I would run it exactly like how Kavanaugh does above. Hell, I wouldn't even be able to CONCEIVE of running a company any other way.

The stuff in that article he writes is so incredibly obvious, it makes me wonder if Hollywood is a bunch of raving idiots that every production company hasn't done this. About the mathematical models, the Monte Carlo method is something I first learned in high school, for fuck's sakes. You're telling me no one has ever thought to apply this to something as capricious as movies? Wow.

The material about making shorter films to have more screening times at a theater, making actors and directors take huge paycuts to share in the profits, avoiding risky projects because of how it can bankrupt a studio, and ONLY caring about the final bottom line would seem like common sense for anyone who has spent some time looking at Boxofficemojo and read a few articles.

Any business that doesn't quantify their business with mathematical models is doing themselves a tremendous disservice.

Anyways, thanks for the read, and despite the obvious hate in that and other articles, Kavanaugh seems like the lone efficient businessman in the industry.

Yeah, all absolutely true. Very nice summary.

The chance of a sequel being made are virtually non-existent, unfortunately.

 

It's not just the business model that makes Kavanaugh so smart. It's this right here:

I mean Jesus Christ, that is the one that should be completely obvious to everyone. A lot of Hollywood has this buy up everything policy so others can't get it, and scripts and rights sit on the shelves forever and end up never getting made.

Kavanaugh one day decided, hey, I'm not going to buy rights to a movie just to keep it out of others hands. I'm only going to do it because the movie will make money and I'm actually going to make it. Yeah, there's your revolution Tucker.

 

I went to best buy today. I saw three people in the checkoutline buying it. I was shocked. This may be more popular than we are assuming.

 

While the sample might not be that impressive the DVD could do far better than I'm expecting. Has there been any promotional push for the DVD anywhere? I know Tucker has been doing a few radio talkshows and whatnot but I haven't seen any banner ads or sites pushing the trailer w/ a link for the DVD.

 

I've seen more online marketing for the DVD than I ever did for the theatric release.

Movie trailer websites, rotten tomatoes, a few others.

 

Agreed, I never saw a thing leading up to the theatrical release. I have seen a few online spots for the DVD as well as a trailer pushing the movie On Demand on cable.

 

Am I the only one that feels like they've gone from rooting for the guy, to roasting him and then going back to rooting for him again?

 

Hey, I never rooted against him. Tucker has provided more entertainment for me than virtually anything else over the last 7 years (via the RMMB, not his book/movie). And I actually liked the movie. But then again I also thought Fredie Got Fingered was fucking hilarious. I knew it wasn't going to be perfect. But the entire thing was funny, and that's all I really looked forward to.