I don't plan on seeing the movie any time soon; certainly not in the theater. But, having read the book, I am curious... To those who have seen it and put some thought into a review, tell me this: To what movie would you compare IHTSBIH?
I know the words coming from my mouth didn't do shit to get my friends into theaters. I was at the Cambridge premiere with my roommate, (who had never read the book and who had only the vaguest idea of who Tucker was,) and we both thought it was hilarious. There were problems, yeah, but we both ultimately loved the movie and laughed a lot. The two of us were telling almost anyone we could that the movie was hilarious, but the most positive reactions we got were, "Eh, maybe I'll see it on DVD." More often than not, people pointed out that reviews were really bad, and I think I may have ended at least one friendship because she was disgusted I was a fan of Tucker's writing in the first place. Yeah, a fat lot of good word of mouth did there.
I would really be interested to hear from someone-not-Tucker what really went on in Shreveport. We all know that, even if he does do a tell-all, it will be highly edited with all of his usual self-preservation spin affixed. It's seems that Tucker was not liked on set there, but no one beyond Bob has had the courage to call him on it. And I don't think it was just the crew, did anyone else read Matt's body language in that interview they did (which Tucker conveniently forgot to tell everyone about)? He looked like he never wanted to see Tucker again. Compare that with the pre-shooting, Tucker picking him up at the airport video, where they looked like best buds. As for the movie, I can't believe anyone is surprised it failed. For starters, the product itself was marginal. I cried myself laughing several times reading the book and the stories on the site, but it just wasn't that funny on screen. The actors did a fine job, but the script was lousy, the pacing was off, and the whole movie just looked cheap. Combine that with what Biscuits told us all about 3 months ago about distribution and the long odds of success, and can any of us really be surprised that it has failed so miserably? Or, in Biscuit's words, done exactly what it should have done?
Honestly to me it felt a lot like Swingers. Man I know! When I watched that it was obvious to me that Matt Czuchry really dislikes Tucker and had no desire to be around him, or be associated with him in any sense other than he played a version of Tucker. I read someone claiming to be part of the crew a while back (I honestly have no idea how I found it or I would link it) and he said that Tucker was a nice enough guy, but was crazy passionate, had no idea what he was talking about, would try to interject himself into everything, and would completely freak out sometimes. Now I have no idea if it was real or not, but he wasn't overly negative, and it seemed real to me. What I would really like is for Charlie Hoehn to write about what in the marketing plan he thought was so brilliant that he was confident it would do so well in the box office. I wrote a fairly lengthy review on the message board that is unfortunately now gone forever as I didn't save a copy of it, but in the review I predicted that it didn't seem likely that it would do well in the box office, but that it would become a cult classic and sell extremely well on DVD. Despite all the bad reviews I still honestly think this. I think the movie has many bad parts, but all in all I think it is very funny and is the type of movie that will get better with age.
Which makes it all the more curious to me that there hasn't been more backlash. If he turned off arguably the two most important people on set (Bob and Matt), imagine how he treated everyone else. You could be right about the movie doing well on DVD. After all the things we heard from Tucker about not fucking up a la Troy Duffy, this thing becoming a Boondocks Saints-type success would read like a Greek tragedy.
I just saw this now and I want to say the same thing actually happened to me. A girl I dated for 2 years is a pretty intense feminist, and when I asked if she wanted to go to the premiere with me she predictably said, "Him? He promotes rape culture you know." Even though she had never read a single thing he had written. Then the day after the premiere I was texting her, and apparently she had had a bad experience with a guy at a party who had been overly aggressive, and we talked about that for a bit, and when I thought that issue was settled I said ,"By the way I met Tucker Max last night." and sent her a picture of him and I at the bar after the movie. I honestly had forgot that she thought he promoted rape culture or whatever because that whole thing is completely ridiculous and I just wanted to change the subject. I didn't think she would equate that as me making light of what happened to her. I swear to god this is the truth, she would not reply to my texts, answer my calls, or call me back for over a month. Finally when she did she said she was mad because I was making fun of her "sexual assault" by hanging out with a known rapist and sending her pictures of him. She said she no longer hates me, but she has no desire to talk to me anymore. That was the last time I've contacted her.
So I'm right? And don't worry, if you're posting here, law probably isn't your thing anyway. Does anyone know if Biscuits came over here too? I'm interested in seeing what he has to say (if anything) now that he doesn't run the risk of being deleted/banned.
Except that if the movie does well on DVD, Tucker would actually benefit greatly from it unlike Troy Duffy who signed away any rights to his film. The only comparisons that can be made with Troy Duffy would be on the personality side, not the business side. Max has reportedly burned many bridges with the people who helped him bring this movie to life, and in a town where money makes all things forgiven he doesn't really even have that going for him. More intelligent people - like Biscuits - could probably come in here and highlight where he made critical errors but I don't think anyone should fault him for being committed to his own vision. Tucker Max may be an asshole, but Troy Duffy was a lunatic.
Well if by "hard core fan base" you are referring to people who would go to the premiere tour then "B" does not hold true. At least from what I experienced. I went to the Seattle premiere, and it was very well received. He wrote that it got a standing ovation there, and that is true. However it doesn't take a marketing genius to know that if you make your customers feel special in some way then they like your product much more than they would have even if the product is exactly the same. I don't believe that "B" is true, and I don't think Tucker thought that. I believe he said something like 10% of his fans would not like the movie, or that non-fans might actually like it more, but I don't think he ever said that his hard core fans wouldn't like the movie. It is not that I think his marketing strategy was flawed really, but I don't think it was revolutionary or groundbreaking in anyway. I'm a business/marketing nerd so I was actually much more excited to see his marketing plan come to fruition than I was to see the actual movie. As i've said I did like the movie, but I don't think it was as near as good as Tucker made it out to be. If it really was as "genre-defining" and "transcending" as he claimed then his marketing strategy likely would have worked. But for that strategy to work you really have to an absolutely incredible, flawless product to work with. Which is why I am so confused why Hoehn was so confident it would succeed based ONLY on being privy to the marketing plan.
I remember Tucker a few weeks ago once mentioned something about how the promotional or releasing firm or something completely fucked his vision up for the marketing plan. I find it hard to believe that his grand idea was a few banner ads and complete reliance on word of mouth. That said, I think a lot of people (including possibly Tucker) overstate the reach of sites like Twitter and Facebook and other Web 2.0 stuff. Yeah, they're highly visited, but not everyone is completely in touch with them and traditional advertising remains important.
Again, we obviously can't get into details since we don't have the source threads, but I think one thing we differ on is what he assume the definition of core fanbase is. To me, it wasn't so much the people that went on and read his stories as a one-off, since that's what a lot of content on the internet is. Go on, read it, leave it. At the same time, I don't think it was just the die hards he was relying on, since those people just couldn't show up in the numbers. To me, everyone that was part of RMMB and was being exposed to the movie was what he had in mind for people to spread the word, not just the die hards that went to 2 tour stops. Oh well. Whatever he thought or didn't think, apparently he just didn't get it right. I was hoping he would do well, but it has become fairly obvious that he made a whole lot of promises and didn't deliver due to poor marketing strategy and mediocre content. There's nothing wrong with that. He tried it, which is a lot more than most people can say for their huge dreams. The guy isn't a screenwriter, big deal. His books and stories are amazing, his scripts--maybe not so much.
I saw the movie awhile ago at the LA premier with five people. Of the five, only me and another liked it. My views on the movie have changed a little since then, but immediately after I thought it was funny. I thought all three leads had some good lines, and I really liked the depth that the two female leads added to the film. With some reflection, and after reading a lot of the reviews for the film, some nagging issues I'd had after watching it became more prominent: -The thematic elements of the book -- honesty and following your dreams -- that endure Tucker to a lot of his fans are absent. I know it was intentional, but without that backdrop, it becomes a lot harder to root for Tucker. It never bothered me because I had preconceived notions of the character before seeing the movie, but that is where a lot of the negativity of the reviews seemed to stem from. Without those themes behind him, Tucker Max is a nonredeemable asshole. A funny asshole, but one without any real positive aspects. -A lot of Drew's lines were forced. It's been covered. The Magic Johnson part was not funny in the trailer, and less funny in the movie. -That speech at the wedding reception is awful. I don't think anyone could sympathize with a friend who made such an awful apology, let alone forgive him afterwords. -Almost every line that fell flat for me was straight out of the book. I know it's supposed to appeal to the non-fan, but it just didn't work for me. I think a lot has been made about the failure of the marketing plan. On the old board, I didn't see any mention of the reviews -- possibly because they were deleted. Let's face it though: a 24 on Rotten Tomatoes is awful. I couldn't convince anyone to see the movie with me after that. Even with major issues, I still thought the movie was funny. If it came on HBO or one of the movie channels that comes with it, I would definitely catch it again, as well as start recommending it to friends.
On August 9, 2009, Tucker said: "The movie isn't going to appeal to all my current fans. Just like when I want from site to book I lost fans because I wrote a book for the non-fans, this movie was made for the non-fan, and as a result, some of the real hard core fans will hate it. A casualty of success, and one we are willing at accept." http://www.quotabletuckermax.com/
No doubt on that one. I'm not as well versed in his lunacy, but I know the 10 second dig on him. I'm not criticizing Tucker's vision. Though, I'm sure his vision wasn't aimed at selling lots of DVD's, but maybe I'm wrong. I do think it is cowardly of him to pimp this thing like the second coming up until September 25th and claim it will do fantastic at the box office, and then a week later blame its failure on "forces outside of his control." That's about as bush league as you can get, and THAT realization in his own mind and the subtle musings (and many deleted non-subtle ones) of others on the RMMB of the same tune is, in my opinion, why he shut down the board. He's said many times that the success of the movie was all up to him, and it's pretty weak to make statements like that and then behave how he has when things go to shit. You can delegate authority, but you can't delegate responsibility. And any fool can talk like a leader, but few can act like it.
I was at the Boston premiere, and my wife and I thought it was decently funny. I also thought it looked like it was filmed on a camcorder. Maybe the quality of the film at our theater was bad, but there were some spots that were so poorly lit and of such shitty quality that it was tough to even see what the hell was going on. As far as buying it on DVD, I gotta be honest: Seeing it once was enough. I have some comedies on DVD I can watch over and over (Spaceballs, The Ref, Undercover Brother, Office Space, etc) and this movie just doesn't qualify. It seemed that the further along production and the blog went, the more and more Tucker really got hyped up. It went from being a great comedy to a hysterical comedy to something that was going to change film making as we know it to something everyone was going to be quoting left and right like Chappelle's "I'm Rick James, bitch!" It would have been nice if the movie had been successful, but bottom line, I think Tucker was too close to the material (and too in love with it) to let it go and be done by people who knew what the hell they were doing. Put it this way: I don't care how brilliant a brand-new, fresh out of school doctor is, I want the guy who might not be as bright but has done the operation a hundred times doing my surgery. Maybe Tucker and Nils could have taken a more active role in any possible sequels, but for the first one, I think they should have just been happy to see their script come to life and learned whatever they could.
I saw the movie at Atlanta with a pal of mine. The theater was pretty sparse but there was a constant stream of laughter. Unfortunately, that stream flowed from one girl who laughed at anything when Tucker and co pulled up to Dan's place in a SUV. There were some chuckle from me, but it didn't pan out to be what I expected. That could partly be attributed to the perceptions I had going into the movie. I had followed the production of the movie on the blog from start to finish and had bought into the hype about how it was going to be a revolutionary movie. So I probably set the bar too high and when I went in expecting laughs a minute and only ended chuckling a few times, I felt a little disappointed. Some of the lines might have been funnier if I didn't already know about them going in. There were times where I could guess what Tucker or Drew were going to say before they even opened their mouths. Other lines, specifically concerning Drew's, I thought "this would've been funny to read on paper, but it just doesn't sound funny on the big screen." The most noticeable one was the Mcgriddle/Pancakewhich rant. So basically, the movie felt like the 2009 Florida Gators Football Team. Good product with some flaws, still has potential to be great, but somewhat short of expectations. I'd also like to repeat an earlier request to the link of Czuchry's interview where he expressed discomfort around Tucker Max. If you're going to call someone out, at least provide proof.
I keep expecting Tucker to pop up and quote three or four posts and completely tear people apart and throw a huge tirade in this thread. Don't you? It's weird. I actually think it's better when he's not here. That being said, since I've said it from day one, I will stand by it today - I really loved the movie. But I don't think the reasons I like it will be the same as everyone's, and that's probably why it didn't do so well at the box office. Apart from the money, I remember one kid on the old forum made the point that the movie is probably doing so-so because it is so-so. Forget the marketing strategy or distribution or lack of financing, it's probably, at the end of the day, just a mediocre movie that had a mediocre run. A good example, the movie had no style. It had personality, it had great writing... but as a movie, it had no style, at all, that I can think of. Juno had style (i.e. hand written block letters). Slumdog Millionaire had style (colors and aesthetics etc). Swingers had snazzy jazz music and artsy cutaways and scene changes. IHTSBIH? Lighting maybe, but it wasn't enough to set it apart from the rest. As a movie, as a visual medium, I think it failed to pull through. Tucker admits he knows next to nothing about film making anyway, and the director didn't have much experience either (he even said at first that he attached him because he'd let Tucker be in charge, "I'm the Eisenhower to your Roosevelt"). I brought a lot into the movie with me, and came away liking it for certain reasons. I followed it since day one, went to the premiere tour, learned a lot about making a movie, and a bunch of other stuff the general public wasn't in on. What I saw was a process by a man on a website I was involved with. What they saw was a movie that was cheaply made in shitty, outlier suburbs. I just don't think it carried with it that sort of mass appeal, in spite of all the things he did new and differently to promote it. And it's too bad, because I think the writing and the content is great, but unfortunately it's movie that's far less than the sum of its parts.
Yeah I know I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have talked about it if I didn't know where to find the video. It was linked from the movie forum so someone else had to have seen it and maybe they can remember what the show was called. It took place in a fake bar and the hosts were this annoying douche bag guy with an afro and sunglasses, and a dumb slut. Seriously the hosts sucked. I looked for about 10 minutes but I have no idea what the show was called and so I couldn't find anything. Tucker was pretty funny in the video though, he called the guy out on being a douchebag, which was awesome.