I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

IHTSBIH 3.5/10

The film just wasn't funny enough for me.

I fit right into his target demo (20 year old college student at a B10 school) and if I wouldn't have been following his production updates I would have never known the movie existed.

I think Bill Dawes nailed it in his blog when he said something along the lines of "the movie just wasn't good enough to generate enough WOM."
As for the tour videos, nothing that Dawes said or had people do offended me at all and it was decently funny, but at the same time nothing that he said or did made me want to go out and see the movie either. To be honest pretty much none of the videos (tour stops, trailers, cast interviews, film clips that came out later) made me want to go see the movie. This is coming from a fan who loved the book and have given it out to many friends as gifts.

 

I really don't think that Dawes, Nils, or Tucker were being predatory towards their fans at all. I went to the San Diego premiere, and while Dawes would rip on people on camera, it was always obvious he was just joking around, and he would usually talk to the people after interviewing them and just joke around and laugh with them. I thought most of those videos ended up being hilarious too.

And during the pre-show, when Nils and Tucker had people tell stories, it seemed to me like they were just trying to create an environment like it was a few good friends hanging out and ripping on each other. I thought they did a good job of it too. They made fun of the stupid stories, but they laughed at the funny ones. None of that felt awkward or like he was simply trying embarrass his fans to me, and I really doubt that was any part of the reason the movie didn't do well.

I'm sure there are plenty of reasons the movie didn't do very good. Personally I just think the movie wasn't that good, and that's why it didn't get enough word of mouth. But I just don't agree that it's lack of success had anything to do with the way they acted throughout the tour.

 

I agree. I was at the State College tour stop, and Tucker and Nils had me cracking up laughing throughout the pre-show as well as the Q & A. They only made fun of people who deserved it. And by deserved it, I mean fucking deserved it.

 

A lot of comedy is angry, there's a difference. Pryor, Bruce and Carlin didn't go after their audience, they went after social structures (although Pryor went after himself quite often). Bruce went after specific people sometimes, but those were people within structures that were denying him free reign to work. There's a difference between a comic channeling anger into satire to instill social reflection, and using humiliation as a tool to perceive yourself as being better than someone else. Pryor, Bruce, Carlin, Hicks and many others have held up a mirror to society and asked, "Do you like what you see?" I suppose that is cruel if you're not interested in acknowledging the truth in the reflection. On the other hand, if you base your humor off nothing more than someone's differing gender, weight, skin color, ethnic heritage, sexual preferences, IQ or job income, that's just a poor man's status seeking. Sort of, "if I cut you down then I stand taller" mentality. Some older material doesn't hold up today because it simply was racist or sexist or trite. Some material survives for good reason. Although filled with the "n" word throughout, Blazing Saddles wasn't cruel to minorities, it was cruel to bigots and corporate despots. Blazing Saddles holds up because it attacked the stronger of society, not the weak. Its humor wasn't used to keep African Americans down, it was used to put a light on the things that were trying to keep African Americans down. Throw in Mongol punching out a horse, a few bean farts and daddy loves froggy, and the social preaching behind it seems less overbearing (unlike my posts). It's an effective way to deliver a sermon.

***

Well, maybe I'm wrong about everything.

 

I'm going to 17th this.

The tour stop that I was at (college park, I'm the husky dude wearing blue that asked two questions while drunk) felt organic, friendly, and all the ripping on people that they did was to move the process along, so they didn't have to deal with 12 minute, unfunny stories.

As I said earlier, Dawes was a delight when the camera wasn't on him, but I gotta give a shout out to Corman, who was one of the coolest dudes I met there. Pudgy, funny, introspective little fucker. Not sure how he got relegated to the merch table.

 

My two cents: I was put off my his interviews and blog posts, where he'd say things like "I'm smart" and "This is the funniest movie you'll ever see", over and over again, without a shade of irony. I think he's a mild narcissist, who thinks that he's self-aware enough to acknowledge the point and play it up. It doesn't work.

It left me thinking: either he's delusional and the movie will kinda suck, or it will be so revolutionary that I'll have to go and see it when everybody starts quoting it to me (Austin Powers, Napolean Dynamite, Borat). Either way, I'm not going to make any effort to see it early. The trailers and clips I've seen were pretty mediocre, and while I'm in Canada right now and couldn't go and see it even if I wanted to, all I have right now is enough mild curiosity to perhaps download it (if it ever gets pirated).

 

I'm frustrated that no scene group has even bothered to pick the movie up at all. There wasn't even a low quality CAM release. I'm in Aus so it's doubtful I'll see it until someone rips the DVD and releases it to a topsite or p2p. I can't even see it getting released here at all.

It's a pity because I would like to actually see it, however I'm fairly sure Tucker oversold the hell out of so much that it'll leave me disappointed. It might just be that I'm getting older and don't appreciate the humour any more though.

As for Dawes and his videos - I thought he was absolutely killing it until later on in the tour. It seemed like was running low on jokes or was tired from the tour and resorted to being blatantly racist in some cases. That was about the only time I didn't find him funny.

With the NGTV video review - who's to say that Matt isn't some socially awkward guy? He is an actor, after all. He didn't really seem to be taking part in the conversation so much and was definitely looking a little bit uncomfortable. And yes, those hosts were absolutely cockbags.

This isn't meant to be an attack on Tucker, merely an observation: The whole "revolution" of cinema and ra-ra seemed to come off as someone who was really scared and insecure about their movie failing. So much so that they completely overcompensated for it. It sucks that it didn't go so well because I was hoping that it did. Hope this isn't off track.

 

I may be off base in bringing this up, but even Tucker admitted the movie didn't feel right to him. He chalked it up to having had to see and hear so much of it that he was too emotionally involved and felt disillusioned. Encouragement from close friends and fans revitalized his enthusiasm. I'm implying nothing, I just think it's interesting he even felt to some degree it may not be all he wanted.

I liked it, but that's all I can fairly say without seeing it again. For reference, here in Chico, Ca, I was one of four people in the theater last showing of opening night, and the two girls were with me. Very few people in my area have even heard of Tucker Max, let alone heard of a movie he produced.

I missed his reaction and keep seeing reference to it, can anyone give a brief synopsis? If not by post, a private message?

 

It's enjoyable and acceptable to make fun of those who we think deserve it. I recall reading call out threads on the previous board. A few were entertaining, quite a lot put me in mind of a group of unruly children tearing the wings off moths and giggling at the sight of them crawling.

Invariably whether it's funny depends on a combination of your tolerance threshold for sadistic comedy, and whether you think the target in question is a deserving one. Tucker Max had a fair number of whippers-in ensuring that the vocal posters on his board demonstrated a combination that meshed fairly well with his own. A strategy that seems to have been extended to the premier tour.

Switching off empathy/sensitivity was key to appreciating a lot of Tucker Max’s work. Probably like a lot of people, the butt sex story was the first one I read. I laughed out loud at the same time as I cringed. When I read that Tucker was making a movie, I thought there was a fair chance it might be successful and even ground-breaking if the audience’s sense of empathy and morality could be bypassed (using the same comic touch that he applied in the butt-sex story). A sort of slapstick, zany “In the Company of Men”. Risky, but an interesting project to watch from the sidelines.

I was interested to see if Tucker would permit the movie version of himself to fail in some horribly embarrassing way, and be subjected to the level of group humiliation that he encouraged people to participate in at the expense of others. As I previously mentioned, the "kids pulling off moths' wings and watching them crawl" approach that sometimes happened on his board (often round about Christmas time eg Twinkletoezz....wahoo of the suicide support forum etc). That would have been some genuine character development. It would also have been brave of him to place a movie version of himself in the position he'd placed others in for mockery.

Instead, in a nod to karma, he gave the audience Tucker shitting himself after a fat girl slipped laxatives into his drink. Which isn't justice and a basis for genuine character development so much as it's a predictable anecdote in the life of the carefully crafted Tucker persona who gets himself into scrapes that he can sell stories about. What would Tucker do? He would shit all over the place, then he would lie to a wedding party about having cleaned up the shit and become a better person for it. What would Tucker’s friends do? They would laugh uproariously at the midget story and the tale of Tucker shitting himself, shrug off the fact that he’d lied - and welcome him back into the group. There‘s no humiliation or removal of Tucker from his comfort zone in any of that. Just a visual presentation of the kind of outrageous but funny anecdote I can picture some of the more OTT people I know happily relaying about themselves to friends.

Movie Tucker was nothing more than a narcissistic portrayal of Tucker as his loyal fanbase sees him and as he wanted the movie-going public to see him. A loveable, yet surprisingly intelligent, novelty seeker who gets himself into all kinds of amusing scrapes which he can invariably talk himself out of. You're a fan, you think he's hilarious - fair play to you, and I'm glad for you that you had a good time at the premier. It sounds as though the movie made a reasonable job of delivering what you, as a fan, wanted it to deliver. Tucker Max as you see him and as he sees himself.

For some of the rest of us, watching events unfold in real life has been infinitely more fun than any of Tucker's or Nil's jokes - or the carefully crafted stories about Tucker's personal highlights and lowlights. Perhaps Biscuits from the other board should pop on a comedy hat and write a screenplay about the whole thing. Something along the lines of Bowfinger comes to mind.

 

I really wanted this movie to work for me but I ended up walking out during the wedding speech and several people followed. When I asked them why they left, one of them said "That movie didn't live up to the hype or the book." Here were people who knew of the book and were fans but just didn't get the movie. I went the Saturday of opening weekend and half of the audience walked out before the credits.

One thing I didn't understand was the apparent inability of the writers to take criticism about the movie. This seems to go against many of the non-groupthink ideas the writers trumpet throughout their media.

I wish them well and hope they are able to bounce back from this debacle and are able to honestly confront reality when they write about their experiences. A friend who claimed he had never heard of any of this sent me an email with the phrase "Tucker Max Fail" within it. Maybe his 15 minutes ain't over yet, should be interesting to watch.

 

A college friend of mine sent me a link to Tucker's "Butt Sex, Hilarity Ensues" story and I remember laughing my ass off and thinking at the time, "wow this is fantastic raw comedy story telling." I read the rest of his online stories and then joined the messageboard.

When he announced the IHTSBIH book I was skeptical. After all, all these stories were once online for free and had been for awhile. The idea of getting 2-3 extra stories for $14 or whatever the book cost seemed a little far fetched to me, especially since I thought the earlier stories were the better ones.

I ended up buying the book and passing it along to a couple friends who enjoyed it. These people never became interested in Tucker's website, messageboard, or anything else.

When he announced that he was turning IHTSBIH into a movie I couldn't see how it could be done. The only thing that made sense would be an older Tucker looking back at his youth. When he divulged that it was actually just a few stories from the book turned into a script I cringed and thought this isn't going to work. The threads would have to be pretty loose to connect the dots.

I'm interested in independent films, I attend a lot of regional film fests etc and was excited when he announced that he would be creating an interactive blog that followed the making of the movie. Very, very cool.

Unfortunately that site got away from the videos with crew members and became more and more about Tucker proclaiming how "revolutionary, groundbreaking, earth shattering, genre creating" this film was going to be.

All without proof.

If it really was all of these things, and because it was an indy film he should have showed us. Not a 5 minute clip or anything that gives the whole film away but how about 20 seconds of semi-raw footage that makes us say, "Wow!"

That was what I was expecting.

Instead the mantra was, you'll see, you'll see, you'll see. Unfortunately nobody saw, including me.

By the time the first trailer came out my expectations were for something REVOLUTIONARY! or at least so funny that I would have to forward it to every one of my friends. It wasn't. The turtles-fat girl line made me smile but the rest of it was just... bad.

The red band scene with the "fat girl" was not only unfunny it also went on for too long. I can understand now why they had such a hard time editing their footage into something that played well.

The one other major mistake I think they made was not having a legit comedy actor, not necessarily a big name, just someone who had experience being funny in previous films and could carry the scenes. Plus there was no buzz or quotable lines from the movie like you got with The Hangover, Old School, etc. The reason I went to see those films was because I heard they were funny, and people were throwing around lines from them so much that I needed to see the film before those parts of it got worn out.

I hope they figure out a way to make some money off the DVD release or at least do a better job promoting it so this effort doesn't turn out to be a total failure.

 

Does anybody know how Tucker became friends with Nils? Nils seems like a really down to Earth guy, and I don't really see them as being friends if I had met them seperately. When I met him I was surprised at how cool he was (maybe it was because he gave me $60 for two extra tickets I had to the premier).

I always wondered why Tucker thought the movie would do really well. I could speak to a couple hundred people in Manhattan who are around my age, and probably only 2 or 3 would know who Tucker was. Maybe he thinks he's a much bigger celebrity than he is because he sold so many books and has a lot of girls throw themselves at him? If everybody who bought a book went to go see the movie, he would have made a shitload of money, but that never happened.

 

That's a strange opinion. It's not speculation to say that there was no revolutionary marketing plan.

Take the trailer, for example. The green band trailer was released just under two months before the movie premiered. Not only was the trailer late, but it was panned all over the internet. The red band trailer was released just a week before the movie's release. Tucker fans felt the red band was far better, but at that point it was too late for it to have anything but a negligible impact. This is what Tucker had to say about the trailer:

So Tucker didn't give much thought to the trailer at all. I'm not sure how one can believe that there may have been a hidden "revolutionary" marketing plan that was cut by Darko/lack of budget/whatever when Tucker didn't even give much thought to the most important promotional tool for his movie.

 

Well, one might argue that the proof that this is not the case would be in his inability to harnass the power of the interwebs to market this movie. Instead of being able to use online communities, the "marketing plan", at least that part that we were exposed to (i.e. what we ACTUALLY saw) seems to expose the fact that Tucker's online presence was limited to a rather small niche'. A fact that you implicitly acknowledge in your very next paragraph, effectively contradicting everything you've just said:

Tucker understood his audience very well, but it seems that despite his claims, he really didn't understand the larger audience at all. The proof, as they say, is in the $1.4M pudding.

 

I think a lot of you are delving way too deep into why the film failed at the box office. Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps, it's really fucking hard to achieve box office success? The Pianist was a great movie failed at the Box office and went on to receive three Oscars. Lars and the Real Girl was another great movie that was a box office failure, yet it went on to be nominated for an Oscar for best writing. Unless a movie stars Will Smith, it's usually a good bet to bet against it making money at the box office because it's hard to appeal to a ton of people.


In Bruges is one of my favorite comedies of all time. It has known actors, got excellent reviews, and was even nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay. It was also a failure at the box office and never had a wide release.

I also think this movie is also a good example of the style of humor that Max and Bill Dawes used and it's weird that it was loved in this movie and panned in Max's. In Bruges makes fun of midgets, has jokes about child molestation, child murder, retards, gays, and fat people. Collin Farrell's character is fascinated with a midget just because he is a midget. I can't think of a logical reason why the style of humor was loved in In Bruges, but suddenly became too mean spirited in Beer in Hell.

 

Tucker updated his blog with his candid thoughts on the domestic release. http://www.ihopetheyservebeerinhell.com ... -thoughts/

Let's see if you morons can keep your thoughts on the movie and the marketing of and NOT on the person.

I agree that the movie was poorly marketed; it's not even getting released in Montreal at all. None of my friends even knew that he had a movie and they're bigger fans than I am. He's deflecting all of the failure on the marketing though, I think he's wrong with that. His movie would've done well even with minimal marketing if he had actually produced a fantastic movie.

His movie isn't fantastic, it's just decent/good. That is the biggest hurdle, and it's unfortunately impossible to change (lest there be a producer's cut or something, but even then, it won't change his jokes already in the movie).

 

I think part of the reason the movie was less than stellar was that Tucker tried to send a message. I might be alone in this but I really just wanted the stories out of the book translated to film perhaps with some loose story holding it all together. At the end of the day there were too many "feelings" and my friends and I just felt uncomfortable.

A big part of marketing that was left out was trailers in the theater. I don't know about you guys but I like to get to a movie on time so I can watch out for what's gonna come out later.