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 Tucker Max, whose book I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell has been made into a movie, says people should have the courage to be what they want to be -- even if it's a narcissistic a------. (Alex Urosevic, Sun Media) |
"My name is Tucker Max, and I am an a------," begins the intro on tuckermax.com.
"I get excessively drunk, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable and generally act like a raging d---head."
And he writes about it. In a seven-year career of remorseless X-rated Animal Housery, his blog of coarse anecdotes has morphed into best-selling books, one of which -- the bachelor-party road-trip movie I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell -- hit Canadian theatres this weekend.
In town to promote the movie, Max maintains that the most degrading tales -- the ones where he ends up covered in vomit or excrement, for example -- happened in his 20s. He is a more accomplished player at 34.
We ask if he'd be looking to hook up during his stay in Toronto.
"C'mon man, it's a different game for me now. At 24, I had to go out and work for ass. Now, I go out and select. Oh dude, I haven't had to go out and find a girl for the longest time.
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"I'll, like, post on Twitter that I'll be in Toronto the next two days, 30 girls e-mail me or Twitter me back. I'm going someplace tonight, I post it, and who knows how many will be there -- 30? 50? 100?"
Because you're famous, we ask?
"Dude, I've sold a million books," he says.
This certainly wasn't the life Max faced a decade ago, with careers beckoning in business and/or law (he's a Duke law school grad).
Instead, he channeled his raging id (he claims to be clinically narcissistic) and turned Jagermeister-hazy anecdotes about "bagging" fat-chicks, midgets and deaf girls, etc. into gold. He bristles when I describe it as turning a negative into a positive.
"What's negative? Drinking, hooking up and having fun?" he says. "No one my age considers that a negative. It was kind of a shock to me that people were shocked. The stories were never supposed to be shocking, they were supposed to be funny.
"And then, once the book blew up, people were like 'How could you do this?' It never occurred to me that everyone didn't understand that this is what a lot of people do."
Well, OK, it's what a lot of narcissists do. But we spend an inordinate amount of time in our interview wrestling with the difference between narcissists and sociopaths. "Um, it's kind of a continuum. A sociopath has no sympathy. A narcissist can sympathize, once you make him understand."
For instance, in I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, the Tucker Max character (played by Gilmore Girls' Matt Czuchry) nearly wrecks the groom-to- be's marriage, with no remorse. That is, until he's dropped by his friends and uninvited to the wedding. "Then he has sympathy," Max says. "He doesn't change, but he's learned he needs his friends because a narcissist without his audience is empty."
So he'll cop to being an a------ and a narcissist, but not to being a sociopath.
Yes, he has attracted protesters to his college speaking engagements (and yes, he is invited to speak at colleges -- including Johns Hopkins).
"They don't give a f--- what I talk about. But the speech I like to give is, like, inspirational. 'Cause a lot of people get this message from the book, but a lot of people don't. The drinking, the partying the hooking-up is all there. But below that, the message is, 'Be the person you want to be.'
"Most people, they're just sheep. I went that route. I did the things you're supposed to do. And I hated being a lawyer, I hated business. I hated all that s---. So I carved my own path."