Tucker Max

Me: How are you

Tucker Max: Excellent

Me: That’s great. Well, today I’d like to talk to you a little about your new book and a little about your old book as well.

Tucker Max: Sure, whatever you want man, I’m ready.

Me: Let’s see, “Assholes Finish First” releases next week and is anticipated by all your fans. What do you have to say to those who are not looking forward to it?

Tucker Max: Well, why would I even want to say anything? Who cares? If they’re not looking forward to it, they aren’t looking forward to it. There’s nothing to say to them.

Me: Haha, great. Well let’s see what questions I have here. (Pause) How many stories will be in this [new] book?

Tucker Max:  I can’t remember the exact number, I think it’s like 38, 40, something like that. Whatever [it is] it’s a couple more…it’s like 3 more than ‘Beer in Hell’. Like everything is more. A few more stories, I think 20,000 more words, and 80 more pages. Something like that. (I think he also said something like “What was it 96?” in the background).

Me: Well that’s awesome and I can’t wait to read those. There isn’t that much to say on your new book, you’ve pretty much said it all on your website (www.tuckermax.com). I do want to ask, you are writing your third book now, right?

Tucker Max: Yeah my third book, I’m right in the middle of finishing it.

Me: Exactly how many stories DO you have?

Tucker Max: (Referring to his 3rd book) In that one?

Me: No, just in your life.

Tucker Max: I mean, I don’t know. There’s plenty of things that are borderline “Do I like this stuff, do I not?” Like maybe you consider it’s not THAT funny, but if I write it really funny it could be worth writing. (Laughing) I mean, I don’t know dude, I don’t keep track.

Me: So basically your life isn’t very boring.

Tucker. (Laughing) No dude, I’ve got a lot of problems, but being boring is not one of them.

Me: You’ve done a deaf girl [among other things].

Tucker Max: Yeah, oh yeah definitely.

Me: (Trying not to laugh) What was that experience like.

Tucker Max: Well let’s see, I wrote about it in the last book. It was LOUD. Cause, you know, they can’t hear themselves, so they can’t modulate their own voice. They’re LOUD man. I mean [when] this girl came, it was like a horse being slaughtered or something. It was crazy.

Me: Have you considered doing all three: blind, deaf, and mute?

Tucker Max: Now, we kind of made a joke about that in the movie (I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell), but, no, (I believe, from what I could make out, he says it might be in Assholes Finish First, but don’t quote me on that). Blind girls kind of freak me out. Like I don’t really want to hook up with a blind girl. I had a oppurtunity once; this kind of cute, blind girl was kind of into me, whatever, but she didn’t hook me. They’ve got those dead, milky eyes that go in different directions like a chameleon. I can’t deal with that, it’s just too weird.

Me: Interesting way of putting it (referring to the ‘why he wouldn’t’ aspect of the question).

Me: Where did you get the title [Assholes Finish First] for your new book.

Tucker Max: It’s just a play on the common assholism saying “Nice guys finish last” you know? But, it’s just a reversal, “Assholes finish first”. And it just sounds like a great title.

Me: That it does. Now will the cover photo be explained at all or is that just for the book itself?

Tucker Max: No, no. Absolutely. The cover photo is obviously a photo shoot, but it’s a story in the book and the ACTUAL mugshot is in the book. I couldn’t use it [the mugshot] for a cover because mugshots aren’t high resolution, so it wouldn’t look right on the cover. But, it’s fucking hilarious, dude. It’s one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever written. I don’t know if you want me to tell you the outline or spoil it now, but it’s really good.

Me: You can go ahead and spoil it if you’d like.

Tucker Max: There’s not a whole lot to it- My buddies and I decided to go on a pub crawl (google it) or a bar crawl, but instead of doing a normal bar crawl, we all dressed up like clowns. And so there are like 50 clowns going around Austin and getting drunk and acting like idiots. So, what would happen if you’re sitting in a bar drinking when, all of a sudden, 50 clowns walk in? You’d be like ‘what the hell’s going on?’ I took it to the extreme and I got way too drunk. I ended up stopping traffic and all this other stuff, so I got arrested and the story just goes from there. But yes, the actual mugshot from that night is in there, and the police report? That’s in there, which is probably the funniest police report ever written. It’s really good.

Me: I cannot wait to read that. That sounds really funny.

Tucker Max: Yeah, it’s good.

Me: When writing, do you ever get the urge to fabricate? Make stories more funny? I know you’ve written often that you don’t like to do that because it doesn’t seem as funny. Still, do you ever get that urge?

Tucker Max: Not really. Here’s the thing: when I very, very first started writing, years ago, I actually tried fiction first. Before I started writing these kinds of stories, the fratire genre didn’t exist, no one was doing it. So I took the stories I had and tried to fix a lot of them, and write a novel-type approach to it and it sucked. I’m really bad at writing fiction. I never really try to make stuff up because I don’t need to, but it is also just never as good or funny as the stuff that actually happened, you know?

Me: Uh huh. You are credited with starting the genre “fratire” correct?

Tucker Max: Yep.

Me: How is that going for you?

Tucker Max: Haha, wha-I don’t know, what do you mean? I mean, I created the genre, that’s it. It’s not

like there’s some genre headquarters where we all meet and discuss what fratire is going to be. It’s a label. People who think about these things put it on stuff I write. That’s about it.

(A long pause)

That would be funny, a National Fratire Headquarters.

Me: I’d visit it. Now you and everyone who knows you knows that you’re an asshole right?

Tucker Max: Well that’s the title of my book right?

Me: Yeah…do you ever think it will come back to bite you in the butt? More than it already has?

Tucker Max: You read the first book…how many stories in there are where like I end up that way? A bunch of them. But clearly it’s already bit me the ass. That’s the way life is.

Me: How about when you decide to settle down, are you afraid that your spouse might…probably will know who you are?

Tucker Max: What do you mean probably? How could she not? I mean, why would I want to marry someone who didn’t know what I’ve done…that doesn’t make any sense. Your assumption here, I think, is that I should be ashamed of what I’m doing-

Me: No no no no

Tucker Max: -that’s just not…if you know anything about women- I’ve actually had more women coming to me NOW than I ever did, before I wrote about it. It’s easier now than it used to be.

Me: That was not my assumption, sorry for that.

So you’d say that the amount of women after your first book definitely went up exponentially?

Tucker Max: I don’t know about exponentially but it went way, way up. But just because- before I wrote the book I was just a normal guy. Even if I had good game, I still had to go out and pick up women. I still had to go out and do something; no girl would just come to me. But, once you become famous, even a little bit famous, girls come to you. It changes the entire- reverses the entire dynamic. So, yeah, I didn’t have to do anything anymore, the girls just came to me.

Me: So you’re liking that I assume?

Tucker Max: Well, there are good things and bad things. Life’s a trade-off. Not everything is good. The upside is obvious: You get a lot more girls for a lot less work. But the downside is that some of them are crazy, some of them abuse me, or some of them are whatever. Nothing is all good or all bad.

Me: You mentioned using you. I don’t recall reading any of those stories [in "Beer in Hell"], do you have any of those stories in your new book?

Tucker Max: Actually that’s what the entire second half of the book is about. It’s sort of about how-you have to read it to understand, but when you become famous, the girls come to you to hook-up. A lot of them have different motives. A lot of them essentially have nothing to do with you as a person, but it has to do with the girl wanting to hook up with someone famous. Or she wants to lose her virginity. Or she wants to tell her friends she hooked up with Tucker Max, or whatever. And so that’s the definition of objectification and using someone. IT’s kind of hard to use someone who isn’t famous, but a guy who is [famous], they do. And if you didn’t see the parts in the first book where the girls were using me, you weren’t reading very closely. There are tons and tons of stories like that in there. What about that one asian girl who basically blew 3 hours to hook up with me and do all kinds of crazy shit because she didn’t want to do that with anyone around where she lived. She didn’t want her friends to think she was a slut, but she had no problem doing it all with me. I’m not complaining that she had sex with me, but if you think that’s not someone using me then we have a different definition of using someone.

Me: Apparently we do. (I haven’t re-read that book since the beginning of last year)

Tucker Max: There’s a bunch of stories like that in there. All those stories are a normal guy- something any normal guy can do. I wasn’t doing anything that all my friends couldn’t do. There’s a lot of stories in “Assholes Finish”- it’s the whole second half of stories that have stuff that doesn’t really happen very often- it’s a little bit different. It’s still the same voice, same style, same perspective. But it’s a little bit different.

Me: Is there any more shit getting on your dick?

Tucker Max: I don’t think so.

Me: That was probably one of my favorite stories, aside from you getting banned from the hotels.

Tucker Max: Yeah, that was very funny- not really when it happened to me but it’s very funny to read about.

Me: Are you still banned?

Tucker Max: From Embassy Suites? As far as I know…I mean, I haven’t tried to stay there. But yeah, it’s been-when did that happen? ’99 or 2000? It’s been 10 years. I don’t know how long they keep that going.

Me: You should try to go back and see what happens.

Tucker Max: Yeah right.

Me: I did have some other questions but now they aren’t as important as they were. But one more question. You’ve been going around to all your signings and everything: have your fans been as excited as you’ve anticipated?

Tucker Max: Yeah, more excited than I thought. Some people are a little too excited about it, I think. I mean, it’s just a book at the end of the day, and I’m not saving anyone’s life.

Me: Saving someone’s life would make for a pretty exciting story.

Tucker Max: Maybe, we’ll see. I’ve got 35 stops coming, I’m sure something will happen.

Me: Well, I apologize for the completely amateurish style of interview.

Tucker Max: No big deal, we all have to start somewhere.

Me: Yes, we do. I also apologize for the earlier phone stuff (story on that later).

Tucker Max: No big deal. Listen, if there is anyone who should be forgiving of people, it’s me. God knows I’ve made enough mistakes of my own.

Me: Alright Mr. Max, it was an honour and I thank you very much for this.

Tucker Max: No problem, man.

Me: Have a good day and I cannot wait for the new book.

Tucker Max: Okay, talk to you later.

While doing this interview, I was nervous. I had never been so nervous in my life. I had written down all my questions, how I would respond, but once the talking started going, I froze a lot. This resulted in me sounding a bit…unenthusiastic at times, and I’ll tell you right now, there is nothing worse than feeling like a complete douche when talking to someone important. I felt SO stupid after some of these questions so I do apologize for the quality of the interview. But, like Tucker himself says, we all have to start somewhere. I also have new rule: when interviewing an author, make sure you REREAD the book you plan to refer back to. If you don’t, you’ll sound like a complete idiot.

From his website:
Tucker Max received his BA from the University of Chicago in 1998. He attended Duke Law School on an academic scholarship, and earned his JD in 2001 (despite the fact that he neglected to buy any of his textbooks for his final two years and spent part of one semester–while still enrolled in classes–living in Cancun). His first book, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, has spent over 150 weeks on the NY Times Best Seller List and has over 1.5 million books in print. He co-wrote and produced the movie based on his life/book, also titled “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell.” He has also been credited with being the originator and leader of a new literary genre, “fratire,” and was nominated to the Time Magazine 100 Most Influential List in 2009. He currently lives in Austin, Texas