I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

This is only movie related in that me, Nils, Jesse, Geoff, and Matt will be there, but tomorrow we are going to a party thrown to support a great cause, The Wounded Warrior Foundation. Here’s the info:
Starts: Friday, January 30, 2009 at 8:00pm (that’s tomorrow)
Location: The Elk’s Lodge
Street: 8025 West Manchester Avenue
City/Town: Los Angeles, CA
Here’s the Facebook event link.

Well, not really, but sort of.
One of my friends, who is a professional artist but not a filmmaker, screened the movie last week in NYC, and wrote the review below.
He is definitely a friend of mine, so of course he can’t be considered a completely objective source, but he’s not the type who would bullshit me or blow sunshine up my ass. Plus, I respect the shit out of him and his opinion means a lot to me. So this was nice to hear:

“The preview took place exactly one block from my apartment. In the middle of this really busy week, it was nice to come home, grab a shower and stroll over all relaxed and shit.
I admit it, I was a bit nervous. I’ve been involved in some independent movies both directly and indirectly, and I know that it can be touch and go. While I’m not involved in this one at all, I feel relatively close to it. I’d read the script, Tucker and Nils have told me things about it, and of course all of Tucker’s friends talk about it in our weekly clandestine potluck dinners in Tucker’s secret underground lair. I’ve read all the blog posts everyone else has, only with a little bit of inside information about the details.
So I was apprehensive – I knew it had the potential to be amazing, and that anytime you get that many people involved in creating something, potentially amazing is only a necessary starting point. There are still plenty of ways it can go straight to suck, without batting an eye. I didn’t want it to suck, and I didn’t want to have a beer with Tucker 100 yards from my apartment and have to tell him that I think his movie missed the mark.
The first scene went by, and I relaxed a bit. The editing was great, the scene kept only the best of the way it was originally written, and it plays really well. But the very next scene had no score yet, and it played a little bit awkward or slow, or it seemed “not quite like a professional Hollywood movie” for a second, and it scared me. I got another beer. And realized as I sat back down that there was no music, and that was what I was missing, and I tried to readjust the way I was watching – less like a completely passive audience member, more like a participant in a process.
That was the last moment of doubt or worry that the movie would miss its mark for me. In every case where I knew something was coming and was concerned about how they would pull it off, they knocked it out of the park. Every scene, every line I had read and thought, “hmm, can you do that on camera and make it funny? That’s going to be tough to pull off” or, “I’m not so sure about this one,” they nailed it – I laughed in places I didn’t think I would, I cracked up in places I knew I would laugh, I was blown away how well they pulled off the stuff I thought would be difficult off the page.
They made a movie. A real movie. No bullshit, no “it’s pretty good for an indie,” it’s a fucking funny movie and it isn’t like the others in its genre. That’s the thing that makes it so hard to say, “this movie will be huge,” or anything like that. Look, when I hear Tucker (or anyone) say that he’s created a unique work that will break the world wide open and reinvent history, my thinking is that you have to feel that way inside or you’ll never pull it off, and it’s probably best if you keep that shit to yourself, for the most part. I tend to feel it’s better to pretend to be humble and let others talk about how great you are. Tucker’s a different guy, and that’s cool, it’s just not my thing. But even as he’s distracting me with that stuff, he’s right – in a much more subtle way than I would’ve thought, he and Nils have done something really fucking unique, and it makes it very difficult to quantify or predict.
This movie has all the elements that someone predisposed to hate it could call cliche. But it isn’t. At all. In the moments where it’s coarse or juvenile or all about the titties and the toilet humor, it’s more honest, it’s more real, it’s got more grit on it. There’s no candy coating, no airbrushing – if it’s supposed to be dripping, it’s fucking dripping. And in the moments where it’s supposed to be thoughtful or sincere, the same is true. And it’s smart. I never in a million years would have thought I’d walk away calling it smart, but I am. It’s got all the cliche elements, but it handles them in a completely different way, there’s no dumbing down. And that makes it even funnier, but harder to describe.
If some jackass wants to hear me say, “this is the funniest movie of all time!!” or be disappointed, I’ll do him one better. I’d say you’re going to want to see this movie more than once. Because it’s going to surprise you. And you’re going to walk out of there and ask yourself what just happened. It’s like every other really good tits/jokes/drinking/redemption movie, except that it’s not, not at all, and that will confuse you, and you will want to see it again.
How many comedies have you seen that you would say that about?
Yeah. Me neither.
All that said – I’ve been using whatever creativity I have to make my living for 30 fucking years. And if I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned that I have no idea what will be huge and what will go unnoticed. And that if I’m close to something, if I know too much about the personalities involved, I know even less. I enjoy it a thousand times more, but I can be objective about it a thousand times less. And I have no goddamned idea whether this movie will be 200 million huge or if it will not even find a distributor. I’m on the waaayyyy far periphery of this thing, and I’m much too close to be able to say.
But that has absolutely nothing to do with whether I enjoyed it, or whether I think Tucker and Nils pulled it off. They fucking pulled it off, and I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I want to see it again.
Congratulations, assholes. You two are going to be just impossible to be around – the greatly exaggerated rumors about Ian’s giant head are going to make him look like Zippy the fucking Pinhead next to you two arrogant fucks, once the rest of the world sees this.”

Reprinted from here.
The dude not only makes incredible furniture, he’s a great writer. But he never updates his blog, lazy fuck.
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If any of you ever go on to make a movie yourself, remember what I am about to tell you:
The most unnerving part of the whole process will be showing it to your friends.
I was proud of this movie before anyone saw it, and we’ve already done three screenings and have averaged a 92% score, so I know this thing is going to kill with audiences. But still, there is nothing like standing in front of a room of 30 people you have known for years, introducing a movie you have just spent a better portion of 18+ months living and dying for, and feeling their implicit judgment on you. Without even saying it out loud, every single one of them is saying with their eyes:
“This had better not suck.”
The first three screenings we tried to get a crowd that was random and didn’t know me to get an authentic reaction, but now that we have a good gauge on that and the cut is locked, last night we had our first screening just for friends in NYC. Aside from the fact that the sound was fucked up for the first minute, ruining what is otherwise a great opening scene, it went really well.
But I cannot tell you how many people came up to me afterward and said this:
“Tucker, I was so afraid of what would happen if this sucked, but goddamn…that was really good. I am incredibly impressed. It is so much better than I ever imagined it would be.”
Almost every single one said some variation of that. I don’t know if I should be proud that they liked it, or pissed that they all assumed we would fuck this up. Either way, they all know now what I knew a month ago:
This is a great movie, and people are really going to like it.
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Aside from watching Donovan McNabb choke (again) and Liberal America wet itself over the Obama Coronation festivities, I have spent most of this past weekend plumbing the depths of my comedic genius for dialogue ideas in preparation for the ADR sessions that begin today with Jesse Bradford. We’ve blocked out three and a half hours for Jesse to record 24 lines. I have no idea whether that is enough time, but I am inclined to believe it is since Jesse is a self-proclaimed ADR stud and I have no reason to doubt him since his invaluable contributions in the editing room just prior to locking picture.
From talking to people who are supposed to know about these sorts of things, there seems to be two sides to ADR. First there is the deliberate, fastidious side typically associated with onscreen dialogue (lines delivered where you can see the actor’s mouth moving) that was muffled or garbled or stepped on when being recorded on the day. The primary concern on this side of ADR is accuracy because, unless you are a kung-fu movie or the young girl in THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, you actually want the newly recorded dialogue to match the movement of the actor’s mouth as well as their vocal and visible energy. I imagine matching onscreen energy from inside a soundproof recording booth is the most difficult part of this kind of ADR. And of course, the vast majority of the 24 lines Jesse is recording are onscreen.
The other side of ADR involves off-screen dialogue. This is the looser, more creative side of ADR because the only real constraints under which you are forced to operate are time and plausibility. Less often do you have to match energy, and never do you have to match mouth movement since the lines are being delivered by an actor who is off screen. Why record dialogue for characters who may only be tangentially involved in a scene and you can’t even see?
Think of it like this: you know all those times when you’re out with a group of friends and someone says something funny or makes a crack or starts talking shit and you stand there off to the side like a mouth-breathing idiot searching for the perfect retort only to come up with it hours later as you’re leaving? Personally, I have no experience with this phenomenon since I have better timing than the Atomic Clock, but I’ve seen it happen to other people a lot and it is the perfect analogue to the moments filled in by the use of off-screen ADR.
It is on this aspect of ADR that I have spent all my time this past weekend. Re-watching scenes, re-spotting the moments with perfect, unexploited opportunities to drop a hilarious one-liner or a biting comeback, writing a series of alternate lines for those moments, and then timing them out to make sure the actor has time to deliver them off-screen without disrupting the flow of the scene into which they will be inserted.
If we all do our jobs well, we will end up with the right lines delivered flawlessly and woven into the tapestry of sound and performance so seamlessly that the average viewer won’t be able to tell what was captured this summer in Shreveport, Louisiana and what was produced six months later in a soundbooth in Los Angeles.
EDIT: True to form, Jesse killed it this afternoon. We allotted 3 1/2 hours for 24 lines. Jesse was running 15 minutes late, we took a 10 minute bathroom and coffee break, we added two extra lines to the list, and we finished an hour and fifteen minutes earlier. This being my first experience with ADR, it was really cool to watch Jesse prepare his body, his voice, and his overall performance for each successive line. We were even able to make little changes on the fly because he so easily tempered his energy and modulated his voice. He really knocked it out of the park.
Next up are Geoff and Matt. They each have twice as much ADR to do, so it should be TWICE AS FUN!!!!
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Part of the fallout of the last post was an obvious follow-up question, something that I should have thought about while I was writing but didn’t:

“Well if asking you for help is pointless, how does one succeed in Hollywood?”

Though this question is loaded with assumptions, the underlying point is a good one. How do you do it? How do you make it out here?

The first thing I am going to tell you is that I can’t tell you how to make it in Hollywood, because there isn’t only one way to make it. What I did is very different than what Nick Schenk did, which is also very different than what Michael Martin did. There are almost as many ways to make it as there are people who have made it.

I would also be very careful asking anyone else their advice. I got a ton of advice about “making it” in Hollywood over the past five years, and almost all of it was either ill-suited for me, complete bullshit, or totally wrong. Lots of people like to offer advice about things, yet very few of them are qualified to do so. Remember that when you listen to some assistant who got her job because her dad is friends with a producer about what it takes to “make it” in Hollywood.

Beyond that, there are so many different definitions of “making it.” To some people, “making it” is selling a script. To others, “making it” is becoming a mogul. And there’s everything else in between.

Most of the books I have read or the advice I’ve seen about “making it” in Hollywood is all about how to format your screenplay or where to network or who to know or how to write a cover letter. That’s all fucking bullshit. I don’t know how to do any of that. There is one commonality that I have found with people who come from nowhere to really do something cool in Hollywood, and for some reason, this aspect seems to be left out of almost all the books about “making it” in Hollywood:

The underlying art itself HAS to be good. That’s where it all starts. If you love your art, you work your ass off at it and try to make it as good as possible while treating it with respect, you’re probably going to end up OK.

Everything else comes as a result of that. For the vast majority of people working in Hollywood, it starts with the art, because at its core, Hollywood is the center of the ENTERTAINMENT business, which is based on the writing, acting and production of content.

It’s easy to get noticed. It’s easy to get someone to read your script, or to get a meeting with a big producer, or to get someone to pay attention to your acting. Getting noticed is not the problem anymore. The world is STARVED for something to notice.

That is exactly why most people can’t “make it.” The problem now is that most of the content out there SUCKS and can’t garner an audience and thus does not deserve to be made into something larger. It’s like I told people at SXSW a few years ago, the message that no one wants to hear: Getting the deal is easy, it’s having the content worth getting a deal that’s hard.

It’s really easy to look at Hollywood from the outside and think it’s all about the connections and the parties and the fame and the paparazzi and the image. And to some extent, that is true. There are definitely a few people who’ve made their whole careers on just being famous for no other reason than they’re famous. Is there a way to cheat the system, to finagle and network and schmooze your way to success? Of course. If that’s your goal, if that’s If you want that path to fame, go for it, but I don’t have any advice to give you on that front. It’s not my path, especially not in Hollywood.

I guess it all boils down to motivation. Why are you trying to “make it”?

If it’s for any reason other than because you just fucking LOVE doing it and you can’t imagine doing anything else, that’s where you need to be. Because if you love it, you’ll devote yourself to it, you’ll cherish and nurture your gift, and you’ll work your ass off to improve it and make it what it needs to be.

But so few people who want to “make it” in Hollywood are doing it for the right reasons. Or they start for the right reasons and lose track of why they’re doing it. Or they kinda like art, but really like the scene, and don’t want to put in all the pain and hard work and sacrifice that great art requires. But if you don’t do it for the right reasons, you probably aren’t going to develop what it takes to make it. I wrote about this in another place:

“Dude, it’s NEVER been about the money for me. Money is important, but if it was about the money, don’t you think I would have taken the tv deal NBC threw at me five years ago? Or the tv deal Comedy Central threw at me two years ago? Or don’t you think Nils and I would have taken the millions–plural–we were offered for the script? Or any of the dozens of other things I’ve turned down that I’ve never written about?

This whole fucking thing started as emails to my friends. Me trying to make my friends laugh. It still all boils down to that–making my friends laugh. Now I just have a lot more friends reading my stuff. It’s how I write, and it’s what I tried to do with the movie–write something funny that makes all of us laugh.

That’s why I get up in the morning, that’s why I fight all the battles I fight, that’s why I do it all–because I love laughing and enjoying this stuff and sharing with other people who also enjoy it.

Yeah man, the money is nice. And you better believe I want to make a lot. That’s why I pay so much attention to the business aspect. But I know very well that it can never be about the money, because then the art will suffer. It has to be about enjoyment and fun and the art that creates that emotion.

Why do you think I didn’t…ever peg a dollar figure to the success of this movie? Because it’s success should be measured by how many people LAUGH AT AND ENJOY it. I damn well think it will make a shit ton of money, but I phrased it as me thinking it is something special–because it’s the fact that it is a special movie that is what will be the cause of it making money, not the other way around.

Of course, that’s the supreme irony–if a lot of people do laugh at and enjoy it, if you don’t think about money and just worry about art, THAT’S when you start seeing real money. Funny how that works.”

And another thing I wrote:

If your goal is just a result–whether it be best-selling author or NBA champion or NASCAR driver or famous starlet ot whatever–you will almost certainly never reach it. But if your goal is to do what you love the best you can, ONLY THEN will you be able to have all the awards and designations that come to someone who does those things.

When I started, of course I wanted to have all the things I have now. But it wasn’t WHY I did it. The desire for that shit doesn’t get you up in the morning, it doesn’t push you through the hard parts, and it doesn’t turn good to great. The only thing that does that is a love for creating your art, and a burning desire to say what it is you need to say.

And if your response is “I just want a chance” my answer is this: What the FUCK are you waiting for? You don’t need permission. Whatever it is you want to create, go do it. Once you have an audience that likes consuming your art, then come back to me and I will teach you the next step. I can answer your question specifically and exactly, but it would be a waste of time right now. Like I already said, thinking about the prize will make you miss the target. Worry about what your target is, and hit that first.

The two best quotes I have read about what I am talking about come from two people I greatly admire:

“Don’t aim at success–the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”
-Viktor Frankl

“I never set out to make money. I really wish I could say otherwise, but it just hasn’t been the case. I have met people who have made a fortune with intent, and they are few and far between. Invariably, they are wealthier than I could ever imagine because they have become good at what they set out to do, and that has been their only goal in life.”
-Gordon Ramsay

EDIT: I am going to be going on my book tour starting tomorrow, so I probably won’t be posting for a week or so. But when I get back I will have very good news about our MPAA rating.

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You hear about how unusual and weird Hollywood is, but until you live here, you don’t really get it. Just a few examples from the last two weeks of my life:
-I met this girl who wanted to hook up with me. And then told me she had a boyfriend:
Tucker “So you are OK with brazenly cheating on him?”
Girl “No, he knows I’m going to fuck you and he’s OK with it.”
Tucker [look of confusion]
Girl “You are my Celebrity Pass.”
Tucker “What is a Celebrity Pass?’
Girl “We each have a person who, if the opportunity arises, we are allowed to fuck without it counting as cheating. A Celebrity Pass. You are mine.”
Tucker “Great Holy Jesus.”
-My ex-girlfriend was driving on Sunset, and some guy pulled up next to her and kept waving at her and honking. She is the type of girl who this happens to on a regular basis, so she ignored it at first, but he kept doing it, so she looked over. It was Dave Navarro. Yeah, THAT Dave Navarro.
He acted like he knew her, and waved for her to pull over and talk, and she was so confused that she did:
Dave “I know you from somewhere.”
Erin “No, you don’t.”
Dave “I totally do, I’ve seen you.”
Erin “I’m not famous. I’m just a nurse.”
Dave [pointing to her dog in the seat next to her] “I’ve seen you and your dog before–that dog’s name is Oscar.”
Cue Erin freaking out at the complete and utter ridiculousness of this situation.
Dave “So what are you doing right now?”
Erin “Uhh…what?”
Dave “You want to come hang out tonight. I don’t know if you know who I am, but…”
Erin “I know who you are, but…sorry, I have…ugh…stuff to do.”
This incident is weird on so many levels:
1. Dave Navarro must read this blog, or at the very least looks at my Flickr account. No other way he could have known Oscar’s name. Hey Dave, glad to have you.
2. Who pulls girls over in traffic to pick them up?
3. Of course, I can only assume that technique has produced dividends for Dave before, which leads to the next question: What kind of girl goes and fucks guys who pick them up in traffic? Of course, I fuck lots of girls who email me off my site, so I don’t know if I am in a position to look down on that behavior.
-Other filmmakers, writers, and various hangers-on now send me endless dvds, scripts, treatments, etc, etc. Not big names obviously, these are the people “trying to make it.”
Look, I know what we have done is pretty remarkable–to adapt your own book, and then turn down all the studios trying to buy the script, then get it financed and made in under a year, all while retaining creative control is pretty amazing…but still…the movie hasn’t come out yet. It may suck. I may not have any fucking idea what I am talking about. Granted, I think this thing is going to be a huge hit and we are going to be stars, but still–until it’s out and that happens, it’s just my prediction. You would think people would wait until I have proven I am an expert to treat me like one.
Yet, I get a dozen people a week begging me for advice, or wanting me to read their script, or wanting to send me their reel, or something. AND IT ALL SUCKS!!! That’s the worst part. I feel like if these people worked half as hard on their art as they do on pimping it out, they’d do much better. That’s what I did: Focused on getting the art right first, then worried about everything else. Of course, no one wants to hear that. They just want to know either what my tricks are, or how I can help them.
-The best part of the above: I have FRIENDS who are now getting scripts sent to them, in the hopes they will pass them on to me!! Unreal.
-Erin and I broke up a few weeks ago, and hearing her tales of being a hot, single girl in LA who ISN’T a shallow whore is awesome and hilarious. In an average night out, she’ll get hit on by at least two very famous guys, and usually more. And all of them call her constantly and want to date her. Seeing her missed call log is like a who’s who of young male actors and musicians. Its really funny actually.
Of course, none of this surprises me: Not only is she smoking hot, but she’s very smart and very cool. For fucks sake, if you can get Tucker Max to not only date you but fall for you, you are something special.
But she, being one of the few humble hot girls I’ve ever met, doesn’t get this. She can’t understand all the attention. Her response to all of this is so funny, “It’s just made me lose all respect for celebrity guys. I mean, I feel like I am a pretty normal girl, and they just desperately throw themselves at me, one after the other. I don’t get it. Aren’t THEY supposed to be the desirable ones that every girl wants? At least with you, I had to make the first move. You’d think these guys had never met a girl the way they fawn over me. It’s creepy.”
-Here is what she doesn’t get, and what I am learning now that I am a single and an actual movie producer in Hollywood:
Almost all the girls here are one of two things, if not both: Transparent status whores, and/or disgustingly used up.
I knew this before, but not like I do now. You see, I started dating Erin almost as soon as I got back from making my movie, so I haven’t been single as a legitimate producer until now. But since I broke up with her, I cannot begin to describe what’s come out of the woodwork trying to get a piece of me. I think almost every marginal, struggling actress who has any clue who I am is now all about me. I can see why there are so many shady people in this business. Loser guys see all the desperate hot ass out here and want a piece, regardless of the awful baggage that comes attached. And there are so many shallow, soulless girls that think if they are sluts, it will get them somewhere faster than if they are good people.
No thank you. You know if a social scene is too fucked up for me, it is completely FUBARed.
Welcome to Hollywood. It is a weird, weird place.
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Remember this little incident?

Basically, I ripped on this actor for making what I thought was a wrong choice in an audition, when in fact I was the idiot who made the mistake.

Well, we ended up casting that guy for the part of Logan (who is a typical fratty). His real name is Craig Coyne. He came to Shreveport, shot his part, did a fantastic job, and was great to have on set. A complete joy to work with and I would cast the dude again in a second.

Well, due to problems that had absolutely nothing to do with him at all, we had to cut his entire scene. As far as you the viewer are concerned, Craig will have nothing to do with the movie, he won’t even be in the background. This happens all the time, and most professional actors are used to it. It’s never fun, but it’s part of the business. A lot more gets shot than makes it into the movie.

I don’t have any idea what the normal process is for actors finding out that they got entirely cut out of a movie. I assume they show up at the movie and find out by watching it.

Well…that’s not how Craig Coyne found out.

Yesterday I was at Chateau doing an interview with Playboy Germany about my book being translated to German and my trip there in March, and I ran into him. Nils had told me that he’d run into him a month earlier at The Grove, so I just assumed Craig knew his scene was cut out. Without really thinking about it I started to talk about it…

Oh shit. Fucking Nils hadn’t told him.

Since I already fucked up, I went ahead and just broke the full news and told him that the whole scene he was in was cut. He wasn’t in the movie at all.

The dude was crestfallen. He got this look on his face like an 8-year old who just learned Santa isn’t real. It was so awkward and unfun. I would have kicked a goat to death to avoid having that conversation.

By the way, Nils is a dick. The text message conversation I had with him:

Tucker: Just saw fratty, told him we cut him, dude was unhappy
Nils: Hahaha, I didn’t tell him at the grove, i didn’t feel like telling him in front of his girl. Poor Logan Fratty

So, since I’ve met Craig, I punked him in an audition when he wasn’t wrong, then made him fly to Shreveport for two days, and then cut him entirely out of the movie. If he came over to my house and shit on my floor, I think I would just call it even.

For any other producers or casting directors reading this: Craig Coyne is a very good actor, a good guy, and fantastic to work with. Don’t let our unintentionally awful treatment of him fool you.

And Nils is an asshole.

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So I promised more posts now that editing is over, and what do I do? Not post for like two weeks. Good job Tucker, fucking dick.
Here’s the thing: I don’t know what to write about because there’s nothing to do right now. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there is a lot being done, but none of it is being done by me, and nothing really requires my feedback or input. What the fuck do I know about sound levels or DI transference? Nothing.
The movie is done. I mean…it’s REALLY done. And like I said before, it’s pretty fucking good.
However, despite the fact it’s done, nothing has really changed in my life. This piece of art upon which so much of my future rests is sitting on a DVD in my house…and nothing has happened.
Yet.
I know it’ll all come soon enough–either insane success, bitter failure, or something in between. But it’s still weird to know that, at least in a way, the fate of the movie is already written. What this thing will be, it already is. It’s just the result we’re waiting on. The only thing I can equate it to is that feeling you have between the moment you finish a test and when you get your grade back. Anticipation, nervousness, excitement, and anxiety. And helplessness.
Ultimately the movie will be judged on the 99 minutes of celluloid we present to the public. Not on this blog, or our efforts, or on the promise of the script, or on anything else. Which is what I want, of course. But this means that from the day editing ended, my impact on the success of this movie pretty much ended.
Don’t get me wrong, we have a fucking fantastic marketing plan, one I am very proud of and I think will do wonders for the movie. And I plan to do every fucking thing possible to promote the hell out of this thing, even if my efforts only have a marginal effect. After all, you never know what piece of effort is going to be the one that finally pushes you over the top.
But still…the die has been cast, and I am sitting at that brief moment of stillness before it lands, the result is known, and the consequences dealt.
It’s funny; I wrote about this exact issue in May. But I was such a different person then. The guy who wrote that piece was wound so tight and had so much of his identity wrapped up in the result of the movie that he couldn’t deal with anything. Now, eight months later, I am writing a blog post with the same theme, but from a completely different emotional position.
In May, I only cared about the result. How good was this movie going to be, and how much would it make? What I understand now, that I didn’t understand in May, that though the “result” is important, there is no finish line. Not only is the process important, it’s the most important thing, because that’s where life happens.
So instead of fretting or worrying or wondering what will happen, I am going to savor the stillness before the storm. The short amount of time left I can watch the movie and see it without being burdened by either success or failure. The result will be here soon enough, and it’ll be with me the rest of my life, but the uniqueness of this moment will never be back. I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.
[I know I write about this stuff a lot, but it's on my mind a lot. You may not be able to tell all the time from this blog, but being a Hollywood movie producer is really fucking stressful. Especially the first time around.]

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Not movie specific, but I will be doing a few book signings on the east coast to promote the release of the Revised and Expanded edition of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. It does kinda have something to do with the movie because I will be screening the movie for my friends in NYC, DC, Boston and Chicago, so there will be more (admittedly biased) reviews coming.
Here are the details for anyone interested in going to one of them:

NEW YORK, NY
Wednesday, January 21st
Borders
6pm
2 Penn Plaza
New York, NY 10121
PHILADELPHIA, PA
Thursday, January 22nd
Borders
6pm
80 E Wynnewood Avenue
Wynnewood, PA 19096
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Friday, January 23rd
Books A Million
7pm
11 Dupont Circle N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
MARYLAND
Saturday, January 24th
Books A Million – Arundel Hills
2pm
7000 Arundel Mills Circle, Space B3
Hanover, MD 21076
BOSTON, MA
Monday, January 26th
Borders
7pm
511 Boylston St.
Boston, MA 10121

CHICAGO, IL
Tuesday, January 27th
Borders
7pm
830 N. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611

A few days ago Tucker popped in the DVD of the final cut of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell for me to see. While much of what was in place in the last cut of the film I saw remained, there were several noticeable changes in a few scenes. The editing team has clearly worked hard to further refine scenes to keep the story moving–whatever drags in earlier scenes is gone. As I told Nils earlier this week; we have a very funny movie on our hands.
Film nerd wise, there are a few cuts that I don’t like–but no one shoots the perfect amount of coverage. As I had Tucker next to me while viewing I could hit pause and get some explanation behind some of their editorial choices. But, in the grand scheme of things, the film is fine. You’ve heard this from me before, you’ve heard it from everyone before: The film is funny. The film is entertaining. It may be great.
Imagine that. An internet celebrity writes a screenplay with his best friend based on his only book. This screenplay generates all kinds of interest, but they select a small, but exciting studio with one cult classic under their belt to finance it. This same creative team hires a director with no comedic background, who is mostly well known for small dramatic indies. They cast experienced, but relatively little known actors. During an 8 week shoot filled with drama behind the scenes, we finish on time and on budget.
And that’s what I find interesting: Somehow, despite all the struggles in Shreveport in what only seems to me were a few weeks ago, we have a film. It all worked. The 15 hour days, the arguments, the tension, the personality clashes, none of it matters. The blood, sweat and tears have given us something tangible.
And I’m only on the periphery of all this. God knows Nils and Tucker have been fighting this fight harder and longer than I have. But since I’ve boarded this freight train, I can tell you there is a feeling of relief that’s hard to describe. For better or worse, we’ve committed our story to film. It exists. Whether or not the audiences flock to the theaters now is somewhat out of our hands. That’s not to say that we don’t have a comprehensive marketing strategy; we do. But to a certain extent everyone is rolling the dice. Tucker has talked about putting all his chips on the table. What an accurate description of the struggle of getting an independent film made. For me, I rolled the dice many months ago sitting a coffee shop with a guy whose stories I read in high school:
“Do you want to move to Louisiana for three months?”
In the end I’ve come to believe there are two sorts of people in the world: those who take the plunge and those who don’t. Those who want the 9-5, those who don’t. Those who are afraid to fail and those who are willing to risk being knocked down again, again and again. I haven’t accomplished too much with my life thus far, but this much I know:
Regardless of whether or not IHTSBIH is a massive hit or a complete bomb, I’m glad I took Tucker up on his offer. I took a risk, and I am better off for it.

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