Move over, Hollywood. Today at 6:30 p.m., Coralville will play host to a movie première of its own.
Author, screenwriter, and self-proclaimed “asshole” Tucker Max will bring I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, his first movie, to the Coral Ridge 10 as part of a 31-city tour. Tickets are currently sold out.
The movie, based on stories from Max’s book of the same name, centers on three friends, a bachelor party, and the ensuing mess created by the celebration’s chaos. Similar to his nonfiction stories, Max is at the center of the film, through a fictional version of himself (whom he refers to as “Movie Tucker”), played by “Gilmore Girls” star Matt Czuchry.
Despite comparisons with summer blockbuster The Hangover, Max said I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is different from the average bachelor-party-gone-wrong comedy.
“It looks different and it feels different,” he said. “The most important way is that there are no high jinks. It is a real, raw authentic comedy in a way that Hollywood doesn’t make comedies.”
The première will include more than just a screening of the movie. Max and cowriter Nils Parker will be at the theater before the screening as they encourage attendees to share their drinking and partying stories. The two will also answer audience questions in a Q&A following the film.
“Q and As are weird,” Parker said. “There’s a set of eight to 10 questions we get every day, like ‘How many girls have you slept with?’ Every once in a while, you’ll get a really good question. You don’t really know what you’re going to get.”
Reactions to the film, and the tour, have been mixed. Those attending the screenings, Max said, have enjoyed the film.
“People have been flipping out [at the screenings],” Max said. “You can’t fake that shit — at least, not 17 times you can’t.”
Parker admitted to being hesitant pursuing a national touring première at first but agreed with Max’s assessment.
“Tucker has been 100 percent confident that this movie’s gonna blow people away,” Parker said. “I was more skeptical.” However, after seeing nationwide reactions, he said, “at some point you’ve got to believe the hype.”
Others, however, have not had the same reaction as fans of Max’s previous work. At a screening at North Carolina State University, for example, the tour was greeted by protesters who rallied against what they view as Max’s treatment of women in his books and in I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and encouraged females not to watch the movie.
“Those people are just kooks who are trying to promote their political agenda on top of my fame,” Max said.
For his part, he said he considers himself to be a feminist. Following a blog post recapping the NC State première, he said, he received hundreds of e-mails from female supporters who disagreed with the protesters’ claims.
“I feel like the protesters aren’t feminists,” he said. “If anything, they’re anti-woman. Their implicit assumption is that women need to be protected from certain types of art.”
The only thing the protest accomplished was to give more press to the movie, he said, and he doesn’t believe that there will be any such protest in Coralville this evening.
Though a full schedule has yet to be announced, Max said that the movie will open in Iowa City when it is officially released on Sept. 25.