Knightnews.com landed an interview with New York times bestseller and legendary partier Tucker Max.
Tucker Max is a self-proclaimed narcissist, who gained his celebrity status by writing about his drunken, sexual exploits with women. His first book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, sold over a million copies and was eventually turned into a movie. In 2006, the New York Times named Tucker Max as the founder of the literary genre “fratire”. You can read some of his stories or buy his new book on his website here.
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Jake Rakoci: You have ties to the Boca Raton area, if I’m not mistaken you were managing one of your father’s restaurants after you got done with Law School. How do you like Florida in general?
Tucker Max: It’s kind of a s**t hole dude. Beautiful weather, obviously a lot of fun but not a whole lot of really smart, interesting, compelling people. It’s more of South Florida. Florida is a big state, it’s hard to make a comprehensive statement about it, but South Florida was definitely s**tty.
Jake Rakoci: How about the UCF area? Do you have any ties there?
Tucker Max: No, I mean I’ve been to Orlando a couple of times, in fact, I was supposed to go to the NBA All-Star game next weekend. But no not really.
Jake Rakoci: Your newest book, Hilarity Ensues is the last of the three, can you give us a rundown of the book? Is there any one story that truly capitalizes and ends the series on a bang?
Tucker Max: I mean, it’s the same as my other two books, just new material. If you read any of my stuff and you liked it, you’re going to like this book. I think the funniest story I’ve ever written is in here. The sexting stories, I’ve laughed more writing those than I have anything else I’ve ever written. But I don’t know if you’ve actually read the book, but it actually does pretty much go out with a bang. I mean, I talk about retiring from fratire at the end. That’s a pretty good way to end it I guess.
Jake Rakoci: So what was it that made you decide to drop the law degree and pursue writing full-time?
Tucker Max: Well, being in the law firms makes it tough to keep doing that. That and I hated being a lawyer and I hated everything about it. And I liked writing a lot and it was what I wanted to do.
Jake Rakoci: Did you not think of that while you were going through law school, that you hated it?
Tucker Max: I thought about it but I didn’t identify and sort of explicitly consider all that stuff in, no, I mean I was 23-24-25, I was an idiot. Most people that age are idiots and I was the biggest idiot of them all and it didn’t occur to me that I would not take the job that was gonna pay me 150 thousand a year to start because I didn’t like it. Everyone says your supposed to like being a lawyer, it’s supposed to be a prestigious job. At that point in my life I didn’t think about it that way.
Jake Rakoci: So during this time you’re sending all those e-mails out to your friends, like the Sushi Pants Story, for example was written in a time-line format, was this how your e-mails to your friends were written too?
Tucker Max: Some of them, yeah. When you’re writing an e-mail to your buddies, trying to make them laugh, you can’t write long, eloquent, wordy sentences. No one has time for that s**t, like either you make your buddies laugh or you don’t. If you don’t then they are going to stop reading your e-mails, so that’s sort of how my style developed, is me trying to make my friends laugh over e-mail.
Jake Rakoci: How do you feel about underage kids, say age 16, considering you as their idol?
Tucker Max: Well, the only problem with that is that they don’t really have any content to place the stories in. It’s kind of frustrating to me when like a 17 year old kid e-mails me.
Jake Rakoci: Yeah, I’ve many 17 year olds say that before.
Tucker Max: Like, oh man I’ve been with like five girls, like how can I do the stuff that you’ve done? And I’m like, a**hole, I’m writing about when I was 27 not 17, you know? And so I think a lot of kids don’t understand that, but then they go to college and then they start having all the same experiences I had and then they realize, oh ok, like this guy is not some god of drinking or hooking up, he does all the same stuff everyone else does, he’s just the one who wrote about it in a funny way.
Jake Rakoci: Exactly. I saw on Twitter you were very vocal about the Joe Paterno scandal. You were tweeting at women calling them sick monsters. Why you of all people to be so vocal about this?
Tucker Max: Well, it was weird man. It was just like one of those things where the news broke on a Friday night. The mainstream media didn’t pick it up that much, and I read the Grand Jury report immediately because wherever I was looking, it was linked to it and I read it, and I was appalled, I could not believe that no one was talking about this and that it hadn’t blown up. Now obviously, I didn’t know it was gonna blow up, but like it just blew me away that it wasn’t blown up right away. And you know we live in a world of right away and I just started making jokes about it and all the Penn State cult members and all the people defending Penn State were acting exactly like cult members do. So I called them the Penn State Cultists. So they’re all like freaking out like, how can you attack Penn State? Blah, Blah, Blah, like well your school defended and housed a rapist for over a decade, a child rapist! So that’s why I’m gonna attack them, and like all the Penn State cultists are freaking out. Look, there’s no argument that Jerry Sandusky isn’t evil and there is no argument that Penn State sheltered him, and defended him, and tried to shield their own name because of money and football. So everyone trying to defend Penn State was just wrong and I was right. If you give me the moral high ground to attack from, I will demolish everyone who comes, and that’s just what happened. And plus I got pissed off, these fu**ing people, it’s not even women, the men, all the Penn State apologists were defending an organization that covered up child rape. How do you do that? How are you a human being and OK with that? That’s so fu**ed up that it’s hard for me to even conceive of. It gets under my skin that someone would think that’s OK! I still don’t get it dude. It still blows me the f**k away.
Jake Rakoci: You’re in your mid-thirties now, do you see yourself settling down, or in a committed relationship anytime soon?
Tucker Max: Yeah of course, I write about this at the end of Hilarity Ensues where like I retire from fratire, dude I’m 35. I just turned 36 actually, and I don’t do the shit I did when I was 25. I was crazy, I was out of control at that age and it was funny, and fun for a while. I had a great time, and I racked up some pretty amazing stories. So I’ve written about all those stories now, you know I don’t really have anything else to add to it. At some point, you run out of things to say. And I have nothing else to say about drinking, hooking up stories in that area.
Jake Rakoci: Lastly, a close friend of mine is a virgin. Can you give him any advice or to any other UCF students having female problems?
Tucker Max: Is he a virgin by choice?
Jake Rakoci: No, not by choice.
Tucker Max: Wait, hold on. He’s in college and he can’t find any girl to sleep with him?
Jake Rakoci: Nope, he’s 19 years old and in a fraternity.
Tucker Max: He’s in a fraternity?! Does he have cancer growing out of his face!? What is wrong with the dude?
Jake Rakoci: I don’t know, I mean, I feel like you would be the best person to go to for this advice!
Tucker Max: I can give normal advice to normal dudes. Someone who is a virgin and 19 at the University of Central Florida, which is like Slut U. I don’t know dude! That person must have something really wrong with him. Something major, but like that’s crazy! Wow, that threw me for a curveball. I don’t even know how to interpret that. General advice for girls, look, it’s very simple. Most guys are afraid. Most women are afraid too. But guys are afraid of women, and they’re afraid of rejection and they’re afraid of whatever. The best thing you can do, is just relax. Stop worrying about it, and go out to have fun. Say, tonight I am going to make myself laugh, and going to make my friends laugh, and make girls laugh. And we’re going to have a blast and do crazy stuff, and not worry about getting laid. I’m going to talk to girls and I’m going to interact with them, and if it happens, it happens. But I’m not going to sweat it one way or the other. If you do that, and stop pressuring yourself to get a** and start just having fun, the a** comes.
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