Sorry to start the new year off on this rancid note, but this was just too frustrating to not share: as Leonard Jacobs first reported, producer Christopher Carter Sanderson has obtained the rights to produce a stage adaptation of Tucker Max's autobiographical book I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell (also adapted into a movie) , to be called I Hope They Serve Beer...On Broadway! (It's the exclamation point that really does it.)
For those of you unfamiliar, Max (and has anyone ever told him that his name is backwards?) specializes in stories about his own life, full of excessive drinking and a pathological need to bed every woman he can, despite having minimal interest in women as human beings. It's a toxic brew of misogyny, homophobia, and frat boy smirkiness that has been described by some as comedy. The book has been a major success, but the movie adaptation, released in late September, didn't crack $1.5 million at the box office, which suggests that the market for Max's particular charms is running thin. (And if people wouldn't pay $10 to see a movie with him in it, why would they pay $100 to see the same thing onstage?) In other words, it sounds like a pretty rotten idea for a show.
But all of this would make its existence no more distressing than, say, The Blonde in the Thunderbird, the dire Suzanne Somers vehicle of 2005: something that make observers shake their heads, then dies a quick, merciful death, harming nobody but the investors and the people who bought tickets. What makes it really vile are the quotes that Max gave Jacobs about the show. I'll let you click over to the original article to read the whole thing, but I just had to share this particular gem:
At first, I thought Kit was just another creepy theater fag using some bullshit “I want to adapt your book” angle to try to fuck me. Then I realized he’s not only serious about this, he had really great ideas about how to adapt it, and — he’s straight! I didn’t even know you were allowed to be straight and be in theater. I’m excited, I think he could really do something cool.
So let's see...the phrase "creepy theatre fag," the idea that someone would only want to adapt his book to try to sleep with him (unappealing a notion as that is), and shock that a man working in professional theatre is straight. What a charming man.
One can only hope that potential investors and theatre owners have at least a little taste--or have taken a glance at the movie's grosses--and that this will join the deep pile of announced projects that never make it off the ground. Because if that man makes it to Broadway...well I may have to pick a different profession.
In conclusion, ugh.
Hello world!
8 months ago
6 comments:
It's like Broadway decided to hold a contest to make Neil LaBute look like a feminist...
I actually went on his website and read some of his stuff today, after I saw the article. Some of it was slightly funny, in that 'I guess people like this exist and we sort of have to accept it' way.
Highlights included Max drunk off his ass, running through a hotel lobby literally shitting his pants on the way to the bathroom, and a sobbing Mexican cleaning woman who has to clean up the trail of shit he left behind. Such are the meager joys...
Well, as long as no one is shooting the messenger...
I'm certainly not! Though Gawker had some mean things to say about the (potential) show as well...
So, you're the "Zev" on Leonard's web site. Interesting. You print some untruths here. They include the suggestion that it is Tucker max himself on the way to Broadway. It isn't. It is also pretty clear that you don't know your theater history - Ubu Roi comes to mind, among a few other thing. But, I tire. Leonard has just posted "as long as no one is shooting the messenger" instead of pointing out your mistakes editorially, which I find boring. I have work to do, and MSM to talk to. This was an interesting experiment in running it all up the flagpole with the theatre folks, and many anonymous folks, online. BTW no one, incuding the self-important Gawker, has actually seen the show in question, which doesn't exist yet, you know. That makes dissing the show tiresome... logically impossible, in fact. I have made a decision based on the data, though, and it will effect the production strategy well. You've all helped make the investing partners and I some money that way, and I thank you.
Mr. Sanderson, please inform me of any mistakes I've made and I'll be happy to correct them. The statement that Max would be coming to Broadway himself was an assumption I made, and apparently an inaccurate one.
I assure you I know my theatre history rather well, and have read and seen Jarry's "Ubu Roi." I'm confused as to the point you're trying to make, however, with that comparison. Is it that any work that offends people through sexual and scatological content is therefore a penetrating work of social commentary?
And I wasn't criticizing the play itself, as I have not seen it. I was criticizing the idea of the play. And that idea is, without question, a rotten one.
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