HEY, PAULINGTON: I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell's Tucker Max Responds!

Date: Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:53 PM
Subject: Dude, just come to the source

I appreciate you writing about the movie, but here is what I don't
understand: You claim you don't have any info on the movie because
Freestyle hasn't sent you any, but then you link my site. If you know
enough to read the blog, why would you not just email me directly and
ask me any question you want? I am nothing if not accessible and
self-promoting, and there is a contact form on the site that goes
directly to me.

Let me clear some things up for you:

-I not only wrote this movie with Nils, we produced it. Not "we got a
producer credit" produced it, but we were the only producers--aside
from Sean McKittrick--who have been involved in every single step of
this process. Good or bad, it is our creative vision.

-You are absolutely right to question how the book will translate into
a movie, especially because the book doesn't have a coherent
narrative. We realized this early on, and focused intently not only on
the humor--which was easy--but on making a MOVIE, which means having a
great story. I think we pulled it off, but at the very least, know
that we understood this going in.

-Please don't say things like "If Freestyle is smart", etc--it makes
the wrong implication. Freestyle is one of the distributors, but not
in the normal sense. With most movies, the distributor owns the movie
and makes the creative decisions about marketing and promotion. Not
really the case here. All the creative decisions--trailer, poster,
marketing, etc--are being made by me, Nils, and the Darko team, with
our distribution partners adding input and helping us execute our
plan. Succeed or fail, it's on us, not the distributor.

-When I said the trailer stunk, I was talking about the first draft of
the trailer. First drafts of everything stink. Please do not think
this first draft will EVER been seen by anyone outside us and the
trailer house. We won't release anything until we get a version we all
like and agree on.

-The Premiere Tour is not going on now. It starts in late August, and
runs up until the release. We will finalize the schedule by July 10th,
hopefully.

-BTW, the release date is September 25th, not September 29th.

-When you haven't seen the movie, speculating about what the movie is
like by relying on nebulous and inaccurate rumors is unproductive,
especially when there is already a review out there by another
professional reviewer that was at an early screening.

-Beyond that, I have listed a ton of reviews from other people who
have seen the movie on my site, for example.

-But there is no reason to listen to anyone else--you are of course
welcome to come to any screening you want. As soon as we lock the
Premiere Tour schedule down, I will email you and invite you whichever
screening is closest to where you live. I think this movie is awesome,
and all the early feedback has confirmed this, so I am more than eager
to get it in front of as many eyes as possible.

There are a ton of other things I could address, but they are minor,
so whatever. In the future, if you have any question or want any info,
just come directly to the source. I know this is
a novel thing for movies, and no other film companies run their
projects this way, but we are different.