When interviewing Tucker Max, be careful about dropping the S-bomb. To a writer assigned to deliver a story on Max, the “sexist” issue may seem a natural point of discussion. To a man who has been dealing with the adjective every day since the 2006 publication of his book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, it is a topic of considerable weariness.

“Define ‘sexism,’” he shoots back.

I scramble for a dictionary. “See?” he says. “You’re throwing around a word you don’t know the meaning of!”

I have found a definition: “Sexism: discriminatory or abusive behaviour towards members of the opposite sex.”

“Okay,” he pauses for a second. “So, discriminatory behaviour, right? That means treating women differently simply because they are women. It’s not like I look at someone and say, ‘Okay, because you’re a woman, I’m going to…’ whatever, ‘xyz’ that I wouldn’t do with a man. No. I mean, like, the only people who focus on that shit in my writing are really kind of…whatever…” His voice trails off.

“Look. Every person in my book takes shit. I give shit to guys just as much as I give it to girls, and probably no one ends up worse off than I do. And yet, it’s funny, no one ever says, ‘Why do you make fun of yourself so much?’ or ‘Why are you so hard on guys?’ For some reason they only focus on the aspects involving women. I really don’t know why. But sexism implies treating women differently. I don’t treat women any differently than I treat other men or myself.”

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, a raunchy collection of hook-ups gone wrong, features a disclaimer: “My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole.” This more or less establishes the persona point-blank. As described in his literary adventures, Tucker is an unapologetic narcissist with a raving id and a shortage of shame, eager to consume as much sex and booze as humanly possible. “But I do contribute to humanity in one very important way,” the disclaimer adds. “I share my adventures with the world.”

Beginning as a blog, the book became a bestseller many times over, particularly on university campuses. Everyone’s favourite story seems to be “Tucker Tries Buttsex; Hilarity Does Not Ensue,” a chapter that filled me with the intense desire to buy Max a mop.

Now there is a feature film of the same name, collecting many of his most famous anecdotes into a fictional story about Tucker (Matt Czuchry) taking his friends Drew (Jessie Bradford) and Dan (Geoff Stults) to a strip club to celebrate Dan’s impending marriage. Imagine The Hangover if you actually saw the bachelor party.

The film is belatedly opening in Toronto theatres following an American theatrical run in September, where the film was met with modest box office revenues and some of the harshest reviews of the years (“The result just might be the most hypocritical feature in the history of film as well as the history of hypocrisy,” wrote Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune). Gamely taking interviews for the Canadian release, it is clear that Max is still smarting from the reception.

I mention that Tucker’s big redemptive speech didn’t feel very redemptive. His voice lightens considerably. “So many critics totally fucking missed this,” he says. “I mean, they tried to criticize the movie because they’re like, ‘Oh, Tucker’s supposed to be irredeemable but then he fuckin’ totally changes at the end.’ And I’m like, ‘No, you idiots, did you not watch the fuckin’ movie?’ Because, like, he doesn’t! That’s the whole point.

“This presented a lot of problems with the critics: so much of American film is so trite and so pat, and everything’s wrapped up in a little bow, and the moral message is very clear, right? But life doesn’t work like that, and we didn’t make a movie like that, because that’s bullshit. We made a movie where every character has faults—some are more good than bad, but the movie doesn’t take a moral position on anyone’s actions. It just shows them as they are. Sorta like The Wire, my favourite TV show of all time.”

He continues: “A lot of people took this like, ‘Oh, they’re saying this [behaviour] is funny, this is good’—no! It’s not! Like, the movie doesn’t take a position on narcissism necessarily, and if it did, it would be that it’s bad. But a lot of people, because they’re so used to bland pabulum, they don’t get it. If you have a good, complicated movie, sometimes it’s tough to get across in the first showing. Sometimes people have to watch it a few times, like Fight Club, Office Space, whatever, and I think this movie kinda fell into that trap.”

I was bothered by the scene where Tucker flirts with a group of female friends in a bar, holding an indignant one up to ridicule. I ask if it was fair to feel that the woman had every right to be angry. “Yeah, dude. No one’s right or wrong. I mean, in their exchange, sometimes she’s wrong, and sometimes he’s wrong, y’know? Like, there are definitely times when she’s kinda being a fucking cunt, and then there are other times when he crosses the line. The barometer of where the audience should be is where her friends are…I mean, dude, it’s supposed to be like real life, and it’s not always clear what’s right or wrong.”

Instead of parlaying his book’s popularity into a big studio movie deal, Max went the route of independent financing and distribution. “I turned down $2 million for this script. There’s absolutely no way that had I filmed the script through a major studio they would have done anything but fuck this movie up. They would have cut all the balls off the comedy, they would have put Seth Rogen and Dane Cook in it, they would have changed Tucker to make him fall in love, and all this stupid shit that would have driven me up a fucking wall.”

Several times during the interview Max refers to himself and his character as a narcissist, and I tell him that I’m surprised by his frankness. “I really am a narcissist, y’know? I’m not quite as bad as I was in the movie. The movie portrays me, like, 10 years ago, when I really, truly was, like, straight-up narcissist. Now I’ve kinda thought my way out of a lot of those issues, and I now maybe only have narcissistic traits, I’m not a full-on narcissist anymore.”

Tucker Max will be appearing in-person at CINSSU’s advance screening of *I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell on Tuesday, Nov. 10 at 7 p.m. The film opens on Nov. 13.*