I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell - June 10, 2008

I spent all day yesterday with the guy who is going to play me, Movie Tucker. His deal is officially done and agreed to by all parties, and I would totally tell you who it is but we are going to announce the cast all at once in the trades. I am going to wait until the official announcement is made to give my take on this guy and why we went with him, but in the meantime, I thought I'd show everyone two other people's takes on him, as a sort of teaser.

This was written by TheBunny:

"Let me just tell you something about that boy.

I met him for drinks with Tucker. He's kind of "meeting only" which means he's somewhat fancy after having played a significant role on a significant television show, and having had an immense crush on the lead actress of his television show, I had watched many episodes and knew who he was. I thought he was cute and a good actor, but I never thought he'd be able to pull of Tucker Max, not after having watched superstuds fail miserably at it for months.

So we met in person, and he was so unbelievably nice. Tiny, and nice. He had classic good looks and a nice smile. He had great manners. He tried to pay for the drinks. He didn't bore us with the little details of his life. He just listened, and when he spoke, he was unbelievably vapid. I guess it was because he wasn't there to speak about anything. He was sucking up the essence of Tucker, so to speak. Before I was aware of this, I thought there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell he'd be good at playing the role. A guy with all the right dicky swagger (in real life) had just come in and missed the mark. I don't know shit about acting, so my thoughts about that kid were: "he's close in real life, he'll be close on camera."

And so the kid has a few beers with us and listens intently as Tucker lays out his plans to take over the world! Gnarf.

Tucker asks if he has any questions, and the kid really wants to know "Why midgets? Why deaf girls?" Tucker answers, "I'm a narcissist. I want to be THE GUY who has fucked all those types," and the kid laughs in his sweet way.

And then the strangest thing happened. He sort of looked thoughtfully at the clouds, up and to the right, and said more to himself than Tucker, "That's why there's that line..."

And he sits up a little taller, and squints his eyes a little bit, sparks up a smile Tom Cruise would envy, cocks his eyebrows and says "[and says a line from the movie]" COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY CHANNELING TUCKER'S FACE, VOICE, ESSENCE AND MANNERISMS.

Just like that, he snaps back into this terribly nice boy. Like I said, I don't know anything about acting, because this kid couldn't be any less like Tucker in real life, and in two seconds of mimicry after twenty minutes of study, he gave us more to work with than hundreds of professional actors.

So I wasn't surprised when, a week later, I got a text message from Tucker:

[Name redacted] absolutely nailed it."

This is from Ben Corman, who works for me and helped us film the work session yesterday (we are going to, at some point, post selections from that work session/interview on the site and probably put a bunch in the DVD):

"I spent the day filming "behind the scenes" material from the movie with Real Tucker and Movie Tucker. This was the first time I'd met Movie Tucker and while I'd seen him do a chemistry read with the other male leads, I didn't really have a feel for him as a person. Movie Tucker is very cool and very nice but he is very, very different than Real Tucker.

Chemistry reading aside, I spent most of the day wondering how Movie Tucker was going to play Real Tucker. It's not enough for Movie Tucker to just understand the character of Tucker Max. A lot of people are going to understand Tucker's character in the movie, much like most people understand the Tucker character in the stories. Movie Tucker has to go much deeper, he has to internalize Real Tucker's motivations and actions. He can't just know what Real Tucker would do next, it has to be instinctual for him to act that way. Otherwise it won't feel natural or authentic to him and it won't feel natural or authentic to the audience. And like I said, they are very different people.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the whole thing. I'm not sure how actors internalize the characters they play. When I write, I've fully internalized the characters I've created. But these are characters that spring from my own experiences and from my own emotions. I'm not sure I could create a character that feels something I've never felt.

But that's what Movie Tucker has to do. He has to take a character that he did not create and become that character. Movie Tucker and Real Tucker spent eight or nine hours together today, doing everything from taking about the person Real Tucker is, to going over the script scene by scene to get what Tucker's character is thinking and feeling moment to moment. Movie Tucker calls this research. I call it exhausting.

And yet, somehow it works. There were these moments today when Movie Tucker would pick up Real Tucker's mannerisms or his way of speaking or he'd say something that Real Tucker would say. It was a little startling to see someone I just met basically nail the behavior of someone I know. I could see him start to internalize Real Tucker as they went over the script.

I've got a lot more respect for actors."

And I should fire him for posting this embarrassing pic, but the fact is, every time I eat wings I really do end up wearing more sauce than I get in my mouth.

Comment and discuss

Posted by Tucker Max at 6:35 AM