Tucker Max

Personal life

Tucker Max's father, Dennis Max, is a restaurant owner in South Florida. According to Max, his parents met at "one of George Jung's coke parties in Manhattan Beach". Tucker grew up in Lexington, Kentucky and graduated from the Blair Academy in 1995, where he was voted "most egotistical". He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Chicago in three years, with a B.A. in Law, Letters, and Society in 1998. He attended Duke Law School on an academic scholarship, earning a J.D. in 2001.

Max resides with his wife, Veronica, and his son, Bishop William Max, born July 30, 2014.

Career

He began his career by publishing The Definitive Book of Pick-Up Lines (2001), which he followed up by Belligerence and Debauchery: The Tucker Max Stories (2003). He was the facilitator of the website "Tard Blog", from 2002–2003. In 2006, he began development of a television pilot for Comedy Central, but the project was canceled reportedly due to a dispute with Sony about feature film rights.

In September 2006, Simon Spotlight Publishing, a division of Simon & Schuster, announced that Max was contracted to release a book in January 2008, Assholes Finish First. Undisclosed delays pushed the release date to September 2010. He reportedly received a $300,000 advance for Assholes Finish First, and released a revised and expanded edition of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell in January 2009.

In 2008, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Tucker Max was producing a movie based on his bestselling book, also titled I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. He detailed the process on a production blog hosted on the movie's website. Actor Matt Czuchry (The Good Wife) portrayed Tucker in the film. The film was panned by critics and earned $1.4 million at the box office on a $7 million budget. Max attributed the poor box office performance of the film to oversights in marketing, but expressed hope it would find an audience on DVD. In 2011, he was a guest speaker at the Ancestral Health Symposium, giving a presentation entitled From cave to cage: Mixed martial arts in ancestral health.

In January 2012, Max claimed he was leaving behind the lifestyle he had described in his books and that he had been in psychotherapy. In February 2012 a publicity campaign for his book Hilarity Ensues led to his account with the company Sponsored Tweets being banned for "ethics violations".

Starting summer 2014, Max started collaborating with Dr. Geoffrey Miller on a podcast called The Mating Grounds. In September 2015 Max and Dr. Miller released Mate: Become the Man Women Want, an advice book about men's sexual strategies published by Little, Brown and Company.

In November 2014, Tucker Max published his experience of working with Melissa Gonzalez, CEO of the Lionesque Group for her book The Pop-Up Paradigm - the first project of his new start-up, Book In A Box. Book In A Box writes and publishes books for entrepreneurs who wish to have their own book but don't have the time, ability, or patience to do it the conventional way.

Fratire

Max, along with George Ouzounian (known more commonly by his pen name, Maddox), is considered a founding author of the 21st century literary genre "fratire". The term, combining "fraternity" and "satire," was introduced by The New York Times reporter Warren St. John in a 2006 article titled Dude, Here's My Book. The genre is characterized by masculine themes and could be considered the male equivalent of chick lit. Both Max and Maddox dislike the label, pointing out that neither of them were ever in fraternities. In the final chapter of Hilarity Ensues, and in a post on his website, he announced he has retired from writing Fratire, explaining:

Over the last couple years, I've realized that I don't do all the funny but stupid shit I did when I was 25 anymore, and I find myself writing about the way my life used to be. I'm not the same person I was when I started writing these stories, and I don't live the same life I did then—so it no longer makes sense for me to keep writing that way.

In the same chapter, Max stated that he is currently working on an "advice book" (alongside Nils Parker, co-writer of the I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell screenplay), as well as other undisclosed projects.

Controversies

In 2003, he posted on his website an account of his relationship with Katy Johnson, who was Miss Vermont in 1999. Johnson filed a lawsuit claiming, among other things, invasion of her privacy. In response to the lawsuit, a Florida state court judge issued an order for Max not to write about Johnson; not to use Johnson's first, full, or last name; not to use the phrase "Miss Vermont" on his website; and not to disclose any "information" or "stories" about Johnson. Legal experts called the decision "kooky" and "clearly a suppression of free speech". The ACLU intervened, filing an amicus brief, claiming a breach of Max's First Amendment rights, which led to Johnson voluntarily withdrawing her lawsuit, and Max's story was once again posted on his website. An expanded version of the story was later published in Hilarity Ensues.

In January 2006, Max posted a thread on his message board satirizing Anthony DiMeo, a young Philadelphia socialite, for throwing a New Year's Eve party that was a disaster. The number of young partygoers showing up greatly exceeded expectations, which resulted in the food and alcohol running out well before midnight. The more than 700 partygoers got unruly, two pieces of art were stolen, and city police were called in to disperse the crowd. DiMeo sued Max under the Violence Against Women Act claiming some comments on Max's message board were libelous and represented criminal behavior. The lawsuit was subsequently dismissed under the Communications Decency Act, with U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell noting that although Max could be a "poster child for vulgarity", the law must protect "the coarse conversation that, it appears, never ends on TuckerMax.com."

In May 2009, Max held a speaking engagement which was picketed by a feminist group at Ohio State University, who claimed that his writing "promoted a culture of rape." In August 2009, the North Carolina State University Women's Center held a silent protest of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. The advertisements themselves were also vandalized in multiple cities. In his book Trust Me, I'm Lying, marketer (and personal friend of Tucker Max) Ryan Holiday claimed to have defaced some movie posters himself, as a publicity stunt to get media attention for the movie.

For three years starting in 2005, Max was harassed by a man named Justin Massler, who sent him repeated "Unabomber type" emails, and showed up uninvited to a 2006 party hosted by Max while dressed up as a superhero. The altercations made national news after Massler was charged with stalking Ivanka Trump in 2010.

In 2012, hoping to offset a part of his owed taxes in a way that also provided self-promotion, Max reportedly offered to donate $500,000 to Planned Parenthood if they named an abortion clinic after him. Planned Parenthood declined.