Darko Productions Backing ‘Beer in Hell’
Posted by David Hartman (david@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 6, 2008
According to Variety, Richard Kelly’s Darko Productions has agreed to produce the film adaptation of Tucker Max’s bestselling “fratire”, “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”.
Published in 2006, the book’s humorous, gonzo-style stories document Max’s many episodes of excessive behavior. Since the book’s release, Max, a self-proclaimed “asshole” and a guy you hate to like, has created a cult following of twenty-something males. He continues to recount stories of self-indulgence on his website, and Simon & Shuster plan to release a sequel to the book in November.
The film will be based on one specific story from the book, “The Austin Road Trip Story”. The story follows Tucker and his friends on a road trip to Austin to celebrate a friend’s bachelor party. While in Austin, he abandons his buddies for sex, and after being banned from the wedding he attempts work his way back in to his friends’ good graces.
Bob Gosse has signed on to direct, and production is scheduled to begin in Shreveport, La., early next month. Max wrote the screenplay with Nils Parker, and I fully expect the crude, frank, and sometimes, disgusting nature of Max’s stories to be showcased in the film. Watering down the outrageous nature of his stories would be disappointing. And avoiding homogenization seems to be the reason Max went with Darko. On his website, Max stated, “We went with Darko over everyone else for many reasons, the main one being exactly what I wrote about here: They not only ‘got’ the creative vision behind the movie, but they were basically the only company that, when I talked to them, I didn’t feel I was dealing with financiers, I felt I was talking to actual artists.”
As long as Darko and Gosse don’t shy away from the true nature of Max’s stories it should be, at least on a shallow level, pretty funny.
Read more articles by David Hartman
