MovieChat Forums > I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2009) Discussion > A Post Where Tucker Admits Every Negativ...

A Post Where Tucker Admits Every Negative Post on this Board was True

posted 10 years ago by pmcdonnell-4
3 replies | jump to latest

Here is Tucker's latest post about his Rudius empire:

First Company: Rudius Media
Started: 2006
Role: Founder, CEO
Sector: Entertainment
Product: Books, movies, web sites and content
Best Gross Sales Year: Honestly not sure, but under 100k
Best Net Profit Year: Same
Number of employees: 5
Result: Failure, company shut down in 2009
Commentary: This was my first attempt at a company, and it was a f!@#$%^&* mess, almost exclusively because of me and my mistakes. I pretty much did everything wrong that is possible to do wrong with a start-up, other than criminal s!@# like stealing company money to buy hookers and coke or something like that.

What Did I Learn?: Mostly, I learned how little I knew about business, management, money, and how the real world works. Here is a SHORT list of some of the things I know I did wrong:

-I had a poor understanding of the space I was competing in (media & publishing)
-I picked a business model that had virtually no chance of succeeding
-I didn’t focus enough actually making money
-I spent money much faster that I was making it
-I put too much of my own money into projects that made no financial sense
-I spent too much time in big picture thinking (and most of that was me fantasizing about my future success)
-I spent too little time in actual business details
-I picked the wrong people to work with
-I was too enamored with my own ideas, and not willing to listen to people or learn from them, even when they had much more experience
-I had too much emotionally invested in my specific vision and a specific outcome, and it prevented me from making the changes and decisions I had to in order for this company to work.
* * * *
The problem wasn’t the creative effort or ability of me or my team; the problem was me, and that was hard for me to face for many years.

On his new Tucker.me website, he talks about how he is a success now because of the lessons he learned. The problem is that Tucker claimed to be a huge success then, which he now admits was a total lie, and that all his failures were due to his team, i.e. Darko, which he now admits wasn't true--he was the problem.

Tucker's entire new website is nothing more than a huge vanity piece to himself and to how successful he is now. Note to blogger Tucker. Successful people don't have to blog about how successful they are. Other people in the news media report on successful companies. He touts the success of his new company, Lioncrest Publishing. There is virtually no real news on this company aside from an interview where Tucker is talking about it; and they appear to have two obscure books currently listed on Amazon, both are ranked as being virtually non-sellers. And his reported net profits for Rudius are wrong. By his own account, he lost at least $4Million on the movie alone. So why should we believe Tucker now?

And the sadder thing is does anybody still care aside from the few of us that did not get enough schadenfreude in 2009 after his movie went bust and he creeped back to a hole in Austin.

"I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" . . . will be bigger than ANYONE (except me) is predicting."
TM

[–] YourYankeeBlueJeans 10 years ago

I find it somewhat amusing that he finally verified what we had called him out on for years.

What I don't understand is that someone who was so obsessed with financial and artistic success/attention doesn't know how much money he made. I find it hard to believe that someone who was so focused on his pie-in-the-sky business plans didn't look at his own finances. When he says that Rudius Media GROSSED less than $100,000 that could mean that it grossed $5,000. He purposefully used vague numbers to make others think that he was making more than he was. He could have given a range, but he only mentioned what he made less than. Interesting.

That makes me curious about his revenue streams and finances. He earned his J.D. way back in 2001, but has never held a real job since he was fired from the law firm. Since then he has written a few books and had a few paid speaking engagements mixed with numerous failed projects. He did sell about a million copies of IHTSBIH, but the going rate on first book deals was what, 20 cents a copy after publishing fees? He did a few re-releases of that book and I am sure he was able to negotiate a better rate on those. Then he got a $300,000 advance on his second book, but don't forget that was only an advance. He had to earn it back through sales. The sales of his last 2 books are barely even worth mentioning. I will be generous and estimate that his book sales have earned him around $750,000. Keep in mind that this has been primary income stream since 2006. That comes to about $123,000 since his first book. That is ok money, but it is far from rich. Even if he miraculously doubled my estimates, that still isn't rich on the level he tries to convey.

He has made a few frugal financial moves. He lived with roommates when he was in LA, he moved to an apartment in Austin because of the cost of living, and he doesn't spend extravagantly. The fact that he doesn't have a family to support helps stretch that dollar a bit further. $123k is plenty for a single man who lives like that and leaves enough to occasionally splurge to give the illusion of wealth without actually being wealthy.

BUT ... he has liabilities. Since he claimed to live off credit cards for awhile, he had some debt that he had to repay. He also financed some of his own promotional events. The big elephant in the room though is how much did he invest in his movie? He alluded to the fact that he invested heavily himself and gave up the opportunity to take money up front.

And along with those liabilities, his income streams are drying up. His book sales are waning. He is supposedly a writer, but he has run out of material in his own writing genre. There is no word on the book he was supposedly co-writing with the "A-list celebrity". He has failed movie, radio, and television projects that all burned bridges in the entertainment industry. Depending on how well he saved and invested, he might be able to stretch it out for a few years, but he is going to have to eventually find a way to make more money. His fame and youth have passed him by and he has no means of recapturing either. People are beginning to ask him, "Didn't you used to be Tucker Max?"

I still find him incredibly fascinating in the "watching an accident in slow motion as it is happening" kind of way. His false-alpha bravado, misplaced arrogance, lack of accurate self awareness, complete lack of empathy, and ability to fool naive people have made for some great unintended comedy. I'm starting to miss that guy and his fans. Where have they gone?

Tucker Max: destroying more Hollywood careers than is safe or reasonable.

[–] grant-graham 10 years ago

None of this makes any sense, but then we're talking about Tucker. Trying to unravel lie layered upon lie is an exercise in futility.

If Tucker had indeed received an advance of $300,000 for the second book (as reported in a questionable press release) then why would his annual income never exceed $100,000? I'm sure Tucker is like most taxpayers (individual, small corporation) in that he reports his income on a cash rather than accrual basis. Hence income is recognized the second that check clears with his bank.

I think he did "OK" for a number of years when you consider he was just hanging out on his message board, sleeping in, and finding an occasional skank to bang. As others have pointed out, his books never ranked as high sellers on Amazon (a much more credible revenue metric than the NY Times) and he didn't clean up on speaking tours. When you factor in opportunity cost (how much he would have made as a Duke JD) he's been a dismal failure compared to his classmates.

[–] pmcdonnell-4 10 years ago

Tucker claims that he invested his own money in Rudius:

-I put too much of my own money into projects that made no financial sense

So he is essentially saying that he invested his own money, which would have been his personal book royalty revenues into Rudius. So any royalties/advances have to be reduced by the losses on Rudius. Well, we know the whole movie project only grossed $1.5Million from $5Million invested. So it is unclear as to what he is actually referring to when he says anything about revenues or profits. Rudius was also the website so this means that the website wasn't exactly a money maker and there certainly wasn't any revenue to pay any of those great authors or collaborators. He had to invest something into maintaining and building the website. And from the blog, it was clear that Rudius/Tucker was financing the vanity movie bus tour.

He then claims that the movie did well in DVD and secondary markets:

It did poorly at the box office, but has done great in DVD and in the secondary markets.

But he already said that everything total from all the Rudius ventures, including the movie (theater, DVD, and cable) and website was 100k so how well could it have done in the secondary market?

Nothing Tucker ever says about his finances makes any sense. How do you have a company that makes 100k revenue off a failed movie and website; and the same amount (100k) of profit. If revenues and profits are the same then Tucker invested nothing and had no real costs, which he already says isn't true because he moans about investing his own money in the project.

Then he says this:

It’s hard for me to go back and think about that company, not because it failed, but because I was such a f!@#$%^ *beep* in how I ran it and the way I thought. It’s embarrassing to think about now, to be honest. If failure teaches, and bigger failures teach more, than I learned A LOT.

Well, among the things that he learned was not how to calculate revenues, profits, or loss according to GAAP. Assuming pie in the sky assumptions, let's say Tucker made $2M gross royalties from book revenues, which was basically his sole source of income from 2002-09. That pie in the sky assumption needs about 4Million in total book sales for all of his book which we know wasn't true. And the only one that really sold well was IHTSBIH, and he had a very small royalty deal on that book. That's a gross income of 250k per year pre-tax, or around 150k net. He then invests some unstated quantity of money into Rudius whose chief project is a $5M movie which loses $3.5M, and funds a website for some unknown amount of money that didn't make any real profit as well.

After all that, he claims last year to have $500K that he wants to donate to PP to name an abortion clinic after him; and that he actually invested 100k in a small vodka cooler company.

The simple truth is that nothing that Tucker has ever said about his own finances, his investments, or his companies is consistent with reality, either back in 2008 before his movie failed or today. If Tucker presented himself to seek financing or offer an investment, alarm bells would be sounding from the moment he opened his mouth.

"I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell" . . . will be bigger than ANYONE (except me) is predicting."
TM