Tucker Max, Businessman
Tucker Max: blogger of beer and sluts, writer and producer of one of the least funny comedy movie scripts since Illegally Yours, and asshole in a dozen different ways. The most ridiculous of which is as the boss of his own mini-empire of blogs! And since last week, we've heard from several of his former Rudius Media employees, who expound on the gentle pleasures of working for one of America's foremost purveyors of racist poop jokes: He's a cheapskate. Last week we noted how Tucker scoffed at a former blogger who wondered why he only made $82 for six months of work. Other employees tell us the standard pay for Rudius bloggers is somewhere in the $80/ quarter range, with one noting "I got just a tiny bit more than that when my site was doing really well." Sweet. So Rudius must be making a lot of money. You work hard for the money. One Rudius employee was ordered by Tucker to move to a different, more expensive city because Tucker thought that they could better do their job elsewhere. Once the employee had gone to the trouble of packing up and moving and finding a new, more costly apartment, we hear, their pay was reduced to almost nothing. Which seems like the standard Rudius pay rate, now that we think of it. He's not popular with publishers. We hear that at least one book agent quit working with Tucker because he flaked out on book proposal deadlines. (Not true? Email us!) He's not popular with the bloggers that work for him at Rudius. The emails we've received from disgruntled bloggers alone are ample evidence of this. He attracts bloggers he's interested in with the promise of writing for a wider audience-though, as you can tell by their pay, not necessarily more money. But when bloggers tire of Rudius and leave the fold, we hear, they are bizarrely wiped from existence in Tucker Max's world:
If an author leaves the site, the circumstances are never discussed. Not even on the message boards. It's reminiscent of some 1984 thought-crime type thing. The author is simply never mentioned again, the site stays up and repeated questions about "what happened" are ignored.
He's vindictive. Those who have worked with Tucker say he's very protective of his "image," such as it is. We hear that his failed appearance on Opie and Anthony is a very sore point. This sensitivity manifests itself in both the disappearing of his fallen disciples as mentioned above, and in an atmosphere in which Tucker Max sycophants feel that harassment of detractors is a way to win approval. One blogger, Violent Acres, wrote a Tucker Max parody a couple of years ago. This resulted in 70 harassing phone calls from a crazed Tucker fan in a single weekend-and we hear the harassment is still ongoing, though the blogger has filed a police report. Is it Tucker's fault that he has a crazy fan? Not necessarily. But it is Tucker's fault that he expressed his discontent with a cast member on his movie by taking a big crap in the toilet in the guy's trailer, taking a photo of it (do not click that link), and then blogging about it. Can't wait till the movie comes out! [Read all previous Tucker Max coverage here. Anybody else with Tucker stories, email us.]