Tucker Max isn’t exactly someone you would expect to hear extolling the virtues of artistic integrity. The blogger hero of frat boys across America, Max has essentially made a living out of being an asshole (his word). But when he and his buddy Nils Parker had the opportunity to make a movie, they passed on the big bucks and took a deal that offered freedom.

“Darko [Entertainment] came along and they offered us no money but full creative control,” Max told the Straight in a telephone interview. “That was what we wanted, and the only thing we really cared about.” The pair had turned down a US$2 million offer from Fox Searchlight and resumed work on the story they wanted to tell.

You can say all sorts of nasty things about Max, but he has his principles. Sort of.

He and Parker wrote I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by weaving a number of (unfortunately) true stories involving Max into a cohesive plot. The movie, which opens in Vancouver on November 13, begins with what could loosely be described as a love scene between Max (played by newcomer Matt Czuchry) and a deaf woman.

The romantic encounter is interrupted by police officers investigating a possible case of animal cruelty. (Readers can use their imaginations to connect the dots.) Sticking with this theme of equal-opportunity douchebaggery, the film’s central conflict revolves around Max’s obsession with seducing a little person. And closing I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is a scene in which Max pursues a pretty blind girl in the hope of making her one more notch in his bedpost.

Between romantic escapades, our protagonist gets his best friend beat up and thrown in jail, pushes the same man’s engagement to the brink of disaster, and learns the hard way that some apologies must actually be sincere.

“I don’t know of anyone at all who could have done a better job with what is very difficult material and a character that has never really been portrayed in modern American cinema,” Max said of Czuchry’s performance.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell began as a blog in 2002. On-line, Max shared his true stories of excessive drinking, appalling womanizing, and generally repulsive behaviour. (The blog can still be found at www.tuckermax.com/.) From that collection of incriminating evidence emerged a book, which went on to appear on the New York Times bestseller list in 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Max said that he isn’t surprised that his blog made it to Hollywood. “I thought it would be a TV show before a movie,” he explained. But after four years of on-again, off-again negotiations, Max said, he concluded that television was not going to give him the creative control he desired.

“I want to make the calls; I want to do the script. I want to do all that sort of stuff,” Max said. “And since they [television networks] own everything, it is almost impossible to get that sort of control.”

Although the essence of Max remains at the core of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, many legends from the blog are missing from the film. The “Sushi Pants” story, “Tucker tries buttsex”, and “Tucker goes to Vegas” had to be saved for future projects, Max said.

“There’s a ton of stuff I would have loved to shoot, but we only got an hour and a half, so you have to pick your battles,” he explained. “Nils and I would love to do a sequel.”

You can follow Travis Lupick on Twitter at twitter.com/tlupick.