‘DO YOU WANT TO BE FAMOUS OR DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT BEING FAMOUS?’
star Pegg explains. ‘The book doesn’t really lend itself to being a film in a sense. because it’s very anecdotal and it’s filled with huge tracts about philosophy. In order to make it into a film Peter [Straughan] had to shape it differently.’ Seizing a moment to set the record straight Weide
elucidates: ‘Yeah. it's a more tangible sort of -
love story now. What’s funny is I’ve been on imdb.com and I've seen people say. “oh. what character from the book does Gillian Anderson play?“ ()r “who in the book does Megan Fox play?" Well they play characters that were made tip for the screenplay. they aren’t in the book at all. One of the elements we heightened was that this Sidney character comes to work for this magazine thinking not only that he‘s going to take New York by storm. but that he’s really going to excel in this business. in this work place. He thinks he‘s going to be allowed to do his sort of iconoclastic journalism and to really shake things up, and basically once he gets out there he realises that the whole idea is to get with the programme. He realises the extent to which the writers and even the editor. are sort of in the palm of the powerful publicist. He wants to write these satirical iconoclastic pieces on these celebrities, and basically what he learns is that he can‘t do that because the publicist played by Gillian Anderson is very powerful and has a number of big celebrity clients. and if they piss her off. they‘re not going to get any of her clients on the cover of the magazine which they need to sell it. So there is this game of not being able to rock the boat too much because you don’t want to upset the wrong people.”
Pegg also feels the film has a specific message. one maybe at odds with Young’s original missive from the land of opportunity and media humiliation.
‘It was interesting because I started the film directly after doing a big block of press for Hot Fuzz. so 1 had literally just been in contact with about 600 journalists. It was fascinating and funny and not as weird as you might think it was. Toby/Sidney is a specific kind of journalist, I think. It was originally set in the mid l99()s but I
HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE
think now that kind of joumalism — the sort of I
obsession with the material end of show business — is so rabid and ridiculous that the notion of the guy who is desperate to be in that world and at the same time deconstruct it, is very topical.’ Weide agrees with Pegg. He points out that Vanin Fair editor Graydon Carter (called Clayton Harding in the film and portrayed with long haired pomposity by Jeff Bridges). who Weide knew when he edited groundbreaking satirical magazine Spy in the 1980s. ‘was considered a serious satirist. Now by his own
admission he has crossed to the dark side and
become the son of person he would have once despised.‘
Pegg views celebrity journalism with an unsurprising disdain. ‘You know nowadays, you see so many photographs of joumalists over their columns and it‘s like. “well, what are you doing? Do you want to be famous or do you want to talk about being famous?” Of course some of them
do want to be famous. It‘s that ; position of having their cake and g
definitely wants to be.‘
How To Lose Friends . . . is a fish out of water story which aspires to be equal parts Billy Wilder’s The Apartment and The Devil Wears Prada. ‘lt’s just a romp, an underdog story with some great set pieces and a loser hero.’ Pegg yelps before Weide sets off on a more languorous explanation.
‘You know years ago 1 adapted Vonnegut’s novel Mother Night into a screenplay which became a film starring Nick Nolte. When I was working on it, Kurt. who by that time was
eating it. It’s what Sidney ‘
They both agree this version of
a good friend gave me some great advice. He :
told me to just let the book be a ghost around my house. To ignore it. or refer to it ifl needed to but
always to know that it is looking over me. So in
adapting Toby’s book we had nothing more on our minds than extracting the essence. telling an interesting story and getting some laughs.’
Pegg concurs. ‘Peter lStraughan] made the decision to pull it away from being a straight biographical film. so for me it would have been silly to get bogged down in an impersonation of Toby because very few people know what Toby sounds like let alone what he looks like. My character gets off with Kirsten Dunst under the Brooklyn Bridge. Can you imagine the objectional steamroller that is Toby doing that'?’
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is on general release from Fri 3 Oct. See page 47 for our review.
HOT PRESS
Drew Spencer uncovers the sensational, soaraway history of journalism on film
Simon Pegg’s Sidney Young is the latest in a long list of big screen journalists holding the front page with a sensational scoop. The daddy of them all, 1941 '3 Citizen Kane, has Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) driving everyone mental banging on about ‘rosebud' during downtime whilst - becoming a media mogul. Less epic. but way funnier is Howard Hawk's His Girl Friday where editor Cary Grant and star reporter Rosalind Russell wrestle with headlines and each other. setting the standard for one-liners about grumpy editors. Keeping the grumpy editor theme alive more recently is impeccably dressed Meryl Streep who's style mag gaffer g ..
drove serious journalistic wannabe Anne Hathaway crazy in The Devil Wears Prada. Of c0urse. some are more than willing to compromise their high falutin' beliefs. Case in point: Hayden Christensen's Stephen Glass in the underrated Shattered Glass, the true story of a reporter who made up most of his stories — and then got found out. Life doesn't get any easier for editor Henry Hackett (Michael Keaton) in 1994 's The Paper as we follow a mi , ~ _ sticky 24 hours in his life , juggling potential scoops. _ neglected wives and ' terrorising publishers. The result is a tight. funny and thoughtful film. There are no such subtleties when a feature piece by a New York writer leads to love in the classic romantic comedy Crocodile Dundee — a film in which we learn what a real knife is. Romance is never quite as acerbic and volatile as it was in Cary Grant's day. as Drew Barrymore's Never Been Kissed and Kate Hudson’s How to LoseaGuy in 10 Days both attest. Working for Rolling Stone seems infinitely better craic however - see Hunter S Thompson headtrip/biopic Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous.
And don‘t forget -— reporters can also save the planet. ‘Mild-mannered’ Clark Kent does just that in Superman — didn't see him type a word mind you. And how can we forget good old- fashioned. shoddy disguise-sporting. investigative journalism from Chevy Chase's Fletch? It’s all ball bearings these days.
2—16 Oct 2008 THE LIST 19