‘How To Lose Friends’ Trailer Is Awfully Alienating

Reading? What’s that? We read the interweb. But occasionally, occasionally, we have time to read a “book” and before we started blogging last year, one of our favorite books of the last five-six years was Toby Young’s hilariously candid and self-flagellating memoir of his disastrous attempt at working for Vanity Fair, “How To Lose Friends And Alientate People” (or one could say it was his disastrous attempt to be British in New York city).

So it pains us to watch this trailer that looks all Hollywood with a long-haired Jeff Bridges as the VF editor Graydon Carter character. Simon Pegg as the boorish, dumbass Young seems like an OK and reasonable choice given the options (the rest of the cast includes Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox, and Gillian Anderson), but it’s seemingly one-dimensional and silly portrait of the novel gives us the shivers it seems so off the mark.

We should stick our usual mantra: If you want to enjoy a movie, never read the book first. You’re doomed for disappointment.

Watch: “How To Lose Friends And Alientate People” trailer