What Do The Critics Say?

"For viewers who can get past the turn-off of a title, they will find a film as entertaining and easy to like as it is shrewd about its subject matter. A razor-edged exposé on celebrities and the publications that feed into them .. is at times eye-opening. Pegg is terrific as Sidney Young." Dustin Putman THE MOVIE BOY "This might as well be the sleeper film of the year and it is filled with a ton of laughs, a ton of heart and Simon Pegg is funnier than ever. Bridges, Dunst, Pegg, Fox and Anderson all put on great performances This movie honestly was perfect. The laughs all hit perfectly and the dramatic moments were beautiful. Pegg was hilarious and hopefully this will solidify him as a star." Kevin McCarthy CBS RADIO "it's actually quite delicious and very nicely written. I'm giving it four stars." Margaret Pomeranz ABC AT THE MOVIES "The flick is filled with a ton of laughs, a ton of heart and Simon Pegg is funnier than ever. Hilarious! "It's undeniably fun to watch someone onscreen endlessly get away with irritating the bosses in ways most of us only wish we could." Luke Y. Thompson E! ONLINE "An entertaining jest about a young Brit who is not only a fish out of water but totally out of the fishtank." Louise Keller URBAN CINEFILE "Pegg is perfectly cast as the seemingly shallow Sidney who aspires to be accepted into the elusive inner-circle he calls his Shangri-La, while Kirsten Dunst is lovely as girl with the elusive White Russian-drinking poet boyfriend. Megan Fox makes a splash as the ambitious starlet Sophie Maes; we witness the perfectly paparazzi stage-managed moment as she walks fully clothed across a flower-strewn swimming pool at a ritzy party. Gillian Anderson is cuttingly good as the manipulative, controlling publicist and Jeff Bridges entertaining as the all-knowing editor." Andrew L Urban URBAN CINEFILE

"British comedian Simon Pegg; unforgettable in "Hot Fuzz", stars as Sidney Young, a wildly ambitious writer who turns even the most dire situation to his advantage. The great thing about "Friends" is that you don't need to know anything about its pedigree to enjoy it. It stands alone as a mostly hilarious piece of slapstick, which calls upon Pegg's capacity for physical comedy again and again." Ruthe Stein SAN FRANCISOC CHRONICLE "Overall, it's a smart movie that even makes apt, respectful references to the greatest film on this subject, Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita." Bob Strauss LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS "It stars Simon Pegg, who was born to play Young." Roger Ebert CHICAGO SUN-TIMES "Weide... has made an American film, but with a British sensibility; he layers good, broad, dry jokes onto the bones of a traditional Hollywood plot arc." Jeffrey M Anderson COMBUSTABLE CELLULOID "Regardless of your feelings towards the source material, this is an enjoyable romcom with a decent script, several laugh-out-loud gags and a host of terrific comic performances from a superb cast." Matthew Turner VIEW LONDON "Simon Pegg manages to be both obnoxious and eventually likeable: after a few silly, unfunny party antics, the film warms up with Kirsten Dunst as the sharp-witted love interest and foil to foolery. Jeff Bridges is the best thing in this film by a long chalk, deftly nailing a former rebel who now publishes puff. Harding is an older version of Sidney: a satirist who once secretly longed to be "invited to the party", to be part of the in-crowd of star-worshippers." Victor Olliver TELETEXT "Simon Pegg creates another funny character as the unkempt but passionate Sidney, a square British peg in a round American hole. Quite apart from the insights into the strange world of showbiz celebrities, the film is enjoyable for its often witty script and the thoroughly engaging characters, including Jeff Bridges as the owner of Sharps, who had himself been a bit of a larrikin back in the day, and Bill Paterson as Sidney’s understanding Dad." David Stratton ABC AT THE MOVIES

The Inside Story First published in 2001, Toby Young’s memoir entitled How To Lose Friends & Alienate People charts his move from London to New York to become a contributing editor at the highly prestigious magazine Vanity Fair, from which he was fired less than two years later. The memoir hilariously captures Toby Young’s failed attempt to take Manhattan by storm. The memoir was optioned by Film4 in 2002. 1993 Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award winner Stephen Woolley ("The Crying Game") and Elizabeth Karlsen ("Purely Belter" & "Ladies in Lavender") of Number 9 Films, approached both Film4 and Toby Young to produce it. Woolley says he was drawn to Toby Young's memoir because, "in the book he explains why he is like he is, a pain in the arse, and the self-deprecation saves Toby from sheer sleaziness. It’s also laugh out loud hilarious!" Woolley ("Breakfast on Pluto") was aware that they would need to make changes to the memoir to make the transition from book to film. "The book is a series of tremendously funny but disconnected events that happened to Toby Young. What we wanted to do was really find a spine to the tale, a romance, so that the Sidney Young not only falls in love with New York but also a character from New York who, like him, realizes that the magazine industry at heart can be corrupting." Screenwriter Peter Straughan was brought on to the project because producers Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen liked his script "Three Bad Men"; he had previously written the screenplay for "Sixty Six", which Elizabeth Karlsen also produced, and is currently working with George Clooney on "Men Who Stare At Goats". Straughan created the character Alison Olsen who works at Sharps and, although she instantly dislikes Sidney Young, begins to warm to Sidney Young's bumbling charm throughout the course of the film. "One of the differences between the story that’s told in the film and the real story, is that the film is a romantic comedy and the courtship between Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst is kind of cute and funny, and it hits a few roadblocks, then their coming together," says Young. "In reality, I dated the woman for a while (who subsequently became my wife) and then she dumped me. Then I managed to persuade her to go back out with me, and then she dumped me again. And then I proposed to her and she said, ‘no.’ And then we went back out with each other and I proposed to her again, and she said, '‘I’ll think about it.' It literally took me five years of continuous stalking to get her to agree to marry me. And a film that actually, faithfully, recreated that story would be more of a dark psychological thriller than a romantic comedy!" With a great script, the producers turned their attention to finding the right director. Stephen Woolley, Toby Young and Peter Straughan are great fans of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and thought that Robert Weide, Director and Executive Producer of the television series, could bring that same comic sensibility to similar material. Stephen Woolley reasons that the director needed a comedy background and so Robert Weide, was the natural choice. "The most important thing is that this film delivers what it says on the tin: comedy. I thought that if Bob [Robert Weide] can bring half of what he had with Curb Your Enthusiasm we could have a good chance of making people laugh." Weide had been keen to do the right feature film for a couple of years. He recalls: "a few pages into it, I thought, 'I really want to do this' I was really impressed with what Peter brought to it in that he kept a lot of the anecdotes and then fabricated this new story line, the love story and created new characters out of old cloth that were really interesting. It feels like an original piece in that it is not beholden to the book." According to the producers, the key to the whole film was to cast someone who can portray Sidney Young in a sympathetic light. "The character of Sidney Young is fairly close to the character that Toby [Young] creates in his own book with one slight difference: I think that Sidney is a hell of a lot more sympathetic than Toby’s character, and that doesn't come through necessarily only in the writing, that comes through Simon Pegg. Simon is generally somebody that, no matter how hard or tough or bad they seem, you always know that it's Simon Pegg and in the end he's going to make you smile. You instantly love him: he's an instantly lovable guy," says Woolley. "He is immensely likeable, you can’t dislike Simon and given how appalling the character he’s playing is, I mean me, being so likeable is a hugely important quality," Young adds. "Simon just has that way about him that he can get away with anything; he can say really obnoxious things, act like a jerk and be very inappropriate, yet he is just so likeable at the core that I think the audience’s sympathies will stay with him and they will root for him. Simon is able to walk that line between just being really uproariously funny and being a very sympathetic character that I think you care about," Weide explained. Weide has become a fan of Simon Pegg’s work and thought that he would be perfect for the role due to his proven comedy track record. "Simon needs very little directing as his first instincts are always so good," says Weide. "I literally cannot imagine having done this film without Simon now, I don’t know who else could have played him, I don’t know who could have ridden that line between being so obnoxious and so sympathetic and so funny." It was Straughan's script that attracted 2005 Bram Stoker Award winner Simon Pegg ("Shaun Of The Dead") to the film. "I read the script and I really liked it," he said. "I think Peter is a really good writer, it is funny and it just had what I think as an actor you look for in a script which is a challenging character and an interesting situation. When you read the book you think how could this possibly be turned into a film? But he’s taken the spirit of it and the heart of it and put it on the screen, the page, which is a really clever thing to do. It’s a funny comedy, a lot of which is based on truth." Weide’s attachment to the project was also a big draw because of his comedy background working on sixty one episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm". As the 2005 Peter Sellers Comedy Award winner Pegg ("Shaun Of The Dead") explained: "When you’re doing a comedy it’s really important that the person behind the lens understands the dynamics of comedy. They have to be, the best comedies are shot by funny people and Bob’s a very funny guy." 2002 Mar del Plata Film Festival Best Actress Award winner Kirsten Dunst ("The Cat's Meow") was cast as Sidney Young’s colleague and eventual love interest, Alison Olsen. Both Woolley and Weide had previously worked with Kirsten Dunst. Woolley as a producer on Neil Jordan's "Interview with a Vampire" (1994) and Weide, as both the screenwriter and producer on "Mother Night" (1996). Twenty six year old Dunst ("The Virgin Suicides", "Drop Dead Gorgeous", "Crazy/Beautiful" & "Mona Lisa Smile"), who made her feature film debut in a segment of Woody Allen's 1989 film "New York Stories", says there were a number of reasons she was drawn to the project. "20 pages into the script you can usually tell whether it’s good or not, and I was laughing. And when I had heard that Simon was attached, I’d seen "Shaun of the Dead" and was a big fan of his and I really wanted to work with him. It was nice to have the comfort of knowing Bob and, having an environment where everyone just really wants to have good time together and is open. I felt very collaborative from the very beginning with Bob, we all respect each other a lot. So meeting and knowing Bob and reading the script it was a definite yes for me." 2004's National Board of Review Career Achievement and San Sebastián International Film Festival Donostia Lifetime Achievement, Awards winner Jeff Bridges was cast as Clayton Harding, Editor in Chief of Sharps magazine. His character is reported to be loosely based on Vanity Fair editor, Graydon Carter. "As soon as I read the script, I immediately saw Jeff Bridges," says Weide. "When I was a teenager watching movies, anything with Jeff Bridges was fantastic because he also played anti-heroes, he always played the rebel. The list of great Jeff Bridges’ movies is just phenomenal. Clayton Harding is a role that was made for Jeff, because it’s someone who was that old anarchist, that old rebel, who’s now got stuck in this role that he’s in as one of the most successful editors in the world at a point in his life where he doesn’t want to upset the barrel," Woolley notes. Four time Academy ® Award nominee Bridges (1972, '75, '85 & 2001) chose the project for a myriad of reasons. "Probably the top of the list was a chance to work with my buddy, Bob Weide. We go back about twelve years and we were working on a project that fell through but we worked on it for a long time, long and hard. So when he called me up and told me about this movie he was making, the chance to be involved in his first movie was very exciting to me. And he told me about the wonderful cast that he was assembling and I just prayed that the script was going to be good so that I could say yes to it. And it made me laugh and it was a wonderful script, wonderful tale," Bridges recalls. Casting the right actress in the role of Sophie Maes took a long time. It eventually went to the young lady who played Mikaela Banes, in Michael Bay's smash hit movie, "Transformers" (US $708,226,810 world-wide). "It was sheer hard work to find somebody who could play the part. We wanted someone who was reminiscent of Judy Holliday who played in films like The Solid Gold Cadillac, a kind of blonde bimbo and a little like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch; we wanted that quality of having sexuality and power over men that was innocent and yet not quite innocent," Woolley recalled. Weide recalls: "I saw a lot of great people. Megan, who was unknown at the time, walked in and just did this audition that made my jaw drop and she walked out and I looked at the casting directors and said that the search was over. It was as if the part had been written for her." Danny Huston was cast as Sidney’s immediate boss, Lawrence Maddox. "Danny just fits so well into that mould," notes Wooley. Weide agrees: "I can’t see anyone other than Danny playing this part." Synopsis

After disrupting one black-tie event by allowing a wild pig to run rampant, the highly inventive Sidney Young catches the attention of Clayton Harding, editor of Sharp, and accepts a job with the magazine in New York City. Clayton, who like Sidney, once ran a fringe edge magazine, warns Sidney he'd better impress and charm everyone he can, if he wants to succeed. Instead, Sidney insults and annoys everyone. He dares to target the star clients of power publicist Eleanor Johnson. He upsets his direct boss Lawrence Maddox and tries to make amends by hiring a stripper to dance for Lawrence during a staff meeting. Sidney, of course, doesn't stop there, finding creative ways to annoy nearly everyone. His saving graces: a rising, sexy starlet develops an odd affection for him, and in time, Alison whose friendship with him might be the only thing saving Sidney from torpedoing his career.

The Verdict "Simon Pegg's latest film is not only very funny, but very endearing. He's the spitting image your typical aussie larrikin, but in this case Pegg's character is in fact based on Toby Young who was far, far, more outrageous than anything portrayed in this film. That iconic American film critic Roger Ebert wrote of Young: "He is much more preposterous than "Sidney Young", the hero of this film, which is based on Toby's memoir." Pegg has, with films like "Shaun Of The Dead", "Hot Fuzz" and "Run, Fat Boy, Run", amassed a solid following and, I have no doubt fans will find his latest offering highly rewarding. From the opening scenes at the BAFTA After Party, to his memorable first night in New York, through to his finally 'making it', the laughs build up until they're coming thick and fast. The support cast are first class especially the 'A' listers, Jeff Bridges, Kirsten Dunst, Gillian Anderson and Danny Huston. But credit must be given to those who add the extra zing to the film: Charlotte Devaney who plays Bobbie; Miriam Margolyes who is wonderful as Young's suffering landlady Mrs Kowalski and, Megan Fox, who deserves recognition for her restricted role as starlet Sophie Maes. And don't get up at films end, because there are 'extras' in the first segment of the closing credits. "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People" is certainly good value for your cinema dollars and, provided you haven't stopped breathing, should leave you with a big smile on your face. Look for the book by Toby Young at local bookstores and, the Soundtrack CD (Universal Australia) at music outlets. Great fun. 4 STARS." Crew Bytes "HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE" was .......
directed by Robert B Weide [TV'S "The Great Standups" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm"]; screenplay by Peter Straughan ["Sixty Six"]; art direction by Anthony Gasparro ["How to Lose Friends & Alienate People"]; costume design by Annie Hardinge ["The Brittas Empire" , "Spaced" and "Little Britain"]; production design by John Beard ["The Last Temptation of Christ", "Robinson Crusoe" and "The History Boys"]; edited by David Freeman ["This Boy's Story", "The Full Monty" and "Mickey Blue Eyes"]; cinematography by Oliver Stapleton ["The Shipping News", "Ned Kelly" and "Casanova"]; original music by David Arnold ["The Stepford Wives", "Four Brothers" and "Hot Fuzz"]. Who's Who

Simon Pegg Kirsten Dunst Megan Fox Danny Huston Hannah Waddingham Gillian Anderson Jeff Bridges Jane Perry Connie Wheeler Lara Edmunds Kelan Pannell Janette Scott Miriam Margolyes Charlotte Devaney Bill Paterson Katherine Parkinson Felicity Montagu Margo Stilley Isabella Calthorpe Sam Douglas Sarah Mennell Daniel Craig Kate Winslet Thandie Newton

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Sidney Young Alison Olsen Sophie Maes Lawrence Maddox Elizabeth Maddox Eleanor Johnson Clayton Harding Mrs Harding Harding Child #1 Harding Child #2 Young Sidney Sidney's Mother Mrs Kowalski Bobbie Richard Young PR Woman Clipboard Nazi Ingrid Anna Barman Flight Desk Attendant Himself Herself Herself

Run Time 110 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2008 - Paramount Pictures - All Rights Reserved ©2008 All Rights Reserved The Movie Pages - Protected by Australian, International, Copyright & Trademark Laws.