As a seasoned journalist with decades of experience under my belt, I must confess that Ben Mezrich’s approach to nonfiction leaves me in a state of perpetual bewilderment and occasional amusement. Having dabbled in fact-checking his books myself, I can attest to the intrigue and, at times, the frustration they evoke.
Ben Mezrich owns a magic radio. It’s an antique, the stand-up kind families used to gather round, stare at, and listen to, with a large dial that resembles a marine compass. He bought it for $50 in the late ’90s, back when he was a mid-list author deep in debt and contemplating giving up writing for an M.B.A., after wandering into a yard sale. For years, he kept the radio at his high-rise apartment in Boston before transporting it to his country home in the village of Quechee, Vermont, where it now lives in an extra bedroom he uses as a writer’s studio. One day in August, padding around in pink shorts and white socks, Mezrich, a bespectacled 55-year-old with spiked hair, leads me upstairs to behold it. The studio is sparse: Besides the radio, there is a desk, an unmade bed, a ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ puzzle, and the rudimentary word-processing device he uses, called a Neo2.
After purchasing the radio, Mezrich came to believe it had a magical power to grant him three wishes, provided he kissed it while “The Crystal Ship” by The Doors played and the lights were off. His initial wish was to meet his future spouse, whom he described as a beautiful, intelligent model-like woman. That very evening, at a Boston nightclub, he crossed paths with Tonya Chen, a dental student who later gained fame as a local TV personality and charity event regular. (They tied the knot in 2006.) However, Mezrich refused to let his friends attempt kissing the radio.
Following his career, he requested the radio to play his book titled “Bringing Down the House,” which details a MIT blackjack team’s card-counting scheme, with the hopes of becoming a New York Times bestseller. Once this occurred in 2002, he had only one remaining wish, and he knew exactly what to ask for. Mezrich yearned for a movie studio to approve an adaptation of any of his books into a full-length feature film, not the TV movies he’d already experienced when his thriller “Reaper,” about a virus that solidifies its victims, was turned into a TBS feature called “Fatal Error,” a film he considered “a pile of trash.” He desired a blockbuster, so he extinguished the lights and prayed for one.
Mezrich found success with his blockbuster hit, as the book “Bringing Down the House” was adapted into the movie “21,” which opened at the top of the box office in the spring of 2008. Following this, he wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-winning film “The Social Network,” based on his book “The Accidental Billionaires.” This boosted the reputation of Mezrich’s growing body of work about unconventional underdogs seeking immense wealth. Last September, his book on the GameStop stock craze, titled “The Antisocial Network,” was published as “Dumb Money.” It beat out numerous competing projects in development, such as a Netflix movie scripted by “Hurt Locker” screenwriter Mark Boal and an HBO project spearheaded by “Billions” co-creator and “Times” financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Authors have always been associated with Hollywood, but what sets Mezrich apart is his straightforwardness about it. During our time together in Vermont and Boston, Mezrich frequently prods me for writing pieces like this one, which don’t seem ripe for cinema. “What’s the point?” he queries, genuinely intrigued. “You write a long article, submit it, and people read it in seconds before it vanishes. To me, that’s not comparable to writing a book that turned into a movie watched by millions.” Moreover, there wasn’t much financial gain in it. Mezrich, known for his knack for catchy one-liners, succinctly summarizes his life story: “My goal wasn’t to win the Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award. It was to see the paperback with the phrase ‘Now a Major Motion Picture’.
Over the years, I’ve noticed a remarkable evolution in Ben Mezrich’s storytelling prowess, captivating even the most hard-to-impress film executives. Just last month, A24 secured the rights to adapt his upcoming chess scandal book, “Checkmate.” As Mike De Luca, co-chair of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, who produced “21” and “The Social Network,” puts it, Mezrich’s unique blend of nonfiction, with its dramatic arcs and well-structured acts, gives him an uncanny sense of order in the world. Lauren O’Connor, head of acquisitions for Amazon MGM Studios, working on a series based on one of Mezrich’s novels, “Seven Wonders,” echoes this sentiment, praising his knack for striking a commercial tone and creating memorable characters, making him a recession-resistant talent.
In the world of Hollywood, Mezrich’s credibility is surprisingly low compared to the harsh reviews his books have received. In journalism communities, he’s often referred to as a modern nuisance in nonfiction writing, as his career is built on inventing stories rather than reporting facts. His distinctive approach, as explained in an author’s note, involves techniques like fabricating dialogues, combining characters, creating fictional scenarios, and rearranging or confusing time sequences. Critic Janet Maslin of the Times, who took pleasure in criticizing his work, once labeled Mezrich as a master at “fabricating conversations he didn’t hear” and “enhancing events he wasn’t present at.
For over three decades, Mezrich’s closest friend and former Harvard roommate is editor Scott Stossel at The Atlantic. While Mezrich is known for his carefree, politically uninvolved demeanor akin to a Muppet who is content with any ruler, Stossel struggles with anxiety, as depicted in his critically acclaimed memoir titled “My Age of Anxiety.” Stossel often teased Mezrich, commenting, “Why are you wasting your time? You spend all this effort to get every detail right, yet it results in so little reward,” he said. However, Stossel acknowledges that Mezrich is largely correct in his critique. Yet, if journalists were to emulate Mezrich’s methods and present them as serious journalistic work, it would potentially harm the profession due to the lack of rigorous reporting and sourcing associated with such an approach.
Essentially, Mezrich’s works can be seen as more than just books; they are essentially pre-packaged intellectual properties tailored for Hollywood adaptations. This has proven beneficial in the streaming era, where there is a heightened demand for ready-to-use content and writers are motivated to pursue a profitable screen adaptation of their books and articles. Ideally, these stories revolve around heists, capers, scams, feuds, or any narratives with dramatic appeal. As put by Rebecca Angelo, a former journalist who co-wrote the Dumb Money screenplay with her former colleague Lauren Schuker Blum, “Ben is unashamed that his work serves as a rough draft for the screen.” Some find this notion controversial, believing that published works should be their own culmination. However, Mezrich, intelligently and correctly, dismisses such thoughts as absurd.
Over the last twenty years, Mezrich has been an incredibly productive author: he’s published 13 non-fiction books, 3 works of fiction, and a new novel this autumn (as well as children’s books). Some of these books might not be familiar to you. For instance, there’s “Woolly,” which tells the story of the competition to create a genetically engineered mammoth. There’s also “Sex on the Moon,” which focuses on a heist involving lunar rocks. “Busting Vega$” and “Straight Flush” can be seen as reboots of “Bringing Down the House.” Last fall, following the release of “Dumb Money,” he published “Breaking Twitter,” which delves into Elon Musk’s control of the platform. Some may eventually become films or TV shows, while others will remain indefinitely in studio limbo, but all have been optioned for screen adaptations.
Mezrich has a unique approach to storytelling – he sells his ideas for movies first, then writes the books based on those sold movie rights. Unlike most writers who publish a work and try to attract Hollywood’s attention, Mezrich reverses the process. He creates a brief book proposal, pitches it to Hollywood, and sells the movie rights before writing the full book. If Hollywood doesn’t show interest, he simply moves on to another idea without writing the book.
Mezrich’s business is a bold content-production machine that even renowned, sought-after book-to-film authors like Michael Lewis and David Grann haven’t dared to venture into. With the streaming industry contracting after years of growth, he remains an unexpected titan still standing amidst the receding wave of content, his career both unparalleled and a testament to how, with audacity and minimal discipline, one can become successful in Hollywood.
The Mezrich family’s countryside home resides in Vermont, yet it doesn’t exude rural serenity as one might expect. Instead, it’s a bustling environment filled with pugs Bagel and Cream Cheese, their school-aged kids, iPads, chargers, dog toys, piano sheet music, a collection of South Park dolls, and half-consumed camp lunches abandoned in the sink. Most of Ben Mezrich’s time is spent lounging in a leather recliner, occasionally pampering his feet with one of the numerous foot massagers he has a penchant for purchasing. (Similar to Buzz Bissinger’s obsession with Gucci leather, Ben Mezrich cherishes foot massagers.)
In a somber tone, Mezrich recounts his childhood as one that was unremarkable in terms of physical strength and athletic prowess for sports. From a young age, he admired celebrity but felt his appearance and athletic abilities were not suitable for fame. However, during his teenage years in New Jersey, he came across the glamorous fictional characters created by Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis, which sparked an idea that perhaps he could attain stardom through writing. Already dabbling in genre fiction at Harvard, Mezrich and Stossel later moved into a Boston apartment above a dentist’s office to focus on their writing careers. Interestingly, Mezrich’s family has a medical background, with his father and two brothers being doctors. As a result, he contributed to the family business by writing science fiction and medical thrillers. Stossel remembers that the first novel Mezrich submitted was called “Mutant Brew“.
As a fledgling author, Mezrich found guidance in Albert Zuckerman’s book titled “Writing the Blockbuster Novel“. He meticulously implemented its teachings, refining his distinctive literary traits such as shifting character viewpoints, vivid modern settings, and robust relationships between protagonists and antagonists. Simultaneously, he wrote promotional materials for a charitable organization, all while diligently producing around 40 pages per day in his spare time. In an audacious move that could have been scripted for a biopic, Mezrich displayed the rejection letters he received from publishers, numbering approximately 200, on his wall.
As a movie enthusiast, I’d rephrase it like this: “Despite the setbacks and rejections, I’ve always held onto my belief that I’m a genius, albeit an eccentric one. I attribute some of this to my Jewish upbringing – if I didn’t ace a test at school, I’d question the validity of the test itself. In 1996, five years after graduating college, I published my debut novel, ‘Threshold.’ It was a gripping tale about a brave med student uncovering a rogue government doctor’s work on the human genome and the enigmatic deaths connected to the project. One critic even suggested that this flawed masterpiece would make a fantastic movie.
Mezrich felt extremely happy. Although Threshold didn’t achieve sales success, it still put him on the literary map, securing a $250,000 advance for his subsequent novel, Reaper. He recalls those years as a hazy sequence of hotel suites in Amsterdam and Los Angeles. “It’s ironic,” Mezrich muses. “I didn’t indulge in drugs. I had very few vices, but my main vice was living luxuriously.” Stossel vividly remembers that period: “He was barely getting by, staying with an ex-girlfriend. As soon as he started selling thriller novels and receiving reasonable advances, he rented a swanky apartment on Boylston Street in Boston, visited a high-end furniture store, and bought all the most expensive leather furniture. I believe he went into debt in a single day.
In a desperate bid to salvage his career, Mezrich found redemption when he met an former MIT blackjack player in a Boston bar. He later penned the book “Bringing Down the House“, weaving a captivating narrative that read more like a novel than factual account, drawing upon all his literary flair. Interestingly, it was revealed that the coach portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the movie was a composite of several individuals who claimed never to have interacted with Mezrich. Some of the MIT students, after reading the book, even disputed being confronted by intimidating casino enforcers. The book became a massive success, selling over 2 million copies and introducing readers to Mezrich’s high-octane world filled with ambitious characters who were either grinning, sweating, or charging into rooms, often accompanied by attractive women categorized as “blonde”, “Asian”, or “brunette.
I recall countless individuals, including myself, picking up “Bringing Down the House” as their first book post-“Harry Potter,” as Mezrich often shares. It’s intriguing how many women have shared stories with me about partners who typically shun reading yet found themselves engrossed in my books. In 2004, The Times‘ Ginia Bellafante wrote a Sunday “Styles” profile of me titled “What Do Men Really Want (to Read About)?” The article succinctly captured the essence I’ve always felt: men desire tales about wealth, intimacy, and people outsmarting the system. Spacey’s business partner, Dana Brunetti, coined a term for this genre – “dick lit.
Mezrich completely shifted his focus towards writing about the “dick lit” genre, which finally enabled him to blend his personal experiences with his storytelling, much like in the style of “Bright Lights, Big City”. As he once cheerfully noted, “I write about young people living the high life, and I do it myself.” In 2004, a publicist managed to get Mezrich nominated for the “Sexiest Man Alive” issue of People magazine, reasoning that the ‘author’ category was the easiest. This recognition came following an equally surprising event: Mezrich participating in the “Sexiest Bachelor in America” pageant, which Tonya entered him for, despite them being a couple. Since Massachusetts is often referred to as the ‘sexy state’ of authors, he was once again selected, only to withdraw during the first round. Simultaneously, the Mezrichs were developing Ben’s signature style, a look familiar to readers of mid-2000s lad magazines: spiked hair and silver ties worn with unbuttoned dress shirts.
His audience yearned for a piece of the action, and Mezrich established a hotline where individuals could call him with intriguing book concepts. One of the perks of his fact-fiction amalgamation, Mezrich explains, is that it attracts cautious sources. Plausible deniability is a key aspect of his approach: “If you chat with me and you’re not satisfied with what I wrote? Simply claim you never spoke to me! It doesn’t matter to me!” People will assume he invented it regardless.
A few weeks prior to our Vermont rendezvous, author Mezrich extends an invitation for me to join him at Boston’s exclusive ‘Quin House’, a Soho House-like establishment catering to the city’s high-powered professionals. Nestled within a historic McKim, Mead & White mansion in Back Bay, this club carries the legacy of its previous tenant, the Algonquin Club.
In conversation, the topic of Michael Lewis arises; they share the same film agent. “Every time I write a book, my brother will tell me, ‘It’s good, but it’s not as great as Michael Lewis.'” I inquire about his reaction to this comment. “I find it amusing,” he answers. Does he believe it’s accurate? “Absolutely, I think it’s funny,” is his response.
“No. We write very differently. I think the FTX story — mine would be a very different story than how he wrote it,” he says, referring to Lewis’s recent book on fallen crypto prince Sam Bankman-Fried. “Did he open with an orgy in the Bahamas? Because my book would have opened with a drug-fueled orgy in the Bahamas.”
In early 2008, just before the release of the movie “21,” Will McMullen contacted author Ben Mezrich with an enticing proposal: “My friend is the one who founded Facebook but remains largely unknown.” Impressed, Mezrich arranged a meeting with the friend, Eduardo Saverin, at a hotel bar. As Mezrich recalls, “He drank only two beers and immediately began discussing his strained relationship with Mark Zuckerberg, saying ‘Mark Zuckerberg wronged me.'” The two grew closer as Saverin shared his account of the broken friendship with Zuckerberg.
By the month of May that particular year, Mezrich completed drafting the book proposal for “The Accidental Billionaires“, originally titled “Face Off“. He hinted at a “tale brimming with romance, intriguing locations, lavish indulgences, and deception”. This proposal was later leaked to Gawker, and it commenced:
Originally, two close companions, labeled as social outcasts at a distinguished Ivy League university, aspired to join one of the exclusive fraternities on campus. Their primary objective was to simplify their journey towards romantic encounters. However, unintentionally, they performed an action that not only transformed their lives but also the world, making them overnight billionaires.
The proposal was stuffed with wild and dubious revelations, like the one about Zuckerberg and Saverin eating koala meat outside Monte Carlo on the megayacht of the Sun Microsystems CEO, who, for starters, didn’t have a boat. But the spine of the story — a dramatic legal feud between two close friends over the founding of Facebook, a saga that had escaped the notice of the mainstream press — was legitimate. The very day the proposal leaked, according to Mezrich, Saverin began negotiating a settlement with Facebook and had a lawyer send him a demand to cut off contact. (It’s unclear if this timeline or its details is entirely correct. Saverin’s nondisclosure agreement probably ensures we’ll never know.) Mezrich thinks Saverin, currently No. 56 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on the strength of his Facebook settlement, should send him a gift.
Mezrich posits that Facebook chose to resolve issues with Saverin to limit his involvement and prevent the book’s release, stating, “They didn’t anticipate how quickly I write books. I can complete one in four weeks!” (Later, he concedes it took closer to 11 weeks.) However, Mezrich had already gathered sufficient material from Saverin. The remaining details could be sourced from the simultaneous legal battle between Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins, numerous unnamed sources, as well as his own imagination, such as an amusingly implausible incident where Zuckerberg has to stealthily bypass a pair of smooching students while sneaking around in the dark to hack into a Harvard dormitory’s database.
Mezrich’s great narrative insight was to frame the creation of Facebook as a kind of revenge plot against the exclusionary social clubs that ran Harvard. And whatever Saverin or other sources told him about Zuckerberg’s true motivations for creating Facebook — Mezrich never spoke with Zuckerberg, despite his efforts — his best source material may have been his own college-age psyche. “As Harvard freshmen, we were both intimidated by the elite social players, such as they were — fancy kids from Andover and Groton,” Stossel says. “We thought of ourselves as some combination of Revenge of the Nerds and Statler and Waldorf.” It’s hard not to read Mezrich’s description of Zuckerberg — “a nebbishy geek who hacked his way to stardom” — as aspirational.
Following the disclosure of the proposal, Sony Pictures’ head Amy Pascal reached out to Sorkin to gauge his interest in adapting it. Impressed by what he read that morning, Sorkin confessed he was hooked after just a few pages. For the first time, Mezrich sold the rights to his proposal in this manner. According to his film agent, CAA powerhouse Matthew Snyder, “This approach proved to be highly successful not only for placing a project into capable hands but also for doing so early in the process, ensuring that the movie doesn’t release years after the book has already been published.
Following the transaction, I found myself ensconced in a hotel room, engrossed in penning the novel, while Sorkin was concurrently working on his screenplay. “During this process,” Eric Simonoff, my book agent at WME, remarks, “I’ve never witnessed anything quite like it.” The book hit the shelves the following summer, shortly after the proposal became public knowledge, and the film made its debut less than a year later – an astonishingly swift production schedule for such a significant motion picture.
Before the premiere of “The Social Network”, Sorkin distanced himself from Mezrich, stating that he used the book’s overall concept as a basis for his screenplay rather than the actual content. Later, the movie’s creators declined to link the film’s artwork and title with the paperback edition of the book, which upset Mezrich. He has proposed that Scott Rudin, another producer of the film, was concerned that associating with Mezrich’s perceived lower-tier brand might harm the movie’s chances at the Oscars. Rudin did not respond to comments. A source close to the film suggested that the real reason for this decision was to avoid legal issues with Facebook, who disliked the book.
Despite some scenes being fabricated or exaggerated, it’s clear that Sorkin drew heavily from Mezrich’s book for the movie. A notable example is the scene where Saverin and Zuckerberg are depicted having an encounter with their Harvard groupies in adjacent bathroom stalls, a scene not found elsewhere. When I spoke to Sorkin about his use of the source material, he acknowledged my point: “You’re right, I didn’t give Ben enough credit.” In fact, when Sorkin deviated from the book, he amplified the portrayal of Zuckerberg as driven by resentment and longing.
21 was the year Spacey referred to Mezrich as someone who, when in situations such as Vegas events or parties, acts like the amazed kid who can’t believe he’s there. He would typically be the one standing outside the ropes. Now that he’s inside, he can’t seem to get enough of places like the ‘Quin, which resembles the exclusive clubs he wasn’t part of. Maslin once penned that if Mezrich has a favorite phrase, it is this: “Billionaires.” If more was needed, his enthusiastic version would be: “Billionaires. Was it really possible?
Over time, the film and television industry has consistently shown a fascination with adapting true events. Producers, as well as audiences, are drawn to “based on a true story” productions. However, over the past decade or so, there’s been a significant shift due to the emergence of streaming services, fueled by debt, eager to attract subscribers with an abundance of content. In 2009, according to FX network analysis, only 210 scripted shows were aired. By 2022, this number had grown to a total of approximately 600 original series across network TV, cable, and streaming platforms. The same trend is observed in the movie industry pre-pandemic: In 2018, around 872 movies were released compared to about 520 in 2009.
As a movie enthusiast, I’ve noticed that Mezrich’s rise in Hollywood aligns perfectly with this era of increased appetite for content. In essence, studios and streaming platforms began purchasing more Intellectual Properties (IP) to satisfy their insatiable hunger for “ready-to-use” content, ranging from comic books to young adult novels. For nonfiction works, the allure of IP lies in the perceived worth it bestows upon a story that theoretically anyone could tell. As one book-to-film agent puts it, “The development of projects can be quite reactionary and fear-based. People need someone else to endorse it first, to give it validation.” A polished book or magazine article by a well-known author is more appealing to studio executives than an ordinary .docx screenplay about the same subject matter. As an IP scout at one of the streamers puts it, “IP is like Veblen goods – items that are inherently valueless but become more desirable because others want them.
In the world of journalism, it’s common for Hollywood studios to compensate journalists through “option-purchase” agreements. This option allows the studio to lease the rights to a story or book for a set duration while they attempt to develop a screenplay and secure talent. If the project is produced, the writer receives the purchase price, which can be ten times the initial option cost. Due to an oversupply of intellectual property, these option payments escalated from five-figure amounts to even higher figures. In 2016, David Grann bypassed the option process entirely when he sold the rights to his book “Killers of the Flower Moon” for a flat fee of $5 million to Hollywood. Two years later, freelance journalist Jeff Maysh made headlines by selling an option for one of his Daily Beast articles about the McDonald’s Monopoly game for $350,000—for a film that is still in pre-production. As traditional media outlets struggle, many authors are turning to satisfying Hollywood’s preferences as a viable business strategy on its own.
For Mezrich, who found the book industry less enticing due to its original terms, the boom has turned into a challenge. Initially in his career, with books making best-seller lists, he saw movies as a marketing strategy. However, things have reversed. He’s concerned that the pandemic may have contributed to the decline of the airport paperback, and it seems his typical audience, men, are no longer reading much. Sales have taken a back seat, with adaptations becoming the main focus. According to BookScan, Mezrich’s book, “The Antisocial Network,” sold only 10,000 physical copies in the U.S., but he claims that if you factor in e-books, audiobooks, and foreign sales, the number could be around 50,000 or possibly even 100,000.
Opting for a book or article generates an additional value – the excited announcement of the deal in a trade publication, which could potentially block competitors. To illustrate, imagine if you purchase the rights to a book from Ben Mezrich. Announcing this in “The Hollywood Reporter” makes other potential buyers hesitate. Would I want to buy The Wall Street Journal’s report if Sony has already invested in this project? Furthermore, as Mezrich notes, there’s an added advantage of adapting a popular story: “From a PR perspective, you can get countless articles written about it.
In late January 2021, while in quarantine at a hotel in Montreal, Aaron Ryder – producer of ‘Arrival’ – witnessed an unprecedented surge in the value of GameStop’s stock due to the actions of amateur traders. He had recently sealed a first-look deal with MGM and received a call from Pam Abdy, then co-chair of the studio. She suggested it was movie material, to which Ryder agreed. The primary task at hand was determining the intellectual property that could give them an edge over others. Ryder began searching the internet for relevant reports and even spoke to journalists at the ‘Times’. Then unexpectedly, there were whispers about Ben Mezrich potentially having a book proposal, which caught Ryder’s attention as a potential goldmine.
The tale of GameStop gave rise to a distinct category of articles speculating about its potential transformation into a film. Highlighting the ridiculousness of the gold rush, one of the screenwriters for Mezrich’s project, Lauren Schuker Blum, was vying with her husband, producer Jason Blum, who was also striving to get HBO’s project off the ground. MGM acquired Mezrich’s book proposal, titled “Dumb Money,” for over $1 million directly.
In summary, due to his unique blend of nonfiction and fiction, he was able to make the story incredibly dramatic, potentially more so than reality. This served as an excellent blueprint for the writers of Dumb Money, who were former finance reporters with a knack for quick writing. As put by Simonoff, Mezrich’s book proposal functions as a sales tool for the underlying dramatic rights, and the book itself serves as a template for the actual screenwriters.
Looking back, the wild GameStop incident might symbolize the highest point of the surge in easy money for intellectual properties (IP). Once the pandemic ended and filming resumed, production lines became congested, reducing the demand for fresh content. Realizing they couldn’t compete with the industry titan, Netflix’s rivals reduced their development. Even after the writers’ strike concluded last fall – a strike sparked in part by the rise of streaming, which didn’t provide the residual payments television writers used to earn from reruns – the industry continued to shrink. As TV production has decreased since its 2022 peak, so too has Hollywood’s enthusiasm for showering money on journalists. For the typical magazine writer or podcast producer, the flow of easy money has diminished, option payments have dwindled or vanished, and journalism has returned to its usual state of not making one rich.
In essence, Hollywood is more interested in established intellectual properties (IP) from well-known sources these days rather than new ideas. Mezrich’s IP, tailored specifically for the screen and brimming with captivating stories not found elsewhere, might be among the scarce properties worth investing in. Lately, he has refined his approach. Previously, he would uncover obscure tales, such as Saverin’s. Starting with Dumb Money, progressing through Breaking Twitter – acquired by MGM – and now with his upcoming Checkmate, he has been drawing inspiration from current events.
Last April, he completed his most recent novel titled “The Mistress and the Key“, a follow-up to the pandemic-written historical thriller-heist book he penned, which was released in October. (“I’m hoping it could be like The Da Vinci Code,” he mentioned.) With the project concluded, he began contemplating his next move. “True crime is all the rage these days, but I don’t consider myself a crime writer,” he pondered. “Should I write about AI and chase after Sam Altman and others in that field? But I don’t have a personal connection there, and honestly, I don’t fully understand the goings-on in that world.” He turned to Google for guidance: “I searched ‘scams.’ Is this the worst possible topic?” He couldn’t find anything that truly captured his interest. He experimented with “deception” instead.
In that instance, there appeared an intriguing news article detailing the sensational 2022 chess match where underdog Hans Niemann outplayed Magnus Carlsen, often regarded as the best player ever. The defeat was so astonishing that Carlsen insinuated Niemann was using unscrupulous means, leading to a heated uproar in the chess world. Mezrich faintly recalled the event, but couldn’t remember how it ended or if it did at all. He navigated through websites to confirm no book or film was being produced about it, then reached out to his literary and cinematic agents to gauge their interest, which they expressed.
He took a couple days to bang out his Checkmate proposal, which clocked in at 15 pages. Opening with a scene of Carlsen staring in disbelief at a chessboard, sweating profusely, he teased a tale of “larger than life personalities, exotic locales, lies, betrayal, and billions of dollars.” Checkmate, though it didn’t contain new information about the cheating mystery, would nonetheless “blow the doors off one of the biggest scandals in recent sports history.” Mezrich’s book agent hung back, while his film agent worked to attach potential stars and took the PDF out to studios and streamers to create a bidding war.
As the Checkmate idea spread, it didn’t immediately resonate with everyone in Hollywood. “It was so scant,” one agent remarked, “I thought, ‘What on earth is this?'” Recalling its arrival in his inbox, someone involved in adaptations at a streaming service said, “It doesn’t provide any unique information you couldn’t find elsewhere. It truly seems like something crafted to generate substantial marketplace interest.
Indeed, it turned out to be exactly that case. One journalist with a foothold in Hollywood asserts, “A superior chess book is likely to be written compared to Ben Mezrich’s work.” He further suggests that an exceptional writer from The New Yorker might be writing such a book currently, but marketing it for film and TV rights in three years will be more challenging due to the existing Ben Mezrich project. He likens this to land grabs. (In reality, New York magazine also published an article around the same time concerning chess cheater Hans Niemann, when Mezrich was selling his proposal.)
The journalist states, “He’s not discovering anything new! He reads the newspaper: “Ah, here’s a story. He’s involved in something else where he’s associating himself with the most buzzworthy story of the day, and it generates this lubricant for these projects tied to Hollywood. For example, Ah, Ben Mezrich — yes, I understand its connotation. It’s a modern, exciting, entertaining twist on this, even if the book isn’t good. He’s not peddling intellectual property in the traditional sense. It’s quite remarkable. He’s essentially ‘post-intellectual property’.
In the vehicle, Ben and Tonya found out that A24 sealed the deal with Nathan Fielder as director and Emma Stone as producer, offering a substantial sum of money – regardless of whether the project gets produced or not.
The Mezrichs extend an invitation for me to stay overnight in Vermont, and I’m greeted by Ben making enthusiastic sounds from another room about Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen the following morning. These chess rivals hadn’t squared off since the alleged cheating scandal, but they were now on a surprising path towards a thrilling rematch at a tournament in Paris in September. Regardless of the outcome, it would provide an ideal climax for his book. Following this, he and Tonya start talking about potential hotels to stay in during their trip to Paris.
Throughout my career, it’s felt like a dream, even making me question if reality is actually a simulation, much like Elon Musk suggests,” he muses. He ponders further, suggesting that perhaps he might be shaping this reality himself. This, in essence, captures his unique perspective on nonfiction. Reflecting on the past, Maslin feels Mezrich was a forerunner of our current post-truth era. “At the time, I was immersed in reviewing serious nonfiction, and we were living in a fact-based world,” she recalls. “I never imagined he would become more of the norm.
For a journalist, the lure of fact-checking Mezrich’s books is irresistible. I did it myself by calling Mezrich’s sources. In the book that became Dumb Money, a Duke student named “Jeremy Poe” has a disastrous Zoom date, in part because he keeps tracking GameStop’s share price instead of paying attention to the woman on his computer screen. In fact, Mezrich invented the date completely.
However, it’s important to note that I discovered the information about Jeremy Poe being a real person named Noah Lanier, not through fiction but from reality. Ben Mezrich’s storytelling techniques have led to a “Boy Who Cried Wolf” scenario. In his review for the newspaper, journalist Giri Nathan hinted at the possibility that “Jeremy,” and another significant character, a nurse named Kim, were fictional. However, they are real people. Both Lanier and Kim confirmed that Mezrich accurately captured the essential aspects of their stories, including their financial highs and lows, and were not troubled by his dramatic enhancements. Moreover, both individuals approached Mezrich with their stories after learning he was writing a book, as they believed it would eventually be turned into a movie, according to Lanier’s statement: “In my mind, I thought, ‘Okay, this is going to be a movie. Ben won’t write something that won’t become a movie.’
Mezrich’s style, both in his writing and speech, tends to be somewhat dramatic. However, this flair for the dramatic can sometimes lead to outcomes that surprisingly resonate on a cosmic level. For instance, when it comes to Zuckerberg, a traditional journalistic perspective might not have provided much insight into his college mentality. Mezrich believes that the film accurately portrayed Facebook’s origin story. He finds it preposterous to suggest that Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook primarily to save the world, rather than because he wanted to attract romantic attention.
Whenever a reporter questions his work, Mezrich believes, “They’re the ones acting without integrity.” Mezrich appreciates journalists and values their work, but he understands that they’re all competing for sensational news because they don’t earn enough from writing articles alone. The only way their stories gain traction, making them more prominent, is if they contain something intriguing or scandalous.
It seems unlikely that Mezrich will emerge victorious in the high-and-mighty contest. However, after spending time with him, one can’t help but find themselves questioning their own moral dilemma: If given the chance to write as swiftly and dramatically as Mezrich, if selling a 15-page manuscript you created over a weekend could finance your children’s education, and if bending some facts led to success in the film industry, would you choose to do it yourself?
The Mezrich family plans their trip to Paris for the chess match, also intending it as a celebration of their wedding anniversary. They invite me to join, and Tonya asks if I will be going. I respond that I’m unlikely to go. In response, Mezrich tells me I picked Quechee over Paris.
Instead of fretting over not being present for my ideal conclusion to this piece, where I observe Mezrich observing a chess game, he advises me not to worry. Why must I travel to France to pen a scene that transpires there in the first place?
“You can still write it! See, that’s what I would do. What’s the difference?”
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2024-11-01 15:56