We’ve seen these guys on TV shows galore, and it’s hard not to roll your eyes unless you’re totally gullible and will believe just about anything.
Weekend seminars hosted by guys with one name pseudonyms, usually cheesy names like Mystery, who can teach anybody how to get any woman they want, as if you can learn that in a weekend.
You may also recall that Neil Strauss, a regular contributor for Rolling Stone and author of Motley Crue’s self-congratulatory hagiography The Dirt, even wrote a book about the secret society of pick up artists, and he bought all the bullsh*t hook, line and sinker, even giving himself one of those stupid nicknames, Style.
Apparently this guy couldn’t even get any action being on the road with Motley Crue, so desperate measures had to be taken, and it turned into a best-seller. Watch enough of these guys, not for advice, but just to see how they operate, and the whole things reeks of cult recruitment, a la Scientology. (It also makes you wonder how many times Strauss has bought the Brooklyn Bridge…)
Also to be filed in the believe it or not category, there’ve been two attempts so far to turn The Game into a movie. This summer, The Hollywood Reporter reported that The Game moved from Columbia to MGM, where it hopes to get off the ground there. Originally Chris Weitz (About a Boy, New Moon) was going to direct from a script by D.B. Weiss (who worked on the now defunct big screen adaptation of Halo). Weitz was still slated to produce along with Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who produced the Michael Douglas drama Solitary Man.
The L.A. Times was of the opinion that this book could be adapted a number of ways. “You could go bromantic, take it in a kind of I Love You Man direction. You could go a little darker and do it as a more grown-up version of Roger Dodger. Or you could go straight [Judd] Apatow… Just turn it into a raunchfest, where a guy spends two hours learning how to pick up women but eventually ends up with a likable sweet one.”
Fans of Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood), will also recall Tom Cruise played one of these pick-up artist guys in Anderson’s sprawling epic, Magnolia, and the character was based on the real teachings of these guys, particularly Ross Jeffries.
Jeffries taught his own version of the how to pick up girls course, except his techniques also included hypnotism and subliminal language techniques .(Anderson wrote the role for Cruise, and IMHO it’s one of his best performances).
