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Fraud: Ben Mezrich Made Up "True Story" For Bringing Down The House And Movie Spin-Off 21
Yet “Bringing Down the House” is not a work of “nonfiction” in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead of describing events as they happened, Mezrich appears to have worked more as a collage artist, drawing some facts from interviews, inventing certain others, and then recombining these into novel scenes that didn’t happen and characters who never lived. The result is a crowd-pleasing story, eagerly marketed by his publishers as true – but which several of the students who participated say is embellished beyond recognition. “I don’t even know if you want to call the things in there exaggerations, because they’re so exaggerated they’re basically untrue,” said John Chang, an MIT graduate and one of the inspirations for the character Micky Rosa, who in the book is the team’s founder and leader. [Link]
MGM Making Robert Ludlum's Matarese Circle Starring Denzel Washington
A heated week of negotiations for “The Matarese Circle,” a buzzed-about project based on a Robert Ludlum novel, culminated with MGM and Relativity Media winning the bidding war late Friday. The project, first reported in The Hollywood Reporter is an action-thriller based on Ludlum’s Cold War novel. Denzel Washington is attached to play the hero, and “3:10 to Yuma” scribes Michael Brandt and Derek Haas are on board to write. [Link]
Harry Potter Author JK Rowling Considered Suicide
The creator of the blockbuster Harry Potter books, JK Rowling, admitted she had “suicidal thoughts” after separating from her first husband in the mid-1990s, in an interview published Sunday. “Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted,” Rowling said in an interview with a student magazine at Edinburgh University, which was re-printed in the Sunday Times. “The thing that made me go for help… was probably my daughter. She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn’t right, this can’t be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state.” [Link]
Arthur C. Clarke Dies At 90
Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90. Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said. [Link]
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Split Into 2 Movies
According to an article on The LA Times the final Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will now be split in two. The films will just be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II. [Link]
Money Honey Maria Bartiromo Gets $500,000 Book Deal
CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo has sold a book to Crown, a division of Random House, for an advance several knowledgable sources said was in the neighborhood of $500,000. Ms. Bartiromo’s literary agent, Wayne Kabak of the William Morris Agency, declined to comment but an assistant at his office referred questions to Crown Business executive editor John Mahaney. [Link]