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Ben Mezrich’s Foolproof Formula for Succeeding in Hollywood
How a gleefully unscrupulous hitmaker became one of the most bankable writers in the business.
This has served him particularly well in the streaming era, which has goosed demand for oven-ready content and incentivized writers to thirstily seek a lucrative second life for their books and articles onscreen, ideally by reporting on heists, capers, scams, feuds, and other narratives with theatrical appeal. And with the streaming industry now retrenching after years of expansion, he’s an unlikely giant left standing as the flood of content recedes, his career at once totally inimitable and an object lesson in how, with maximum chutzpah and minimum rigor, to strike it rich in Hollywood. But if you spend enough time with him, it’s impossible not to ponder an ethical quandary of your own: If you could write as quickly and cinematically as Mezrich; if you could put a child or two through college by selling a single 15-page Word document you dreamed up in a weekend; if you could fudge a few details and make it in Hollywood, might you do it, too?
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