January 13, 2025 • 35 mins
Ben Mezrich is a major international and NYT bestselling author with well over 11 million copies sold. With such hits as “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook” which was made into the critically acclaimed movie THE SOCIAL NETWORK and DUMB MONEY starring Pete Davidson and America Fererra... take a peek inside Ben Mezrich’s daily writing routine, his latest projects and so much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Lisa's Book Club, a podcast where I
interview best selling authors from the New England area, pulling
back the curtain on what it's really like being a
best selling author. They're guilty pleasures, latest projects, and so
much more. Hey, my name's Lisa, and I want to
introduce my first book Club guest, New York Times best
selling author of The Accidental Billionaires, Bringing Down the House
(00:26):
and Dumb Money, amongst so many others, Ben Measure at
Kay Ben.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It's been a long run. I've had I think twenty
four twenty five books, but people really read two of them,
so it wasn't like they were all big best sellers.
But it's been a great run for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So we're talking about the social network, which was made
into a movie, bringing Down the House, which was the
story of the MIT students, which was also made into
a movie, and now you have well we have to
talk about bitcoin billionaires, right right.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
We can talk about that, Sure, we can talk about that.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
You've also you're also currently writing for the show Billions.
I don't know if you guys know that amazing, which
is incredible too.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
And you're also currently working on.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
A movie based on your book the anti social network
for Sony right right.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The movie is called Dumb Money and it's about the
whole Game Stop drama if you remember that craziness with GameStop.
And we just wrap shooting pretty much and it stars
Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Shileene Woodley, America Ferrara, Sebastian Stan
from the Marvel Movies, Phenomenal Cast and it'll be out
(01:40):
next next summer early fall.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
So this is incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I mean, everyone wants to know what's it like working
with Pete Davidson.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Pete Davidson is interesting, you know. I have to tell
you he is an amazing actor. And this movie it's
kind of a dark comedy and I've seen a lot
of the scenes that he's in and it's just gonna
blow people away. And he plays like a towny character,
so it's kind of a perfect it is character for him.
It all takes place around Boston, so he's doing a
(02:11):
sort of Boston accent. There's a lot of Boston stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Are you schooling him on that?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
No?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
No, I.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
I did get to shoot a cameo in the movie,
but not with the I shot it with Sebastian Stan.
Oh so, which there's a scene where I get to
hug him, and I had to shoot it like a
hundred times, and my wife was very jealous hugging Sebastian
Stan one hundred times. But we'll see if it gets
into the movie, you know how you never know what's
going to end up in. But the movie looks fantastic.
(02:39):
I think it's gonna be really great.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Are they going to fill up any of it here,
you know?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I don't know. I don't know if they'll do some exteriors.
This the book and the story took place in the
Wilmington area, a little bit in Brockton area, so there
is great Boston connections to it. We'll definitely do it
like a big Boston premiere and stuff when the movie
comes out, But I don't know whether they'll actually shoot
here or not.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Has the guy that was the center of it from
here has he visited the set or have you met him? No?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
So when I wrote the book, I was researching and
I got into pretty much everybody I needed to talk to,
But he has been pretty secretive since it all went down.
I think he's facing a lot of different lawsuits. I
don't know if you know the story, but he turned
a fifty thousand dollars investment into fifty million dollars and
then nearly wrecked the whole stock market. So he became
(03:28):
the center of a whole lot of different legal actions.
So he's kind of buttoned up at the moment.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So wow, yeah, all right, So let's sort of like
backtrack a little bit because this is a book club.
So I personally want to know just a little bit
about your backstory, Like how did you know that you
wanted to become a writer?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Like, was there a moment in time?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, moment For me, it started really early, so I
was very lucky in that respect. I was twelve when
I realized I wanted to be a writer. I really
loved television as a kid, and I used to want
to watch TV all the time. And my parents had
a rule when we were little that we had to
read two books a week before we were allowed to
watch TV.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
And you've got tough parents, Tim, My husband's here, we're
taking notes.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I know, Okay, anything counted as a book my dad.
You know, my parents had a huge library in the
basement of all sorts of things, so you could read
just about anything, but they would quiz us at the
end of each week on the books. And so by
the time I was eleven or twelve, I knew I
wanted to be a writer, not really knowing what that meant.
And I tried to write a book when I was twelve,
and I even sent it out to publishers and got rejected.
(04:34):
But it was so when I got to college, I knew, Okay,
I'm going to be a writer. This is what I'm
going to do. So everything I did from that point
on was just to figure out how to break into
the writing industry. And so when I graduated from college,
I moved to an apartment in the back bay with
my roommate from college, and we had this little underground
basement apartment and we both just wrote all day long,
and I wrote nine novels the year I graduated, which
(04:57):
I don't recommend to anybody, was because my dad had
said to me, I'm not going to let you starve
for one year. So in one year, you have to
prove that you can be a writer or you're just
cut off. And so because he wanted me to be
a doctor or lawyer the rest of my family, so
I literally wrote nine novels in one year. I was
writing forty pages a day, round the clock writing, and
(05:20):
at the end of the year I had one hundred
and ninety rejection slips. I've been rejected by everyone in publishing.
And then I was even rejected by a janitor at
a publishing house because I wrote a manuscript and I
sent it to an editor who had no longer working
there and ended up in the trash and a janitor
took it out of the trash and then sent me
a rejection letter naxious. But I kept going and eventually
(05:41):
caught the attention of an editor and ended up selling
my first book when I was I guess twenty five
or so, so that's when it all started.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Do you still have the other eight books? I guess
are they still sitting side?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
I have all the rejection slips too, the books. You know,
For me, some writers write one book ten times to
get to a book. For me, it took ten books
before I got to one. I think that was good
enough to get published. So I'm just one of those
people that needed to write thousands of hours before I
practice Some us.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, so what's your process? I always think about writers like,
do you go up to it like a remote location,
and close yourself off from your family and friends for
months on ends.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I mean, what is that I have paid that picture.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I'm fairly eccentric and neurotic. I'm an odd person and
I've written all different ways. When I started out, I
was a nighttime writer, and I would write from ten
pm to ten am, and I would write all night long,
usually locked up, you know, windows drawn music playing really loud.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
But as I have little kids now right, your life
is just it transformed me and so I really start
writing now at noon, you know, I get up with
the kids, take the kids to school, do whatever you
do in the morning, and I write from like noon
to five or six, and then after dinner I'll write
a couple more hours. If I'm on deadline, I start
to get more and more into it. In the last
two weeks. Tony usually takes the kids somewhere and I
(07:05):
write round the clock.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So deadlines are those deadlines that you're putting on yourself
or is that a publisher saying?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I mean everything is self imposed in this industry. I
mean you don't have to do anything, but you won't
ever publish anything. So for me, usually when I sell
a project and I usually sell the movie first. So
I'm a little different than most book writers in that
I find a story, I write like a ten page proposal,
I sell it in Hollywood to some studio. Then I
sell the book rights, and then I write the book
(07:32):
while the studio is attempting to develop the movie.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
So it done come along way.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Fifteen books now or so, and the movie doesn't always
get made, but it just, you know, has that it
becomes something bigger than just a book, and to me,
that's always what I'm looking for. And then the writing
process is just you know, intense, crazy, furious for three months,
and then I move on to the next project.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So when you write on a computer, do you have
like an old fashioned typewriter?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I mean I have done everything because I've been doing
this for a long time. When I started out, I
was on typewriters. I've tried even you know, the dictation software.
I've dictated a couple of my books, which is a
little strange. But most of the time I just use
a laptop and I travel. I do hotel writing a lot,
like I wrote Bringing Down the House, which became the
movie twenty one about the Blackjack team in Vegas. Staying
(08:20):
in a different hotel suite every night for four weeks.
So I wrote that book in four weeks and I
stayed at a different hotel each night, as if you know,
I was on the blackjack team, right and in Vegas. Yeah,
so I stayed in every single casino there is.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Which is the best hotel there?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Do you think, oh, gosh, well, this was a long
time ago, mind you. At the time, I really liked
Encore there. I liked Bellagio a lot. You know, for
some reason, I I fell for the Flamingo, which is
a real crappy hotel, but there was something very charming
about being at the Dirty Bird, as we call it. Yeah.
But the worst hotel I can tell you was the
(08:56):
Imperial Palace. If any of you have ever stayed there,
your window shade open on a brick wall, and like
it was a little terrifying that one. And some of
the downtown hotels were really bad.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So do you get emails every day from people pitching
you their stories?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, so it used to be emails. Now it's more
Twitter or text. I used to have a phone, this
is back in the old days, with an answering machine
with a published number. So people could just pitch me stories,
and I would say almost all the big stories I've
been involved with have started with some random pitch to
me an email at two in the morning or a
phone call or something like that, and if it's cool,
(09:34):
I'll go out and meet with the main character and
hang out with them and see what where the story leads.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So you've never had to like a story that you
found to be interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
You've never had to hunt down that person set.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So the Game Stop story was that the Game Stop
story started. You know, I was at home during the
pandemic like everybody. I guess it was a year and
a half, two years ago, and all of a sudden,
Game Stops started to go crazy. If you remember what
was going on. All these Reddit people were buying the
stock and it became like as valuable as ge overnight,
and I started getting all these texts and tweets. People
were like, Ben, you should be writing this book. You
(10:08):
should be writing this book. And then my agent called
and was like, hey, you know what, My kid just
called me and said Ben should be writing this book.
So I was like, I wonder if I I've never
tried to chase a story before. It's usually someone pitches me.
So I started to reach out to see how many
of the characters I could actually get to. Did I
have access to all of the people involved? And I
discovered I did have access to a lot of the people.
(10:29):
So I this was a Wednesday. I wrote a proposal
on by Friday, there were eleven studios bidding on it,
and it was literally no research. I had done nothing yet.
And then I realized, Okay, I got to write this
book now. And so I actually had to figure out
how to write that book during the pandemic with no
actual you know, involvement in the story while the story
(10:52):
was happening. But it worked out so.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Definitely in the movie.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah right, So has there ever been a subject where
you just couldn't have access, like it just.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Didn't work out?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Plenty of times?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Can you tell us?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Like a couple plenty of stories where I've been pitched
stories and I didn't do it for some reason or another.
You know, Gosh, every story you've seen in the news,
I usually get pitched somewhere or another. I almost did
the story about those kids stuck in the cave in Thailand.
You remember that story. So the kids and their coach
came to me to tell their story way, but I
(11:29):
ended up not doing it for a variety of reasons.
It was a very good story, but it was hard
to know whether the book two years later would be
the kind of book, and it was very different than
the stuff I usually write about, you know, like the
FTX scandal would be a perfect book for.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Me and perfect Are you work? Are you currently trying
to work?
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Well?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Michael Lewis has been hanging out with the FTX guys
for six months planning to do a glowing book about them,
So we happened to be in the right place at
the right time. So you know, this one, I think
Michael's going to do. It just becomes the kind of
thing where I wrote a pitch a story, although he'll
take two years to write it and I could do
it in two months. But if I were to jump in, No,
he's phenomenal. He's a phenomenal right. I have to say,
(12:08):
every time I write a book, my younger brother will
read it and call me up and go, you know,
it's good, but it's no Michael Lewis, except so he
can have that one. Yeah, he's fantastic and he'll do
a phenomenal job with it. I might write something about it,
but I don't know if I'll do a book.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, it seems like there could be more written about
this story.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I mean, it could be folding, it could be a
great Well the.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Girl but one of the girls is from Newton.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I mean, and there's a whole lot North I
think high school. Then there's the whole Mit angle and
then all that stuff. But U but no, I don't
think I'm doing that. Sorry.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Wow, So have you ever had a flop? Like, has
there ever been a book that.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
A book that didn't do well? Yeah? I mean I've
written twenty five books at this point. It's not that
it's a flop. But every time you write a book,
you think it's going to be huge, at least I do.
I mean, I won't write a book unless I think
it's going to be the biggest thing in the world.
And some stories just aren't and you don't have a
lot of control over that. I've written a couple books
that I think would make phenomenal movies and we're still
(13:08):
working on them. I wrote a book called Sex on
the Moon.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
So this story my husband read that.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, it's a true story about a kid who was
kicked out of his house. He was a Mormon family.
He was kicked out for having pyramadal sex. The kid
was a genius eighteen years old and he went to
work for NASA. He decided, I'm going to become an astronaut.
He fell in love with an intern and decided to
impress her by breaking into a lab, a high security lab,
(13:34):
and stealing a safe full of moon rocks that had
been pulled from every moon landing in history. He stole
all these moon rocks, which were worth half a billion dollars.
He laid them out on a bed and had sex
with his girlfriend on the moon, and then tried to
sell the moon rocks over the internet, caught in a
huge sting operation. It's a phenomenal story. I spent three
months at NASA writing the story. The book did well.
(13:56):
It book was a long time ago, but we had
a bunch of different movie situations. We had Rob Pattentson
attached to it for a while, but the movie never
got made. So that was a story I think would
be a phenomenal catch me if you can kind of
movie totally help to make. But I have had a
lot of books that were like close to big successes,
but only two of my books really exploded, and those
(14:16):
were the ones where the movies were made already.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
So yeah, so you mentioned the FTX sort of scandal.
Is there anything else that you're currently sort of looking.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
At or I mean, I am I have just I'm
not allowed to say that much better. I just I
just pitched a very big story that'll probably break in
a week or two and then people will know what
I'm writing.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Can you come on the billion lease in the morning Shop.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And as soon as it breaks in all the Hollywood
reporters stuff, which it will probably shortly, then I will
come talk about it. But right now I'm you know,
I'm working on the sequel to Midnight Ride, which was
a book I wrote last year. The paperback is out
this week actually, so it's in airports right now. Giving
to the sequel comes out next summer. And that one
we sold the Spielberg to make a movie of, so
(14:59):
it's very Da Vinci. It all takes place. I love that.
And then I'm working on a show for Amazon based
on a book I really called Seven Wonders, which is
going to be a ten episode series starring simou Lee
the asan actor from the Marvel movies. Who's phenomenal and
he plays an anthropologist in our in our show, so
that'll be a show. It's directed and written by Justin Lynn,
(15:22):
who did all the Fast and Furious movies. So I've
got a lot of projects, he is.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, this is so much fun though, like every like
not just reading, but then we can just watch it
and go to the movies.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, I mean, I live the moments.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I feel like a book for me is a platform
for a movie or a television show, and I've always
felt that for me anyways, it's a I'm trying to
tell the story in as big and fun way as possible.
So I start with the book and then it hopefully
becomes something.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
But I think that's like an important thing about reading
is that when you read, you get transported into a
different place. And that's the whole reason why everybody reads. Right,
So I want to ask you who are your favorite authors?
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Like what are you reading? Do you even have time
to read?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah? I know I am reading all the time right now.
I could go back. So my favorite authors were Hunter S. Thompson,
Michael Crichton, and Jay McInerny. Bright Lights Big City was
a very fan. I love that me. Yeah, and hemingway
way back in the day. But I'm currently reading the
Matthew Perry Biography, which I don't know if anybody's read it,
but it is to me. It is mind blowing. It
(16:25):
is so intense and dark and funny and all of
these things. I know he I did not know how
much that guy was dealing with. If you're reading that book,
it's it's spectacular. How Yeah, it is very well written.
So I actually recommend that book.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
But you know what, maybe we'll put that on our
book club last.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And I got to say I don't. I don't always
like read celebrity books because I say that, but there's
something about you know, he's his dealing with addiction his
whole life. It's pretty spectacularly honest book. So I highly
recommend it. I think you'll like it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That's awesome. I love that. I love hearing that.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Do you guys have any questions for Ben? I know
I was walking around before. Everyone was super excited. Don't
be shy.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
We have a microphone.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Anybody got something?
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Anyone sure is that?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Oh no, that was just the glasses.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Any questions?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Oh did you work on it?
Speaker 1 (17:22):
What?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Were you doing there? Oh cool, you were background in
which scene? Do you remember what scene you were in? Oh? God,
the movie was twenty ten or eleven ten? Okay, yeah
something about. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Did you get to meet Justin Timberlake.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yes. I spent a lot of time with justin Timberlake.
He was great. He was really fun and super nice
and like just very uh. It was his first kind
of that kind of movie and he was great. I
remember when they first cast him as Sean Parker and
we were all like, se really justin Timberlake, and then
he was really really good.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
I thought, yeah, I thought he was And Eisenberg was amazing.
He came into the studio, we met him.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Oh yeah, he's an intense guy, very intense. The fun
part of it being an author on the set is
you have zero responsibilities and no power, so you just
go there and hang out and have a good time.
And then you don't know what to do with yourself and.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
You're going out with the act when you're on the
set that do the actors come over and ask?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Oh yeah, their actors all, well, they don't know who
you are at first, and so at first they're like,
who's that guy hanging out over there. But then they
see the director talking to you, and the director has
to be very nice to you usually, and then they're like, oh,
this guy is the guy who wrote the book. And
then they come over and have a long conversation with you.
And it depends on the set twenty one If you
remember that movie. Other than Kevin Spacey, who I guess
we don't talk about as much anymore, it was a
(18:44):
group of very young, fun actors who all became you know,
Josh Gadd ended up being you know, huge and everything,
and the Oloff. Now my kids are loved that I'm
friends with Oloff. But they came to Boston for a
month and they all stayed with me and Tanya because
they were just a bunch of kids and they were
at the Sheraton Hotel and they didn't like their rooms,
so they'd all come over our house and play video
games all day. So we had the whole cast and
(19:06):
Spacey too, and it was a whole scene, I can
tell you. And then for the Social Network, I don't
know if you had the Spirits, it was a much
more frightening set because David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, these
are all very big personalities, so it was less of
a party atmosphere, but it was incredible to watch how
it got film.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
When it won the Oscar area, it won.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
A lot Oscars.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Were you there?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, so we won Best Adapted Screenplay, and Aaron Sorkin
the first thing he said was I want to thank
Ben Mesick, and my phone like exploded and it was
an amazing moment. So I was there and I got
to go on stage at the Golden Globes and all
of that stuff and lots of fun stories about about
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, so you mentioned this set.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
So when you're sitting there, how I mean, have you
ever actually gotten up and said you're you're kind of
getting this wrong?
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Oh? No, no, you don't, you know. I mean no,
you're on set that the director is pretty much king,
and they might ask you questions, like someone'll come over
and say does this look right? Or do this character
do this or that kind of thing. But the reality
is it's not your movie. You know, you sell the project.
There's screenwriters who write it's usually not me, and then
I work with the screenwriters as they do that. But
(20:18):
once the movie's shooting, it's a train. You know, there's
one hundred and fifty people there. The director knows what
they're doing, and you know you're just alone for the ride.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So can you share your experience on Billions?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah? So Billions was great. It happened because of Twitter.
I was sitting at home and Brian Koppleman, who runs
the show, he texted me, tweeted to me because he
was interested in my book Bitcoin Billionaires, about the Winklevi
twins and their rise and Bitcoin, and he was talking
about writing that and he was like, have you ever
written for television? And I was like, I don't ever
(20:49):
leave the house. You know, I don't wear pants half
the time. And he's like, well, would you ever want
to write for TV? And I was like, well, you know,
I love Billions and I hang out with a lot
of billionaires. Like most of my career has been writing
about hedge fun you know, evil financiers, and so I
know the reality of that world, and that's what he
kind of wanted. So he's like, well, come and right
for us. So I was here in Boston, but I
(21:10):
would go to New York three days a week and
take the train in and it was amazing. It was
a totally different experience than writing a book. You're in
a room with six other writers and you have a
big whiteboard and you plan out the whole season, plan
out the episodes, and then you're given an episode. So
I wrote season five, episode three, I think it was.
And you get to hang with the actors a lot,
which was amazing. I love those actors, and Billions was
(21:33):
just a phenomenal show.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
So it's a phenomenal show.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah. I mean I think once acts left, it changed
a little bit. That was nobody's nobody wanted that to happen.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
But I yeah, yeah, Wow, that's so great. Does anyone
else have any other questions?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Okay we got yeah, oh left out of the books
that made it into the movies. That's a that's great question. Well,
I have to say the Social Work is a perfect movie.
I mean I would not change a word of that movie.
And I remember when Aaron Sorkin wrote the script. I
read the script and I just sat there for ten
(22:09):
minutes saying, oh my god, this is fantastic. So I
don't think I would make any changes to that. Twenty
one is a really fun movie, and it's aimed at
twenty one year olds, you know, flying to Vegas for
the first time. It's different than the book in a
lot of respects, which was a little bit more about
the math and beating Vegas. So I don't know if
I would change anything. I mean, I love both those movies.
(22:31):
I've been very lucky. You know, sooner or later a
bad movie will be made from one of my books.
It's just undeniable that happens. But so far, both those
movies really really worked out. And I think Dumb Money
is going to be fantastic. So I think, so far,
you know, it's going really well. I haven't had any
scene that I wish it made it in. But yeah,
(22:52):
oh well, my wife was in a small scene in
twenty one that ended up getting cut, so I wish
that stayed in. Yeah. So, but she is on the DVD.
If you have anyone ever still has a DVD machine,
I want.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
To see it.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
She's there.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Have the kids seen it?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
The kids have not yet. They're twelve and ten, so
I can't decide when they can watch twenty one.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
They believe what's their favorite book of my books?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, I mean, well, it's funny because they like to
pick up my books and look for bad words. That's
like their favorite thing. But my wife and I write
a children's series as well, called the Charlie Numbers Series,
and book four is coming out next summer. So they
like the Charlie Numbers books because they can read those
and stuff like that. But I think my son, like,
he knows I wrote the Facebook book, and he knows
(23:37):
I wrote a book about gamblers, but I don't. You know,
He's picked up like Seven Wonders because it opens with
a murder and he likes to read that stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So have they seen any of the movies? No?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, I mean Social Network. I think one of these
days we'll sit down and watch it, but we haven't
done it yet.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
That would be really fun.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah, I think we'll do it soon, but he's old enough.
My daughter at ten is close. There's like one scene
in the Social net Work with the groupie that I'd
have to like speed through, right, But yeah, sure, yes, yeah,
favorite of my book. So, I mean there's different experiences
(24:15):
came with writing each book, and so I remember those
more than the book itself. I loved writing Bringing Down
the House because I was in Vegas and it was
just a very and it was my first successful book.
So my life changed Overnight. It was dramatic, and I
would say I love writing the fiction. The Midnight Ride
was a blast to write because it takes place in Boston,
(24:37):
so I know you know the area really well. I
wrote a book called Wooly, which not that many people
read about George Church the scientists did in Boston. If
you know this guy who is making a wooly mammoth
in his lab, and it's a true story. And I
spent six months. It's very hard to sell books that
are all deep science, but I really enjoyed writing that book.
And then I wrote a UFO book called thirty seventh Parallel,
(24:59):
which was a really strange journey into this world of
people who have found evidence of UFOs, and it was
a really wild exting.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Do you believe? Did you believe?
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well? I will say when I started the book, I'm
absolute skeptic. I'm a science science background family. But what
I did learn through the course of writing that book
is there's a lot more out there than people realize.
So whether or not people you know, aliens have been
here or not, I can't say, but I can say
that there are materials and crash sites that have not
(25:29):
yet been explained and the government has totally started to
release things on that and so there are actual metallic
things we've found that we can't figure out where it's from.
And that's weird. But but who knows unexplained that.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah, that's a really good book. I have to say,
you haven't read that. It's a really fun book if
you like science fiction.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, but it's true. But it's it's weird. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
It's yeah. And we met mister Church. You brought him
into the studio.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
George six foot like six. He's a narcolept dyslexic genius,
is probably one of the smartest people in the world
and has a huge white beard, and he looks like God.
He looks like God, and he just hill in the
middle of a conversation. He can fall asleep. And his
lab has like a hundred lab students in it who
(26:20):
are changing the world. It's kind of spectacular.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Wow, you have met some incredible people.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah, I mean I have hung out with Russian oligarchs.
That's a great story. I spent a lot of time
with these Russians that are very terrifying individuals and whoever,
so no, I would not do that. I was in London, okay,
And I would go every weekend to London to write
that story and meet with you know, Roman Abramovich and
all of these terrifying individuals who would tell me the
most horrible stories, and then I'd spend a lot of
(26:48):
time with Really. Yeah, I had some very intense experiences
with those guys.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Did you have security?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
You know, quite the opposite. I was almost killed a
couple times. No, not almost killed, but I had a
couple moments where I thought things could get very ugly.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yeah, because you're asking the wrong question.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
No, they love me so basically. I remember once in
New York. I'm walking with this guy who was an
oligarch who had done a lot of really bad things,
and we're walking in New York and there were college
kids behind us being very loud, and he turns to
me and he's like a big, burly guy and he's like,
this is very annoying. And I was like, well, it's
New York. People are having a good time. And he's like,
shall I do something? And there was this moment It's
(27:26):
like that scene in Jaws where the eyes rolled back,
and I was like, if I say yes, something horrible
will happen. Here. So I was like, no, no, no,
everything's fine. He's like okay, and never mention it again.
But moments like that happened all the time. Like I
was in a bar in Russia, I mean in London
with this oligarch and one of his security men comes
up behind me and just jams something in my back
(27:46):
pocket and I was like, what is it? And he goes,
don't look, don't look, and I'm thinking, oh god, I'm
polonium poison. Now I'm gonna die. And I go back
to the hotel and I pull it out and it
was a computer memory card and I didn't know what
was on it. I didn't want to open it in London.
Had a lawyer waiting in the airport in Boston for me.
I flew back to Boston and just to make sure
I didn't know what it was. And when I put
it in my computer, it contained ten thousand pages of
(28:09):
court depositions with putin with all of the big ways
and it ended up informing that book. And so I
don't know if I'm ever supposed to have that. I
don't know if it was a document that ever was
supposed to but they wanted me to have that information.
Stuff like that happened all the time writing that book.
It's an intense story.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
That's intense. Someone should write a book about you writing.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I mean, i'm i've heard a sorry. Yeah. I was
interviewing a Japanese kuza boss once. I don't know if
I ever told you this story, but I was in
Osaka and I was set up. There's a book I
wrote called Ugly Americans about expat bankers living in Asia.
Very crazy book. But anyways, I was like trying to
interview with yakuza boss. So I got this interview through
(28:48):
a bunch of connections. They're like, you're going to be
interviewing this guy. You can ask him what you want.
And this is the guy who didn't have a pinky
because he had cut it off and given it to
his boss when he'd done something wrong. And they said,
there's going to be two guys behind you. You are
not to look at them. And so I had to
do this whole interview with these two huge men standing
behind me. I don't even remember what I asked the guy.
It was just this terrifying meeting. I don't know. It
(29:11):
was a useless interview and I ran out of there.
But I've had a lot of experiences like that.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
So, yeah, the guy without the pinky, that's amazing. Does
anyone else have any other questions?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Anything else?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Oh, Christine, no.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Change me? Yeah. I mean, you know, I have a
kind of a double life personality. Or at home, I'm
like totally you know, kid oriented. I live in the house.
I'm a you know, somewhat neurotic, as I said, individual.
But then I go out and research these stories and
become a part of the story. I run around with
these characters. Spent six months with the winkleed It Twins
running around New York, and you know, playing with the
(29:58):
Mit Blackjack Team or whatever it is. I think each
story I tend to fall for my characters. So in
the while I'm writing the story, I think Janet Maslin
called me the billionaire's best friend, because I no matter
how many horrible things they might have done, I try
and see it from their point of view and from
their eyes. But when I'm done with the story and
(30:19):
move on, I go back to who I really am.
So it's it's a weird thing. I don't think I've
gained superpowers along the way, but I've gained a little
bit of understanding about each group or each character I've
written about, and I can see sort of the good
in some pretty bad people along the way. I don't know.
I mean, I think I've changed as a person in
(30:40):
numerous ways being a writer all these years. But you know,
it's it's a good question that I have to think
about more to give you a better answer. But I've
definitely learned a lot through the characters, but I always
return to who I am. It's almost like I'm watching
a movie when I'm living that research phase of life.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Do you still stay in touch with the Winklevoss twins.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, I just I talk to them every day pretty much.
And this is a weird time for them because crypto is,
you know, taking a little bit of a dive. But
you know, they bought two hundred thousand bitcoin at seven
dollars a coin, so they have three billion dollars in bitcoin,
which is kind of wild. And they're exactly what you
would expect of six foot five identical twin Olympic rowers
who now have a billion dollars. So they're a little
(31:27):
over the top and crazy and wild. But yeah, I
stay in touch with them, and they've been you know,
you know good guys in my opinion. I mean, they're
they're tough, they're kind of like sharks in some ways,
but once you get to know them, they believe in
honor and right and wrong and that sort of thing.
So yeah, very cool.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Did you guys have a question?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, yes, yeah, that's a great question. And so, you know,
people usually ask me, well, when are the Oligarchs going
to get rid of Putin? That's been a question I
get a lot. The reality is, until a couple months ago,
(32:09):
I would say it's the other way around. You know,
Putin is the godfather. Putin decides which oligarchs get to
be Oligarchs and which ones don't.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I tell the story in the book that when the
Oligarchs placed Putin in power, he was in nobody, a
low level KGB agent who worked for the mayor of
Saint Petersburg who had helped the oligarchs get a car
dealership opened up. That's how they knew him. And when
Yelton was dying, they installed Putin as the next president,
thinking they could control him. And in the first week
of work, he invited all the oligarchs to Stalin's old house,
(32:39):
which is a place where there's bullet holes in the
walls where they used to line people up. And he
sat the oligarchs down and he said, listen, you've all
made a lot of money. You can keep your money,
but from here on out, you stay out of my way.
And any oligarchs who stayed out of his ways an
oligarch today, and any oligarch who stood up to him
is you know, fell out of an elevator or fell,
you know, out of a window or whatever it is,
(33:00):
and is dead. So the oligarchs live by Putin's grace.
But in the last month or so, we have definitely
seen some of these oligarchs, like Roman Abramovich, try and
solve the problem, and then Roman got poisoned and almost
died doing it. I don't think the oligarchs want to
be in the Ukraine. The ones I've talked to are like,
we hate this, We don't care about the Ukraine. This
(33:21):
is not a war that we're in favor of. But
Putin has an incredibly powerful base around him, and he
has levels and levels below him. It's very hard to
see him being deposed, and he's incredibly popular in Russia.
That's what's forgotten here. He's not an unpopular dictator. He's
a dictator who if he ran tomorrow, would win by
ninety percent of the vote. So it's not an easy answer.
(33:44):
But all of the oligarchs would like the war to end,
so we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Wow, well this was amazing.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, you know so much about so many different subjects, right,
I mean that must yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
And yet I get lost walking around my house. I'm
just like, I'm like mister McGoo in real life. So
I love that.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I love your wife his wife. Actually, I need to
mention Tanya. She was a big part of this too,
setting this up. She's the new fashion editor for Fashion
editor of Boston Magazine, So the next time you pick
up Boston Magazine you'll see Tanya Mesick's name, which is
really fabulous there, and she's actually writing a piece on
the book club for the January issue. Yeah, it's going
(34:25):
to be great, so our picture will be in it, hopefully.
So this was fabulous. Thank you so much for being
our first book club author.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
This is this is a big deal.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
These are the founding members and I really hope that
this grows and continues to expand and that maybe we
can have Ben come back again at some point.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, thank you guys. You guys, you guys are all amazing.
I mean, a book club in this day and age
is such a wonderful thing to see. And you know,
you guys a guts went to wait. You guys have
been my home and my family for twenty since the
beginning of my career, even before I was a writer,
I came on your show. So I'm just a big
fan of what you're doing and listen, You're all amazing
for doing this, so I hope it grows and grows
(35:09):
and grows well.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Thanks Ben.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Lisa's book Club is free to join at Kiss oneaway
dot com slash Lisa's book Club, where we host in
person events with best selling local authors. Please join us
for our next episode featuring Mel Robbins.
Hey, welcome to Lisa's Book Club, a podcast where I
interview best selling authors from the New England area, pulling
back the curtain on what it's really like being a
best selling author. They're guilty pleasures, latest projects, and so
much more. Hey, my name's Lisa, and I want to
introduce my first book Club guest, New York Times best
selling author of The Accidental Billionaires, Bringing Down the House
(00:26):
and Dumb Money, amongst so many others, Ben Measure at
Kay Ben.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It's been a long run. I've had I think twenty
four twenty five books, but people really read two of them,
so it wasn't like they were all big best sellers.
But it's been a great run for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So we're talking about the social network, which was made
into a movie, bringing Down the House, which was the
story of the MIT students, which was also made into
a movie, and now you have well we have to
talk about bitcoin billionaires, right right.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
We can talk about that, Sure, we can talk about that.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
You've also you're also currently writing for the show Billions.
I don't know if you guys know that amazing, which
is incredible too.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
And you're also currently working on.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
A movie based on your book the anti social network
for Sony right right.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The movie is called Dumb Money and it's about the
whole Game Stop drama if you remember that craziness with GameStop.
And we just wrap shooting pretty much and it stars
Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Shileene Woodley, America Ferrara, Sebastian Stan
from the Marvel Movies, Phenomenal Cast and it'll be out
(01:40):
next next summer early fall.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
So this is incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I mean, everyone wants to know what's it like working
with Pete Davidson.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Pete Davidson is interesting, you know. I have to tell
you he is an amazing actor. And this movie it's
kind of a dark comedy and I've seen a lot
of the scenes that he's in and it's just gonna
blow people away. And he plays like a towny character,
so it's kind of a perfect it is character for him.
It all takes place around Boston, so he's doing a
(02:11):
sort of Boston accent. There's a lot of Boston stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Are you schooling him on that?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
No?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
No, I.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
I did get to shoot a cameo in the movie,
but not with the I shot it with Sebastian Stan.
Oh so, which there's a scene where I get to
hug him, and I had to shoot it like a
hundred times, and my wife was very jealous hugging Sebastian
Stan one hundred times. But we'll see if it gets
into the movie, you know how you never know what's
going to end up in. But the movie looks fantastic.
(02:39):
I think it's gonna be really great.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Are they going to fill up any of it here,
you know?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I don't know. I don't know if they'll do some exteriors.
This the book and the story took place in the
Wilmington area, a little bit in Brockton area, so there
is great Boston connections to it. We'll definitely do it
like a big Boston premiere and stuff when the movie
comes out, But I don't know whether they'll actually shoot
here or not.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Has the guy that was the center of it from
here has he visited the set or have you met him? No?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
So when I wrote the book, I was researching and
I got into pretty much everybody I needed to talk to,
But he has been pretty secretive since it all went down.
I think he's facing a lot of different lawsuits. I
don't know if you know the story, but he turned
a fifty thousand dollars investment into fifty million dollars and
then nearly wrecked the whole stock market. So he became
(03:28):
the center of a whole lot of different legal actions.
So he's kind of buttoned up at the moment.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So wow, yeah, all right, So let's sort of like
backtrack a little bit because this is a book club.
So I personally want to know just a little bit
about your backstory, Like how did you know that you
wanted to become a writer?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Like, was there a moment in time?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, moment For me, it started really early, so I
was very lucky in that respect. I was twelve when
I realized I wanted to be a writer. I really
loved television as a kid, and I used to want
to watch TV all the time. And my parents had
a rule when we were little that we had to
read two books a week before we were allowed to
watch TV.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
And you've got tough parents, Tim, My husband's here, we're
taking notes.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I know, Okay, anything counted as a book my dad.
You know, my parents had a huge library in the
basement of all sorts of things, so you could read
just about anything, but they would quiz us at the
end of each week on the books. And so by
the time I was eleven or twelve, I knew I
wanted to be a writer, not really knowing what that meant.
And I tried to write a book when I was twelve,
and I even sent it out to publishers and got rejected.
(04:34):
But it was so when I got to college, I knew, Okay,
I'm going to be a writer. This is what I'm
going to do. So everything I did from that point
on was just to figure out how to break into
the writing industry. And so when I graduated from college,
I moved to an apartment in the back bay with
my roommate from college, and we had this little underground
basement apartment and we both just wrote all day long,
and I wrote nine novels the year I graduated, which
(04:57):
I don't recommend to anybody, was because my dad had
said to me, I'm not going to let you starve
for one year. So in one year, you have to
prove that you can be a writer or you're just
cut off. And so because he wanted me to be
a doctor or lawyer the rest of my family, so
I literally wrote nine novels in one year. I was
writing forty pages a day, round the clock writing, and
(05:20):
at the end of the year I had one hundred
and ninety rejection slips. I've been rejected by everyone in publishing.
And then I was even rejected by a janitor at
a publishing house because I wrote a manuscript and I
sent it to an editor who had no longer working
there and ended up in the trash and a janitor
took it out of the trash and then sent me
a rejection letter naxious. But I kept going and eventually
(05:41):
caught the attention of an editor and ended up selling
my first book when I was I guess twenty five
or so, so that's when it all started.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Do you still have the other eight books? I guess
are they still sitting side?
Speaker 2 (05:54):
I have all the rejection slips too, the books. You know,
For me, some writers write one book ten times to
get to a book. For me, it took ten books
before I got to one. I think that was good
enough to get published. So I'm just one of those
people that needed to write thousands of hours before I
practice Some us.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, so what's your process? I always think about writers like,
do you go up to it like a remote location,
and close yourself off from your family and friends for
months on ends.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I mean, what is that I have paid that picture.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I'm fairly eccentric and neurotic. I'm an odd person and
I've written all different ways. When I started out, I
was a nighttime writer, and I would write from ten
pm to ten am, and I would write all night long,
usually locked up, you know, windows drawn music playing really loud.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
But as I have little kids now right, your life
is just it transformed me and so I really start
writing now at noon, you know, I get up with
the kids, take the kids to school, do whatever you
do in the morning, and I write from like noon
to five or six, and then after dinner I'll write
a couple more hours. If I'm on deadline, I start
to get more and more into it. In the last
two weeks. Tony usually takes the kids somewhere and I
(07:05):
write round the clock.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So deadlines are those deadlines that you're putting on yourself
or is that a publisher saying?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I mean everything is self imposed in this industry. I
mean you don't have to do anything, but you won't
ever publish anything. So for me, usually when I sell
a project and I usually sell the movie first. So
I'm a little different than most book writers in that
I find a story, I write like a ten page proposal,
I sell it in Hollywood to some studio. Then I
sell the book rights, and then I write the book
(07:32):
while the studio is attempting to develop the movie.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
So it done come along way.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Fifteen books now or so, and the movie doesn't always
get made, but it just, you know, has that it
becomes something bigger than just a book, and to me,
that's always what I'm looking for. And then the writing
process is just you know, intense, crazy, furious for three months,
and then I move on to the next project.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So when you write on a computer, do you have
like an old fashioned typewriter?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I mean I have done everything because I've been doing
this for a long time. When I started out, I
was on typewriters. I've tried even you know, the dictation software.
I've dictated a couple of my books, which is a
little strange. But most of the time I just use
a laptop and I travel. I do hotel writing a lot,
like I wrote Bringing Down the House, which became the
movie twenty one about the Blackjack team in Vegas. Staying
(08:20):
in a different hotel suite every night for four weeks.
So I wrote that book in four weeks and I
stayed at a different hotel each night, as if you know,
I was on the blackjack team, right and in Vegas. Yeah,
so I stayed in every single casino there is.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Which is the best hotel there?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Do you think, oh, gosh, well, this was a long
time ago, mind you. At the time, I really liked
Encore there. I liked Bellagio a lot. You know, for
some reason, I I fell for the Flamingo, which is
a real crappy hotel, but there was something very charming
about being at the Dirty Bird, as we call it. Yeah.
But the worst hotel I can tell you was the
(08:56):
Imperial Palace. If any of you have ever stayed there,
your window shade open on a brick wall, and like
it was a little terrifying that one. And some of
the downtown hotels were really bad.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So do you get emails every day from people pitching
you their stories?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, so it used to be emails. Now it's more
Twitter or text. I used to have a phone, this
is back in the old days, with an answering machine
with a published number. So people could just pitch me stories,
and I would say almost all the big stories I've
been involved with have started with some random pitch to
me an email at two in the morning or a
phone call or something like that, and if it's cool,
(09:34):
I'll go out and meet with the main character and
hang out with them and see what where the story leads.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So you've never had to like a story that you
found to be interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
You've never had to hunt down that person set.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So the Game Stop story was that the Game Stop
story started. You know, I was at home during the
pandemic like everybody. I guess it was a year and
a half, two years ago, and all of a sudden,
Game Stops started to go crazy. If you remember what
was going on. All these Reddit people were buying the
stock and it became like as valuable as ge overnight,
and I started getting all these texts and tweets. People
were like, Ben, you should be writing this book. You
(10:08):
should be writing this book. And then my agent called
and was like, hey, you know what, My kid just
called me and said Ben should be writing this book.
So I was like, I wonder if I I've never
tried to chase a story before. It's usually someone pitches me.
So I started to reach out to see how many
of the characters I could actually get to. Did I
have access to all of the people involved? And I
discovered I did have access to a lot of the people.
(10:29):
So I this was a Wednesday. I wrote a proposal
on by Friday, there were eleven studios bidding on it,
and it was literally no research. I had done nothing yet.
And then I realized, Okay, I got to write this
book now. And so I actually had to figure out
how to write that book during the pandemic with no
actual you know, involvement in the story while the story
(10:52):
was happening. But it worked out so.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Definitely in the movie.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah right, So has there ever been a subject where
you just couldn't have access, like it just.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Didn't work out?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Plenty of times?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Can you tell us?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Like a couple plenty of stories where I've been pitched
stories and I didn't do it for some reason or another.
You know, Gosh, every story you've seen in the news,
I usually get pitched somewhere or another. I almost did
the story about those kids stuck in the cave in Thailand.
You remember that story. So the kids and their coach
came to me to tell their story way, but I
(11:29):
ended up not doing it for a variety of reasons.
It was a very good story, but it was hard
to know whether the book two years later would be
the kind of book, and it was very different than
the stuff I usually write about, you know, like the
FTX scandal would be a perfect book for.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Me and perfect Are you work? Are you currently trying
to work?
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Well?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Michael Lewis has been hanging out with the FTX guys
for six months planning to do a glowing book about them,
So we happened to be in the right place at
the right time. So you know, this one, I think
Michael's going to do. It just becomes the kind of
thing where I wrote a pitch a story, although he'll
take two years to write it and I could do
it in two months. But if I were to jump in, No,
he's phenomenal. He's a phenomenal right. I have to say,
(12:08):
every time I write a book, my younger brother will
read it and call me up and go, you know,
it's good, but it's no Michael Lewis, except so he
can have that one. Yeah, he's fantastic and he'll do
a phenomenal job with it. I might write something about it,
but I don't know if I'll do a book.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, it seems like there could be more written about
this story.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I mean, it could be folding, it could be a
great Well the.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Girl but one of the girls is from Newton.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I mean, and there's a whole lot North I
think high school. Then there's the whole Mit angle and
then all that stuff. But U but no, I don't
think I'm doing that. Sorry.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Wow, So have you ever had a flop? Like, has
there ever been a book that.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
A book that didn't do well? Yeah? I mean I've
written twenty five books at this point. It's not that
it's a flop. But every time you write a book,
you think it's going to be huge, at least I do.
I mean, I won't write a book unless I think
it's going to be the biggest thing in the world.
And some stories just aren't and you don't have a
lot of control over that. I've written a couple books
that I think would make phenomenal movies and we're still
(13:08):
working on them. I wrote a book called Sex on
the Moon.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
So this story my husband read that.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, it's a true story about a kid who was
kicked out of his house. He was a Mormon family.
He was kicked out for having pyramadal sex. The kid
was a genius eighteen years old and he went to
work for NASA. He decided, I'm going to become an astronaut.
He fell in love with an intern and decided to
impress her by breaking into a lab, a high security lab,
(13:34):
and stealing a safe full of moon rocks that had
been pulled from every moon landing in history. He stole
all these moon rocks, which were worth half a billion dollars.
He laid them out on a bed and had sex
with his girlfriend on the moon, and then tried to
sell the moon rocks over the internet, caught in a
huge sting operation. It's a phenomenal story. I spent three
months at NASA writing the story. The book did well.
(13:56):
It book was a long time ago, but we had
a bunch of different movie situations. We had Rob Pattentson
attached to it for a while, but the movie never
got made. So that was a story I think would
be a phenomenal catch me if you can kind of
movie totally help to make. But I have had a
lot of books that were like close to big successes,
but only two of my books really exploded, and those
(14:16):
were the ones where the movies were made already.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
So yeah, so you mentioned the FTX sort of scandal.
Is there anything else that you're currently sort of looking.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
At or I mean, I am I have just I'm
not allowed to say that much better. I just I
just pitched a very big story that'll probably break in
a week or two and then people will know what
I'm writing.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Can you come on the billion lease in the morning Shop.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And as soon as it breaks in all the Hollywood
reporters stuff, which it will probably shortly, then I will
come talk about it. But right now I'm you know,
I'm working on the sequel to Midnight Ride, which was
a book I wrote last year. The paperback is out
this week actually, so it's in airports right now. Giving
to the sequel comes out next summer. And that one
we sold the Spielberg to make a movie of, so
(14:59):
it's very Da Vinci. It all takes place. I love that.
And then I'm working on a show for Amazon based
on a book I really called Seven Wonders, which is
going to be a ten episode series starring simou Lee
the asan actor from the Marvel movies. Who's phenomenal and
he plays an anthropologist in our in our show, so
that'll be a show. It's directed and written by Justin Lynn,
(15:22):
who did all the Fast and Furious movies. So I've
got a lot of projects, he is.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, this is so much fun though, like every like
not just reading, but then we can just watch it
and go to the movies.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, I mean, I live the moments.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I feel like a book for me is a platform
for a movie or a television show, and I've always
felt that for me anyways, it's a I'm trying to
tell the story in as big and fun way as possible.
So I start with the book and then it hopefully
becomes something.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
But I think that's like an important thing about reading
is that when you read, you get transported into a
different place. And that's the whole reason why everybody reads. Right,
So I want to ask you who are your favorite authors?
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Like what are you reading? Do you even have time
to read?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah? I know I am reading all the time right now.
I could go back. So my favorite authors were Hunter S. Thompson,
Michael Crichton, and Jay McInerny. Bright Lights Big City was
a very fan. I love that me. Yeah, and hemingway
way back in the day. But I'm currently reading the
Matthew Perry Biography, which I don't know if anybody's read it,
but it is to me. It is mind blowing. It
(16:25):
is so intense and dark and funny and all of
these things. I know he I did not know how
much that guy was dealing with. If you're reading that book,
it's it's spectacular. How Yeah, it is very well written.
So I actually recommend that book.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
But you know what, maybe we'll put that on our
book club last.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And I got to say I don't. I don't always
like read celebrity books because I say that, but there's
something about you know, he's his dealing with addiction his
whole life. It's pretty spectacularly honest book. So I highly
recommend it. I think you'll like it.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That's awesome. I love that. I love hearing that.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Do you guys have any questions for Ben? I know
I was walking around before. Everyone was super excited. Don't
be shy.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
We have a microphone.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Anybody got something?
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Anyone sure is that?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Oh no, that was just the glasses.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Any questions?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Oh did you work on it?
Speaker 1 (17:22):
What?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Were you doing there? Oh cool, you were background in
which scene? Do you remember what scene you were in? Oh? God,
the movie was twenty ten or eleven ten? Okay, yeah
something about. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Did you get to meet Justin Timberlake.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yes. I spent a lot of time with justin Timberlake.
He was great. He was really fun and super nice
and like just very uh. It was his first kind
of that kind of movie and he was great. I
remember when they first cast him as Sean Parker and
we were all like, se really justin Timberlake, and then
he was really really good.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
I thought, yeah, I thought he was And Eisenberg was amazing.
He came into the studio, we met him.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Oh yeah, he's an intense guy, very intense. The fun
part of it being an author on the set is
you have zero responsibilities and no power, so you just
go there and hang out and have a good time.
And then you don't know what to do with yourself and.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
You're going out with the act when you're on the
set that do the actors come over and ask?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Oh yeah, their actors all, well, they don't know who
you are at first, and so at first they're like,
who's that guy hanging out over there. But then they
see the director talking to you, and the director has
to be very nice to you usually, and then they're like, oh,
this guy is the guy who wrote the book. And
then they come over and have a long conversation with you.
And it depends on the set twenty one If you
remember that movie. Other than Kevin Spacey, who I guess
we don't talk about as much anymore, it was a
(18:44):
group of very young, fun actors who all became you know,
Josh Gadd ended up being you know, huge and everything,
and the Oloff. Now my kids are loved that I'm
friends with Oloff. But they came to Boston for a
month and they all stayed with me and Tanya because
they were just a bunch of kids and they were
at the Sheraton Hotel and they didn't like their rooms,
so they'd all come over our house and play video
games all day. So we had the whole cast and
(19:06):
Spacey too, and it was a whole scene, I can
tell you. And then for the Social Network, I don't
know if you had the Spirits, it was a much
more frightening set because David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, these
are all very big personalities, so it was less of
a party atmosphere, but it was incredible to watch how
it got film.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
When it won the Oscar area, it won.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
A lot Oscars.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Were you there?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, so we won Best Adapted Screenplay, and Aaron Sorkin
the first thing he said was I want to thank
Ben Mesick, and my phone like exploded and it was
an amazing moment. So I was there and I got
to go on stage at the Golden Globes and all
of that stuff and lots of fun stories about about
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, so you mentioned this set.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
So when you're sitting there, how I mean, have you
ever actually gotten up and said you're you're kind of
getting this wrong?
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Oh? No, no, you don't, you know. I mean no,
you're on set that the director is pretty much king,
and they might ask you questions, like someone'll come over
and say does this look right? Or do this character
do this or that kind of thing. But the reality
is it's not your movie. You know, you sell the project.
There's screenwriters who write it's usually not me, and then
I work with the screenwriters as they do that. But
(20:18):
once the movie's shooting, it's a train. You know, there's
one hundred and fifty people there. The director knows what
they're doing, and you know you're just alone for the ride.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So can you share your experience on Billions?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah? So Billions was great. It happened because of Twitter.
I was sitting at home and Brian Koppleman, who runs
the show, he texted me, tweeted to me because he
was interested in my book Bitcoin Billionaires, about the Winklevi
twins and their rise and Bitcoin, and he was talking
about writing that and he was like, have you ever
written for television? And I was like, I don't ever
(20:49):
leave the house. You know, I don't wear pants half
the time. And he's like, well, would you ever want
to write for TV? And I was like, well, you know,
I love Billions and I hang out with a lot
of billionaires. Like most of my career has been writing
about hedge fun you know, evil financiers, and so I
know the reality of that world, and that's what he
kind of wanted. So he's like, well, come and right
for us. So I was here in Boston, but I
(21:10):
would go to New York three days a week and
take the train in and it was amazing. It was
a totally different experience than writing a book. You're in
a room with six other writers and you have a
big whiteboard and you plan out the whole season, plan
out the episodes, and then you're given an episode. So
I wrote season five, episode three, I think it was.
And you get to hang with the actors a lot,
which was amazing. I love those actors, and Billions was
(21:33):
just a phenomenal show.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
So it's a phenomenal show.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah. I mean I think once acts left, it changed
a little bit. That was nobody's nobody wanted that to happen.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
But I yeah, yeah, Wow, that's so great. Does anyone
else have any other questions?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Okay we got yeah, oh left out of the books
that made it into the movies. That's a that's great question. Well,
I have to say the Social Work is a perfect movie.
I mean I would not change a word of that movie.
And I remember when Aaron Sorkin wrote the script. I
read the script and I just sat there for ten
(22:09):
minutes saying, oh my god, this is fantastic. So I
don't think I would make any changes to that. Twenty
one is a really fun movie, and it's aimed at
twenty one year olds, you know, flying to Vegas for
the first time. It's different than the book in a
lot of respects, which was a little bit more about
the math and beating Vegas. So I don't know if
I would change anything. I mean, I love both those movies.
(22:31):
I've been very lucky. You know, sooner or later a
bad movie will be made from one of my books.
It's just undeniable that happens. But so far, both those
movies really really worked out. And I think Dumb Money
is going to be fantastic. So I think, so far,
you know, it's going really well. I haven't had any
scene that I wish it made it in. But yeah,
(22:52):
oh well, my wife was in a small scene in
twenty one that ended up getting cut, so I wish
that stayed in. Yeah. So, but she is on the DVD.
If you have anyone ever still has a DVD machine,
I want.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
To see it.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
She's there.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Have the kids seen it?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
The kids have not yet. They're twelve and ten, so
I can't decide when they can watch twenty one.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
They believe what's their favorite book of my books?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, I mean, well, it's funny because they like to
pick up my books and look for bad words. That's
like their favorite thing. But my wife and I write
a children's series as well, called the Charlie Numbers Series,
and book four is coming out next summer. So they
like the Charlie Numbers books because they can read those
and stuff like that. But I think my son, like,
he knows I wrote the Facebook book, and he knows
(23:37):
I wrote a book about gamblers, but I don't. You know,
He's picked up like Seven Wonders because it opens with
a murder and he likes to read that stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So have they seen any of the movies? No?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, I mean Social Network. I think one of these
days we'll sit down and watch it, but we haven't
done it yet.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
That would be really fun.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah, I think we'll do it soon, but he's old enough.
My daughter at ten is close. There's like one scene
in the Social net Work with the groupie that I'd
have to like speed through, right, But yeah, sure, yes, yeah,
favorite of my book. So, I mean there's different experiences
(24:15):
came with writing each book, and so I remember those
more than the book itself. I loved writing Bringing Down
the House because I was in Vegas and it was
just a very and it was my first successful book.
So my life changed Overnight. It was dramatic, and I
would say I love writing the fiction. The Midnight Ride
was a blast to write because it takes place in Boston,
(24:37):
so I know you know the area really well. I
wrote a book called Wooly, which not that many people
read about George Church the scientists did in Boston. If
you know this guy who is making a wooly mammoth
in his lab, and it's a true story. And I
spent six months. It's very hard to sell books that
are all deep science, but I really enjoyed writing that book.
And then I wrote a UFO book called thirty seventh Parallel,
(24:59):
which was a really strange journey into this world of
people who have found evidence of UFOs, and it was
a really wild exting.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Do you believe? Did you believe?
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well? I will say when I started the book, I'm
absolute skeptic. I'm a science science background family. But what
I did learn through the course of writing that book
is there's a lot more out there than people realize.
So whether or not people you know, aliens have been
here or not, I can't say, but I can say
that there are materials and crash sites that have not
(25:29):
yet been explained and the government has totally started to
release things on that and so there are actual metallic
things we've found that we can't figure out where it's from.
And that's weird. But but who knows unexplained that.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah, that's a really good book. I have to say,
you haven't read that. It's a really fun book if
you like science fiction.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, but it's true. But it's it's weird. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
It's yeah. And we met mister Church. You brought him
into the studio.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
George six foot like six. He's a narcolept dyslexic genius,
is probably one of the smartest people in the world
and has a huge white beard, and he looks like God.
He looks like God, and he just hill in the
middle of a conversation. He can fall asleep. And his
lab has like a hundred lab students in it who
(26:20):
are changing the world. It's kind of spectacular.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Wow, you have met some incredible people.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah, I mean I have hung out with Russian oligarchs.
That's a great story. I spent a lot of time
with these Russians that are very terrifying individuals and whoever,
so no, I would not do that. I was in London, okay,
And I would go every weekend to London to write
that story and meet with you know, Roman Abramovich and
all of these terrifying individuals who would tell me the
most horrible stories, and then I'd spend a lot of
(26:48):
time with Really. Yeah, I had some very intense experiences
with those guys.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Did you have security?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
You know, quite the opposite. I was almost killed a
couple times. No, not almost killed, but I had a
couple moments where I thought things could get very ugly.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yeah, because you're asking the wrong question.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
No, they love me so basically. I remember once in
New York. I'm walking with this guy who was an
oligarch who had done a lot of really bad things,
and we're walking in New York and there were college
kids behind us being very loud, and he turns to
me and he's like a big, burly guy and he's like,
this is very annoying. And I was like, well, it's
New York. People are having a good time. And he's like,
shall I do something? And there was this moment It's
(27:26):
like that scene in Jaws where the eyes rolled back,
and I was like, if I say yes, something horrible
will happen. Here. So I was like, no, no, no,
everything's fine. He's like okay, and never mention it again.
But moments like that happened all the time. Like I
was in a bar in Russia, I mean in London
with this oligarch and one of his security men comes
up behind me and just jams something in my back
(27:46):
pocket and I was like, what is it? And he goes,
don't look, don't look, and I'm thinking, oh god, I'm
polonium poison. Now I'm gonna die. And I go back
to the hotel and I pull it out and it
was a computer memory card and I didn't know what
was on it. I didn't want to open it in London.
Had a lawyer waiting in the airport in Boston for me.
I flew back to Boston and just to make sure
I didn't know what it was. And when I put
it in my computer, it contained ten thousand pages of
(28:09):
court depositions with putin with all of the big ways
and it ended up informing that book. And so I
don't know if I'm ever supposed to have that. I
don't know if it was a document that ever was
supposed to but they wanted me to have that information.
Stuff like that happened all the time writing that book.
It's an intense story.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
That's intense. Someone should write a book about you writing.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I mean, i'm i've heard a sorry. Yeah. I was
interviewing a Japanese kuza boss once. I don't know if
I ever told you this story, but I was in
Osaka and I was set up. There's a book I
wrote called Ugly Americans about expat bankers living in Asia.
Very crazy book. But anyways, I was like trying to
interview with yakuza boss. So I got this interview through
(28:48):
a bunch of connections. They're like, you're going to be
interviewing this guy. You can ask him what you want.
And this is the guy who didn't have a pinky
because he had cut it off and given it to
his boss when he'd done something wrong. And they said,
there's going to be two guys behind you. You are
not to look at them. And so I had to
do this whole interview with these two huge men standing
behind me. I don't even remember what I asked the guy.
It was just this terrifying meeting. I don't know. It
(29:11):
was a useless interview and I ran out of there.
But I've had a lot of experiences like that.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
So, yeah, the guy without the pinky, that's amazing. Does
anyone else have any other questions?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Anything else?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Oh, Christine, no.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Change me? Yeah. I mean, you know, I have a
kind of a double life personality. Or at home, I'm
like totally you know, kid oriented. I live in the house.
I'm a you know, somewhat neurotic, as I said, individual.
But then I go out and research these stories and
become a part of the story. I run around with
these characters. Spent six months with the winkleed It Twins
running around New York, and you know, playing with the
(29:58):
Mit Blackjack Team or whatever it is. I think each
story I tend to fall for my characters. So in
the while I'm writing the story, I think Janet Maslin
called me the billionaire's best friend, because I no matter
how many horrible things they might have done, I try
and see it from their point of view and from
their eyes. But when I'm done with the story and
(30:19):
move on, I go back to who I really am.
So it's it's a weird thing. I don't think I've
gained superpowers along the way, but I've gained a little
bit of understanding about each group or each character I've
written about, and I can see sort of the good
in some pretty bad people along the way. I don't know.
I mean, I think I've changed as a person in
(30:40):
numerous ways being a writer all these years. But you know,
it's it's a good question that I have to think
about more to give you a better answer. But I've
definitely learned a lot through the characters, but I always
return to who I am. It's almost like I'm watching
a movie when I'm living that research phase of life.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Do you still stay in touch with the Winklevoss twins.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, I just I talk to them every day pretty much.
And this is a weird time for them because crypto is,
you know, taking a little bit of a dive. But
you know, they bought two hundred thousand bitcoin at seven
dollars a coin, so they have three billion dollars in bitcoin,
which is kind of wild. And they're exactly what you
would expect of six foot five identical twin Olympic rowers
who now have a billion dollars. So they're a little
(31:27):
over the top and crazy and wild. But yeah, I
stay in touch with them, and they've been you know,
you know good guys in my opinion. I mean, they're
they're tough, they're kind of like sharks in some ways,
but once you get to know them, they believe in
honor and right and wrong and that sort of thing.
So yeah, very cool.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Did you guys have a question?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, yes, yeah, that's a great question. And so, you know,
people usually ask me, well, when are the Oligarchs going
to get rid of Putin? That's been a question I
get a lot. The reality is, until a couple months ago,
(32:09):
I would say it's the other way around. You know,
Putin is the godfather. Putin decides which oligarchs get to
be Oligarchs and which ones don't.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I tell the story in the book that when the
Oligarchs placed Putin in power, he was in nobody, a
low level KGB agent who worked for the mayor of
Saint Petersburg who had helped the oligarchs get a car
dealership opened up. That's how they knew him. And when
Yelton was dying, they installed Putin as the next president,
thinking they could control him. And in the first week
of work, he invited all the oligarchs to Stalin's old house,
(32:39):
which is a place where there's bullet holes in the
walls where they used to line people up. And he
sat the oligarchs down and he said, listen, you've all
made a lot of money. You can keep your money,
but from here on out, you stay out of my way.
And any oligarchs who stayed out of his ways an
oligarch today, and any oligarch who stood up to him
is you know, fell out of an elevator or fell,
you know, out of a window or whatever it is,
(33:00):
and is dead. So the oligarchs live by Putin's grace.
But in the last month or so, we have definitely
seen some of these oligarchs, like Roman Abramovich, try and
solve the problem, and then Roman got poisoned and almost
died doing it. I don't think the oligarchs want to
be in the Ukraine. The ones I've talked to are like,
we hate this, We don't care about the Ukraine. This
(33:21):
is not a war that we're in favor of. But
Putin has an incredibly powerful base around him, and he
has levels and levels below him. It's very hard to
see him being deposed, and he's incredibly popular in Russia.
That's what's forgotten here. He's not an unpopular dictator. He's
a dictator who if he ran tomorrow, would win by
ninety percent of the vote. So it's not an easy answer.
(33:44):
But all of the oligarchs would like the war to end,
so we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Wow, well this was amazing.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, you know so much about so many different subjects, right,
I mean that must yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
And yet I get lost walking around my house. I'm
just like, I'm like mister McGoo in real life. So
I love that.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I love your wife his wife. Actually, I need to
mention Tanya. She was a big part of this too,
setting this up. She's the new fashion editor for Fashion
editor of Boston Magazine, So the next time you pick
up Boston Magazine you'll see Tanya Mesick's name, which is
really fabulous there, and she's actually writing a piece on
the book club for the January issue. Yeah, it's going
(34:25):
to be great, so our picture will be in it, hopefully.
So this was fabulous. Thank you so much for being
our first book club author.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
This is this is a big deal.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
These are the founding members and I really hope that
this grows and continues to expand and that maybe we
can have Ben come back again at some point.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, thank you guys. You guys, you guys are all amazing.
I mean, a book club in this day and age
is such a wonderful thing to see. And you know,
you guys a guts went to wait. You guys have
been my home and my family for twenty since the
beginning of my career, even before I was a writer,
I came on your show. So I'm just a big
fan of what you're doing and listen, You're all amazing
for doing this, so I hope it grows and grows
(35:09):
and grows well.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Thanks Ben.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Lisa's book Club is free to join at Kiss oneaway
dot com slash Lisa's book Club, where we host in
person events with best selling local authors. Please join us
for our next episode featuring Mel Robbins.
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