Project Detail

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People

Synopsis

Sidney Young is a disillusioned intellectual who both adores and despises the world of celebrity, fame and glamour. His alternative magazine, Post Modern Review, pokes fun at the media obsessed stars and bucks trends, and so when Young is offered a job at the ultra conservative New York based Sharps magazine its something of a shock!

It seems Sharps editor Clayton Harding is amused by Young's disruption of a post-BAFTA party with a pig posing as Babe. Thus begins Sidney's descent into success - his gradual move from loser to confidante of starlet Sophie Maes - and a love affair with colleague Alison Olsen, that will either make him or break him.

Details

Year
2009
Type of project
Features
Running time
110 mins
Format
35mm
Director
Robert B Weide 1st Feature
Producer
Gary Smith, Tessa Ross
Co-Producer
Gary Smith, Tessa Ross
Editor
David Freeman
Screenwriter
Peter Straughan, Book: Toby Young
Director of Photography
Oliver Stapleton
Production Designer
John Beard
Composer
David Arnold
Principal cast
Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox, Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Jeff Bridges

Categories

Production Status

Production Company

Number 9 Films

Linton House
24 Wells Street
London W1T 4PH
UK

T +44 (0)20 7323 4060

info@number9films.co.uk

Sales Company

Intandem Films

22 Soho Square
London W1D 4NS
UK

T +44 (0)20 7851 3800

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

A transmasc driver sits in their car staring out of the window Dread

Director: Gabe Gabriel, Loren Loubser

Year: 2026

Soft-spoken transmasc driver, Toni, is used to dealing with an array of strange customers in their day-to-day work transporting locals and tourists through the economically divided City of Cape Town in their late father’s vintage Daimler. But when Claudia, a German digital nomad with blonde dreadlocks, offloads a traumatic story on a short ride across town, Toni’s car becomes dangerously possessed with Claudia’s invisible trauma demon. Inside Out Film Festival 2026 Wicked Queer: Boston's LGBTQ+ Film Festival 2026

A disturbed looking man stares straight into the camera Welcome

Director: Maryam Hamidi

Year: 2026

A famous Black actor accepts a role in a lucrative government film, but when he learns he’s starring in a welcome video for a British Internment camp, he is confronted by the devastating cost of his political indifference.

A nun staring off screen at a commotion. The Country

Director: Ella Grace Kennedy

Year: 2026

In an extremist religious commune where masturbation is deemed murder, a teenage boy struggles under the harsh laws imposed upon men. Assigned to work in the communal laundry wash, he must continue to adhere to the doctrine of ‘No Reckless Abandonment’, even as doubt and fear threaten to consume him.