When it comes to non-narrative books getting adapted into features, it often deals with relationships and families, such as He’s Just Not That Into You and What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I’ll never understand why someone isn’t turning Real Ultimate Power into a movie. In any case, rights to the handbook for seduction How to Pick Up Girls! have been acquired from The Exchange, who will soon be hiring someone to shoehorn a plot into it. At least we hope it’s just a shoehorn they’re trying to put into it. Yowzah!
Written by Eric Weber and published in 1968, How to Pick Up Girls! has sold millions of copies and has been translated into 20 different languages. Culled from interviews with 25 different women, the original book offered the answers that men on the prowl really want to know, such as what pick-up lines really work and the best places to meet women. And yes, even though the book was published back then, Weber told Variety, "Plenty has changed since then, but just as much has stayed remarkably the same. It’s going to be a lot of fun showing that on screen." It’s worth noting that the original text was expanded and revised in 2002. You know, the year men really figured women out.
Weber is a filmmaker of his own right, having written and directed 2004’s Second Best and the upcoming Outliving Emily. He originally sold the guide by placing ads in men’s magazines such as Playboy and GQ, so it would be interesting to see the film’s marketing campaign play out the same way. It was already turned into a forgettable 1978 TV movie with Desi Arnaz Jr., but there’s a chance to possibly make something interesting out of this.
For instance, instead of making this a bland romantic comedy, turn it into an anthology film with different directors and writers working on vignettes portraying different ways men and women meet each other. It may not sound like the most cohesive way to tell a story, but I really don’t feel like watching extremely attractive people do extremely stereotypical things for yet another hour and forty minutes of my life.
Of course, the only place one ever needs to go for comedy is Amazon comment sections. You’ll find the below quote in the regrettably few reviews available.
"I purchased this book because as a fire fighter, I was told repeatedly that when rescuing women, I pick them up wrong; which most likely is why I keep dropping them."
You can’t make stuff like that up, unless you’re that guy. It was only a few years ago when The Office writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg were brought in to adapt Neil Strauss’ much more misogynistic love bible The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. Who do I have to neg to get that movie made?
