>> on your screen is the tower in the center of the university of texas at austin campus, and booktv has been on location here at the university of texas conducting interviews with some of their professors who are also authors. every sunday during the month of november we'll be bringing you those interviews at 1 p.m. eastern time as part of our university series. ..his newest release, "sex on te moon." >> host: ben mezrich, where did you find the story of "the accidental billionaires"? >> guest: you know, that one actually came at random, a

random e-mail, 2 in the morning. i was sitting i was sitting at home. it was a harvard student. he said my best friend co-founded facebook and no one has ever heard of him. i had heard of facebook. i know what it was. it had to have been -- it gets messed up because of the social network movie. before it came out, 2008 or so. right before "21" came out. the e-mail was my wife forced me to be on facebook so i knew what it was but it was something i used to look at parties i wasn't invited to. i went to drink with this guy. it was eduardo savrez and he was really angry and a little drunk and wanted to tell me a story. that is how i got into it. its 91 send an e-mail to you?

>> guest: time ago to guy for every college kid who does something ridiculous or crazy. because of my book they have a big college audience. these kids want to tell their story. i have become that guy and knocked over a lottery scam or whatever it is. they will call me. i get 30 or 40 of these a week. this was just one of them and usually they are not something i would want to do but this one caught my eye. >> host: you had drinks with him. >> guest: will with a senior at college and he started only this story. i know fund and -- knew nothing about how facebook was founded and he told me he and his best friend had met in an underground jewish fraternity with mark zuckerberg who we have all heard of. they were kind of geeky guys who were not great at meeting girl that he wanted to be a member of

the old world semi secret all male institutions like skull and bones at yale and he wanted to be a member but didn't have a shot and he got into one of those finals clubs and mark went on a really bad date and got dumped and when he got home he hacked into the computers at harvard and pull the pictures of every girl on campus and made a website called facematch. you could pick the hottest girl at harvard. it was a prank. it leaked out over the internet and everyone -- it crashed harvard's server. he became notorious for that on campus. that was the beginning of a lot of ways of facebook. that is how he caught the attention of the winkle voss twins. they were out of a holiday playbook. there 6-foot 5 identical twin

olympic rowers. really good looking. i remember meeting them in new york for the first time. they looked the same. you look at us and you think we must be the bad guys because of the 4 and 80s moving we would be dressed in skeleton costumes which i put in the book and when the movie came out i got a call -- ralph maggio called me and said he loved that line. a stop mark in the newspaper after the spring and tried to hire them as their geeks' because they were working on their own web site called the harvard connection which was a dating site for harvard men to help women meet harvard men. they spent a lot of time trying to figure out ways to meet

harvard guys. they needed a computer programmer and they hired mark. mark just wanted to hang out with them because they were the cool kids on campus but he didn't think much of their idea. that is when he came up with facebook. he went to his friend eduardo and said if you put up the money i will create the company and you can have 30% of the company. that is where it began. two college kids and mark wrote facebook from there. >> host: ben mezrich, from the time of that e-mail to publication of your book how much time passed? what research did you do? >> things got crazy. i hung out with eduardo. it was a six months process of interviewing and things like that and i wrote a book proposal. 14 page book proposal. >> host: is that a short book proposal? >> guest: at this point that is about the additional little

short. 20 pages it's what i try to do but sometimes the story can be told quickly and this one with all the shakespearean town of two friends ripped apart was a pretty simple thing. i wrote the book proposal. remember telling kevin spacey and my production people about it. data set does anyone want to make a movie about facebook. that was my mom's first impression as well. i wasn't writing the book yet. the had just written a proposal and the proposal leaked out on the internet. >> host: how did that happen? >> guest: good question. one of the publishers who didn't get it or somebody had a publishing house, first time i ever seen a book proposal printed on the web in its entire birdy. >> host: was inaccurate? >> guest: it was the book proposal.

and things went crazy because at what wasn't supposed to be talking to me. it was -- he freaked out. got a restraining order saying you are no longer allowed to contact me. from what i understand facebook quickly settled with him so he stopped talking to me and gave what i heard was 5% of facebook which was an enormous amount of money but had decided contract saying he would never speak to ben mezrich again. for 5% of facebook i would never speak to ben mezrich again either. at the same time scott rudin saw what i was doing and immediately wanted to write this. for a movie which was a great phone call to get as an author. i hadn't written of book yet. i was just working on it. so it all happened in the days and i quickly worked on the book and finished it up. i had been talking to mark siegel of facebook. i spent a year trying to get him

to talk to me. really wanted is point of view. he didn't want to. it is perfectly fair. have you met mark zuckerberg? i know cheryl sandberg who is the ceo and his wonderful. i met a number of people. mark and i have never met. he didn't like me when the book came out. he or his company called me the jackie collins of silicon valley. which is great. jackie collins. told a lot of books. this is not the story mark would ever have wanted tell. his story would not have contained eduardo. he would not have talked about the winklefosse twins. mark created facebook. i completely understand why he wouldn't want to talk to an offer he couldn't control. i am not a journalist. i am not that kind of journalist where he could tell me how he wants the book written. i was already talking to people

who didn't want to be part of the story. that is the reason i think he wouldn't talk to me. i would have loved to get his point of view. there were thousands of pages of court documents, depositions, everything you could imagine. dozens of people in and out of facebook and are got to everybody in the story except mark. it was something i could build around. >> host: that was the second movie made out of your book, the first being "21". the book bringing down the house. >> that was the big one for me. my first nonfiction book. >> host: where did you find the story? >> guest: makes me sound like someone who doesn't do anything but i was hanging out at a bar. i had been writing fiction, trashy -- some of them were good. are enjoyed writing them. they were medical thrillers,

science-fiction, pop fiction. are had written a book for the x files television show. i have written a book that became a tv movie of melrose place and robert wagner was the bad guys. it still airs on the sci-fi channel at 2:00 in the morning. pretty funny movie. i had been riding that kind of thing. i was hanging out with these guys from mit. babies geeky mad scientist guys mostly asian. look like everyone else at mit except they had tons of money always in hundred dollar bills. we hung out at this bar in boston which is an mit dive bar. you never see hundred dollar bills. it is weird. in new york you see them. in vegas they come out of the atm machines. i don't know about d.c. but you never see them in boston. i couldn't figure out why they had so much money and i started

hanging out with the main character who occult kevin lewis because he wanted me to change his name because he didn't want to be known as the black dead guy. when "21" came out and he wanted to be known as the black jack got his real name is jeff and i asked why he had so much money and he invited me to his house and his laundry was $250,000 in sacks of hundreds. at first -- >> host: totally random. >> guest: i was friends with him but didn't know he had all this money. i thought he was a drug dealer at first but he is a nice geeky guy and he said you got to come to vegas with me. so the next day i was at a time in my life when i could do that and he and six of his buddies flew to vegas and pretended they didn't know each other and -- >> host: were you in on this? >> guest: i went with them. just to see it all in action. taken to this huge sweet, on the

strip. all of faggots behind you. there is a swimming pool. there with a butler. we didn't know what to do with a butler and all the mit kids pull money out from under their clothes and piled it on the table. it was $1 million in cash. they had flown secretly -- i didn't know they had it on them -- from boston to vegas. >> host: were you writing as a journalist? >> guest: journalist is a strong word for me. of the writer. i had been writing pop fiction. when i saw this and said we are the mit blackjack team i decided i want this to be my next book. i told jeff i want to write this. jeff wanted me to write it. some other people didn't want me to write it because they were doing this for a living making a fortune. they did made $6 million playing blackjack with the secret card counting. but i convinced them to let me do it. our travel back and forth to vegas and learned how to do it even though i was horrible at it. >> host: didn't mean to

interrupt you. $1 million piled up on the table. >> guest: they said we are the mighty blackjack team and describe what they had done. ahead thought i had heard of something called the mighty blackjack team but i thought was a class where you kind of learned to play blackjack or something. this had been going on for 25 years and each group of students after a neighbor finished would train the next group of students. this had been going on for two decades since the 70s. i was blown away. for me that was it. i had been writing all this pop fiction and this was a true story better than anything i could come up with on my own. >> host: what was illegal about this? it is not illegal. >> guest: nothing illegal about card counting but casinos frown on it. all part of the is it when you are playing black jacket is different from roulette or the

other games because black jack has a memory. what that means is every card that comes out of the blackjack deck is no longer in the deck so the odds change if you play. roulette is different. you could spin read 25 times in a row. doesn't change your chances of spinning red even though the casino and wants you do think it does and a print the numbers of what came up. that is meaningless. blackjack if all the 10s and king and jacks came out they are not in the deck anymore and makes it harder to get blackjacks of card counting is is sitting there watching the cards come out and more lower cards come out of the deck that means more of the higher cards are still in the deck and that means you got black jack more often and the dealer will bust more often so your odds are better. that is when you want to raise the bat and that is all card-carrying is, watching the cards and you see lots of low cards come out and you raise your bets. the casino doesn't want you to do that because they don't like people using their brain in the

casino. they wanted to be a game of luck. for some money down and lose and leave the card counters can win and on the average they can win 2% her hand. that is a lot of money. they get caught. the casino can see them raising and lowering their bets. with the mit team does is spreads ten college kids across the casino. one is at each table and he is the one keeping track of the cards and when the cards get good he signals the big player and a big players acting like a high roller. we all know what a high roller looks like. they try to look as much a part as they can. pretending to drink because you have to be drunk if you're a high roller. they sit down and that $10,000 hand and when it gets bad they get going and walkaway so the big money is only bad at good. this way you can make a lot of money and from the casino's point of view all they see as a big player playing $10,000 here

or there. there is no raising or lowering the bets. for them it is hard to see what is going on. >> host: added and from casinos? >> guest: yes. eventually the casino figured out that he keeps winning in different places and follow him, private are followed one big player to boston and found out he had gone to mit and got ahold of all the year books and took the photos out and put them in a software the ball cameras use, facial recognition software so if you had gone to mit and betting big you would come up on a computer screen and eventually they figured out the team and they will kick you out. they're not allowed to hurt you. in the movie laurence fishburne in "21" and rings on his fingers and beating someone up. that doesn't happen anymore in vegas. they just throw you out. they are allowed to throw you out for any reason they want. it is considered private business and an nevada is very

pro gaming. they are allowed to throw college kids out for being able to win. the mit team became dinosaurs which means you're too recognizable in a casino and they are allowed to play other games. you can play anything you want. just not black jack. >> host: what are the young men doing? >> guest: the main character, jeff started an internet company and sold it to yahoo! and he wrote a book about blackjack and business and he has done very well. he is running another business with other mit guys. one of the other kids went to write for tv and wrote for the show chuck on tv. he was a technical guy. someone else ended up on wall street. the girl kicked balls worth played as a big-time lawyer in boston. these are smart people. they weren't bad or doing anything illegal. they reusing mass to win and for them it was like a math problem out of the classroom.

they have done well. >> host: the book bringing down the house. this one from new york magazine is bringing down the house fraud? will charges of inaccuracy bring down bringing down the house from the new york times? >> no. and have been a controversial water ever since mine first nonfiction book lot of journalists don't like the way i write nonfiction. i write nonfiction as if it is a thriller. i go inside the story. i am a message writer. i become a part of it as much as i can and i write it like it is a thriller, not a documentary or something out of the encyclopedia. what happens is book comes out and there are some old world journalists who don't like to see the creativity i put in my nonfiction. i feel strongly everything in these books are true. bringing down the house was

research heavily. all of the stories and were very accurate. but it is very easy for journalists to go for my books and look for something because i write dialogue for instance. i interviewed the people. i know what they spoke about but i don't know their exact words so i recreate the dialogue. they're talking about what they talked about but i put it in human words. and of course it is not take recorded, it is not direct word for word so you can say this isn't true but it is true. is just placed in words that were not necessarily said at the time but that is what they talked about. for instance the facebook fan with a big one. is it true or not? it is very true and i believe "the social network" is extremely accurate. there are certain things aaron burken did that build the story in a certain way but you can't point to much in the movie or book that isn't true. we have a lot of documentation. we have thousands of pages of documentation as to what went

on. ever since the fry thing there are a lot of journalists looking for scandal. they really want it. they want it so badly. they are looking to make a big name for themselves by calling out and of her. with my books i put it right in the author's notes. i tell you exactly what i am going to do in this book so many of my reviews are reviews of my authors note. they don't reviewed the book. the review the authors note. janet madeleine of the new york times have a problem with me. she doesn't like the way i write nonfiction. have found that comical. i read her reviews with enjoyment because there's so much gusto in her hatred of me. it cracks me up. my readers understand what they are getting into when they pick up my book. this is a true story. it is just written as a thriller. it is a thriller that happens to be true. as long as i am up front and clear about our i am doing it,

it is understandable there will always be this controversy but there are plenty of nonfiction books written where a main character died 500 years ago. there are no interviews going on there. the author has to put himself into it a little bit. you make your best guess sometimes but that doesn't change the fact that it is not fiction. >> host: welcome to booktv. this is our in-depth program. our monthly arthur interview with one author of his or her body of work. this month, ben mezrich, author of six nonfiction books. here they are. beginning in 2002 with bringing down the house. "ugly americans: the true story of the ivy league cowboys who raided the asian markets for millions" came out in 2005. "busting vegas" in 2005. "rigged" in 2007. "the accidental billionaires" came out in 2009 and his most recent is "sex on the moon". we will get to some of these other books as well but this is also your opportunity to talk

with ben mezrich. 202-737-0001. in the east and central time zones, 0002. for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can send an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org or send a sweet, twitter.com/booktv. i want to ask about the process of turning a book into a movie. have you been actively involved in the two books that have become movies? >> i have no power. i do involve myself as much as they can handle it. as much as i can get there. it has been two very different movies. "21" was a very fun retelling of bringing down the house. kevin spacey and dana burnetty were my first people in hollywood became my brothers in hollywood and they brought it into sony. and mike deluca was involved

with "the social network". scott rudin and stacey and dana. i have been with sunni both times and had great experiences but mine are not normal experiences. i have been lucky. they have allowed me to be part of it. from the very beginning. it was the kind of thing. i met about of the blue. i had written an article about the mit kids in wired magazine. i got a random phone call and it was a message from a guy who said kevin spacey wanted to talk to me. i didn't believe him. i remember hanging up and called my mom and said kevin spacey is trying to call me and she said it is the mit kids praying calling you. they crane called me all the time. it turns out he really was kevin's assistance. i went to hollywood and he met me and said we want to make a movie out of this. i saw some. i remember it got rejected by everyone except mgm which were the casinos we had been hitting.

that was crazy. that became a sony picture. i do get involved -- the person who write the screenplay will consult with me and show it to me and i will make comments. once the movie is in action it is the director's movie. the director has the most power and are like to be on set and hang out but i am really there if there are questions. not with any control. i heard someone say the author is not at the bottom of the totem pole. they are under the total pole. the author does not have a lot of power on movie sets but you get to make suggestions and see who they're going to cast and you get to have fun with it. both of my movies were filmed in boston where i live so i got to spend time on the set when they were across the street from the house. >> host: ready you grow up? >> guest: princeton, new jersey. my dad is a doctor in baltimore.

he was a scientist and ended up working at a party a and they moved from brooklyn to new jersey to work at our see a and i grew up in princeton which was a great place to grow up and wanted to be a writer since i was 12. >> host: what made you want to be a writer? >> guest: i had a love for television. really bad television. i remember charles in charge and saved by the bell. those were my favorite shows. and my parents set a rule when we were little we had to read two books a week before we were allowed to watch tv so i became a speed reader quickly. my data accepted any kind of book. science-fiction counted. fantasy counted. didn't matter what was as long as you read two book the week. i read everything. i realize i wrote my first book when i was 12. i decided i wanted to be a writer. that down with the typewriter and wrote a 150 page science

fiction novel which i sent to publishers and got rejected. lots of letters at how old are you? that is when i fell in love with writing. my family is oriented around books. what is great is my dad is into technology. he was a scientist and inventor and electrical engineer and became a doctor. back to school in his 40s and got his m.d. and was chairman of radiology in maryland until recently and now he is working on different stuff so he is a radiologist who changed have which is a great lesson when you are young because you realize you cannot do anything. my mom as well went back to law school in her 40s. she is not practicing now but has done a lot and it is amazing to see people who can do what you want to do. that is the lesson you learn. there is no dead end.

if you decide you are writing medical thrillers and all of a sudden find a true story right a nonfiction book. there is no limitation. i learned that as a kid. the love of books came from that. i read everything. i read everything. i was reading books, dozens of books week by the end and i still try to read everything. it was a matter of finding my voice. i knew i wanted to be a brighter but didn't know what kind of writer until later. >> host: you went to princeton. >> guest: i went to harvard. we grew up in princeton. my older brother went to can. i loved growing up in princeton. we were sneaking into parties. i wanted to go to harvard and loved it. it was a great experience. >> host: rivera the same time as mark zuckerberg? >> guest: i wish i was that young and that's smart. that was one of the fun things about the facebook book, i always wanted to write about

harvard. i had been exploiting mit kid with nice to exploit harvard did. i knew about the finals club. i wanted to be a member but was not the type of person who could be a member. i knew about weird social setting which is great. it is fun but it is a little bizarre. there is an aristocracy at harvard that you don't see in the rest of america. there were people who were incredibly wealthy whose families had gone to harvard for 300 years who live in a very different world and yet it is a wonderful place because a guy like mark zuckerberg can go there and change the world without having that kind of background. i loved it. i have a great time there and writing about it was something i always wanted to do. >> host: ben mezrich is our guest. is your toward turn if you have questions. we will look at his other books as we go along in this three hours. we will start with elaine in columbia, maryland. apologize. please start again. >> caller: hello.

i wanted to ask ben mezrich about his relationship now with the winkleloss twins. >> host: did you read the accidental billionaires'? >> i had heard that the news accounts were appealing -- they were appealing their case and i wonder also about the status of the appeal because apparently there was new evidence. >> guest: great question. the winklefox twins, they don't want to ever give up. they really feel very strongly that mark zuckerberg stole their idea. that is how they felt since the minute i first talked about them and they feel that way now. facebook settled with them which they accepted an agreement at first was worth sixty-five million dollars which i believe today is considered worth $200 million. it with a stock and settlement

but they feel that settlement wasn't fair and facebook of them a lot more. i last read they wanted $650 million. from my point of view two hundred million dollars is a lot of money. i don't sit in judgment whether it was their idea. facebook was mark zuckerberg's company. he created that company. they have a web site which had some interesting components. one of the components what you had to have a harvard e-mail account to join and when facebook launch it needed you to have the exclusive e mail to join and it spread out from there. that was the crux of their argument. there have been a lot of e-mails and things published since then that mark zuckerberg supposedly wrote when he was that age that are pretty damning. they brought in the initial case and i think that is the reason for the attempt.

i'm not a lawyer so i don't know what is going on there. the thing about the winkleboss twins is you want to hit them. you look at them and they exemplify everything we are brought up to kind of heat in america. these incredibly good-looking giant, athletic, ultimately the coolest guy is getting all the girls and a geeky guy like me look at them and says they used to put me in lockers when i was in high school. at the same time they are really likable guys. i spent time with them. they are very fun. they're nice and smart. even the docks at harvard are making websites in their dorm room. i love that. they just don't want to give up. and they really believe that they are in the right. you have to take your hat off to someone who believes that firmly in what they believe, the right of what they have done. i don't know what is correct. i feel $65 million is a lot of

money. i don't know. >> host: a un contact with them? >> guest: i am a twitter guy. we treat every now and then. i see them in new york or in boston. they are boulders. they're going to grow in the london olympics. i believe there training for it. they rode together. they're like identical twin rollers. you can't beat that. i don't hang out with them every day. i don't see them often but every now and then we run into each other. i don't know what the current state of their appeal is. one appeal was dropped and one was moved. the whole legal thing is mind-boggling. is so much going on. so much money. the thing about facebook is it is $100 billion company now. there is so much money. i am more curious about eduardo. he is probably worth $7 billion that i have not spoken to him once since the restraining

order. i know nothing about him. he should send me a gift basket like $1 billion or something. he is a wonderful guy, very nice, very naive. >> host: living in the state's? >> guest: i heard he is in singapore and had the top of a building and heard he is party in south of france spending $50 billion a night on this week filled with model. i don't know if any of it is true. he does like to go out and has done very well. he is a really great guy who is suddenly worth millions of dollars. >> host: all of your nonfiction books, legy models and easy money. >> guest: does it need explanation? i always wanted to write books that are a vicarious thrill to me. i am a geeky, neurotic, tear everything guy. i like to describe my riding style or myself as a mix of hunter thompson and woody allen.

hunter thompson had been born to woody allen that is what i would be like. but i am much more like woody allen. when i go into these stories it allows me to live that life that i don't really live. so hanging out with shaun parker from the facebook story justin timberlake played in the story, one of the coolest guys out there. he is a genius running around like a rock star and i follow him around for a month. how can you beat that? or breaking down the house and going to vegas every weekend. in real life i am terrified of everything but when i am there i can become part of it. dufflebag full of money. i went through the airport with a quarter million dollars. it is an intense adrenaline rush but at the same time i can jump back out into my normal life. so there's a lot of sex. when i look for a story it has to have those elements. it has got to have money or

something high stakes. how -- got to be a young person who is very smart. i don't want to write about crime. i'm not that into crime because i don't want to hang out with criminal. i want to hang out with people want to hang out with. i have written one book that was a crime and was an incredible process the all about genius who did something foolish. >> host: give us a taste. si >> guest: the book is "sex on the moon". fat roberts had a tough background and grew up in a fundamentalist mormon family, was kicked out of his house at 18 for premarital sex, went to the university of utah and decided he wanted be an astronaut. changed his life and studied everything he could study and got into the co-op program at the johnson space center which was on its way to becoming an astronaut and fell in love with a 19-year-old girl and to impress her he broke into a lab and stole a 600 found safe full

of moon rocks. true story. apiece from every moon landing in history. spread the lawn of betty and had sex with his girlfriend on the moon rocks and tried to sell them over the internet. he had known her for four weeks. she was an intern at nasa and he was co-author and nasa. you have to look at that and say while. that is so stupid year it is cool. he went to jail for a long time for almost a decade. spent seven years in jail. this happened in 1999. i forget the details. i got the call out of the blue from friends of his. you have got to hear this story. i have never heard this story before. i did an internet search and there was only one article. nothing had been written about it because nasa didn't want anyone to know about it. it was discovered up kind of crime and he had spent almost a decade in jail without speaking

to anybody and had gotten out of jail and was on probation. i had never met anyone who had been in jail at all alone ten years. 7-1/2 years. i met him at a crowded lobby and he was the nicest guy. release smart, good-looking, a real jock but brilliant. getting his ph.d. after prison and had done something so stupid out of love or whatever it was out of an assassinated. >> host: one other fact. he tried to sell those rocks on the internet. >> guest: try to sell them for $100,000. they're worth many millions of dollars. a maracas the most precious item on earth. their only gotten from the men by hand from astronauts in the 60s and 70s and can't be replaced and there are only 800 lbs. in existence and he tried to sell a bunch of it and got caught. >> host: next call for ben mezrich from bob in florida.

>> caller: thank you for c-span. i want to thank you for your great nonfiction books. i have read every one of them including "sex on the moon". what a story. you come away thinking what was this guy thinking? what was going on? my question real quick is on "busting vegas" and how the world's casinos are following the hustler's you mention in your book. face recognition software used in the casinos worldwide. do they communicate with all the casinos worldwide? vegas communicate with monte carlo? thanks for the great nonfiction books and c-span. >> guest: thank you so much. i am glad you read even "busting vegas". level federal little less known. it is about an mit team that went around world and his casinos all over the world.

most casinos use facial recognition software. how good that is is still up for debate. the casinos claim it is incredibly accurate. some of the mit kids have said i don't buy that it is that accurate. the casinos -- most big casino employee it. but also privatize. they all work -- most major casinos work with one or two major product are firms that handle games so there is communication between them. for instance monte carlo and the london casinos communicate with casinos in vegas vienna these private eyes chasing the same people. it is while. mit kids, smart man speaks into the casino spend millions of dollars to catch them and keep them from gambling. overseas it is more dangerous because a lot of casinos -- russian mob have their fingers in monte carlo and their fingers all over london. when kid go overseas it is very

dangerous. they can get -- in my book there are a lot of stories where they get dragged out at gunpoint. monte carlo and aruba. have to be much more carefully to go overseas but casinos to communicate by private eyes and you get well-known very quickly. there was a book called the black book that the agencies that had it would put every unwanted person in the black book and that would get shared by all the casinos. was funny or interesting was after 9/11 they added the terrorist and osama bin laden to the black book and the mit kids were at the top so it shows what the casinos were thinking. the most feared people are mit kid. >> host: what is roberts from "sex on the moon" doing now? >> guest: you read that book and you think what was he thinking? i remember my dad read the book that he is a scientist and hated him because this is a guy who

traveled on something that -- is incredible, the midland in. a big moment in american history and the travel on science by stealing these moon rocks and using them and trying to sell them but when my dad met him, he is a really nice guy. and he is. he is a sweet guy who did something stupid and he knows he did something stupid but at the same time he did it like every college kid pulled a major frank. he didn't think ahead. it is amazing like james bond. even had a james bond song playing in his head when he pulled off the stand and he paid the price for it. as he went back to utah to get his ph.d. he left and is looking for work. he wants to go to space. obviously not through nasa but may be private. a lot of private companies trying to do it. he is a smart guy. he was launching weather balloons for a while and doing different things. he came to boston for my book launch party and it was great seeing him -- he is still

adjusting to being out of prison. that is a long time to be in federal prison. >> host: this is booktv on monthly's in depth program. ben mezrich is our guest. john in kansas city. >> caller: i wanted to ask about "busting vegas". a friend of mine, very good blackjack player said that the scheme they had are described, i read the book and he said that is totally impossible now. what do you say about that? >> guest: the main scheme is cutting cases. the way it works for anybody playing blackjack is after the dealer deals the cards they take the deck and before they shuffle it they will the deck into a line like this after they shuffle at and they offer a cut

card to all players. if you are sitting over here you can usually see the bottom card in that line. if you see an ace which happens once or twice an hour that is significant. they are for the cat card, take the cut card. >> host: how many? >> guest: 6. you put it in the deck so you cut the deck. the dealer takes the front of the deck and moves it to the back. what you do when you cut is you cut to exactly 100 cards from the bottom of the deck. that sounds really hard but if you sat home and practiced three hours a day for a month you could do almost every time. so you cut exactly 100 cards from the bottom and the dealer moves the front to the back and the 100 first card is the eighth that you saw. >> host: they always with the card. >> guest: you take that into account. you know the ace is 101. as the dealer deals out the card you count down to 120 eighth is lined up you bet $1,000.

you get the eighth and increases your chances enormously to 20%. the reason it is difficult to do nowadays and what your friend is talking about is most casino use the cover because of this. because the mit team was doing this you see a plastic card at the bottom of the deck which makes it hard to see but a lot of dealers are very sloppy and if you play at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning anywhere in vegas you will see the bottom card. i recommend if you want to see if it works try to see the bottom card and i bet once in awhile you will see it. not like it used to be before the team was doing this for a bottom card was not covered. just covered by the dealer's hand and you could see through his fingers. it is definitely more difficult and that is part of the game with these folks. every time someone writes a book like this or when i write a book like this the casinos read it and they make adjustments. they are always adjusting things but you also notice the main adjustment they haven't made is making it automatic shovelers. if all of the casino use

automatic shufflers it would be impossible to count cards but they don't do that because most players don't want to play surge to get rid of the few million dollars your losing you would lose many millions of dollars by making it automatic. they haven't done that. does get more difficult. i don't believe what he did in "busting vegas" would work as well now because you get caught quicker and it is a crazy system. you cut to an ace and that a lot of money. the casinos see you bet in a lot of money so you have a whole persona developed so they pretend to be these characters. they pretend to be a rock star walking in with her entourage or in a gentle convention and present their suicidal dentists and i will from a money on the table. a lot of acting involved in that technique to get away with it but much harder to do today. >> host: next call for ben mezrich from david in denver.

good afternoon. >> caller: i have a really frank question for you. i want to thank you for being so open about how you write nonfiction and make it into a fun story. i just published my first nonfiction narrative and by publishers and it reads like a suspense novel. how did you do that? you probably shouldn't do that. we got through it and i can't tell you how good i feel having listened to you just now and explained that. is fantastic. thank you for that. the question comes around. i am starting to get some movie and tv offers from l a. my agent says it is a great offer but we are turning to down because your book hasn't sold enough copies yet. the question is when do you say i have enough copies and when do i go into it and further on from that to how do i go about deciding or will i have any

control over what happens to the book after they take it? >> host: what is the synopsis? >> caller: an accident investigator fight for safe skies and it is a memoir as an accident investigator. >> guest: as someone who 5 times cared to read your book. a great question and congratulations. it is awesome to hear that. the majority of my time i hear about writers who have been unable to sell sodas wonderful to hear someone who got a book published. it is so hard. there are walls as everyone who wants to be a writer knows. it is a tough business and it is getting tougher. the thing about the tv and movies, it is a miracle that any movie gets made. that is what i have seen. i have been fortunate to have two made. it takes a spectacular amount of luck for everything to come together for something to actually get made. so when you get an offer the

most important thing i believe are the people who make you the offer. if it is about the money go for the biggest money you can get, take it and don't think about it again but if it is not about the money and you want to see the project get made it is about the people and you need to sell it to people who are actually interested in making it, have made movies or tv before and seen to have a right take on it. the thing about control as an author is the book is yours. the movie is theirs. you could have input but if you are one of those doctors who thinks this is how it has to beat it is probably not going to get made because they want to make it. they want to make things too so they want -- is there a movie and they want to make a movie. this is a memoir. it is different because it is your life so it would be weird to take your life and do what they want with it. you have to have more say than that but your goal would be consulted or something like that. i don't understand that you

haven't told enough books. if you get an offer from hollywood have long as -- you don't give them forever but you have a six months optional 1-year option or two your option and the rights will revert back to me. so the rights will come back to you. if you continue to sell books and will increase the amount, the chances or movie gets made. maybe you think you'll get more money if you sell more books. which is entirely possible. i don't know. usually if someone is excited about your project and wants to make a movie out of that i say let them. that is my opinion. i have been very lucky and fortunate with the people i work with. book to movie business is crazy. it is insane. ijssel the rights to all my books multiple times. "ugly americans" has been with three studios. >> host: they get paid? >> guest: you get a percentage. usually to sell the book you get some amount of money up front reverses a large pay day on the first day of production it gets

made. it varies depending on the book depend on how many people are interested like any market. people are bidding. it becomes a big project. if there's nobody bidding you get what they offer you. you get the option money upfront and they get an amount of time. if at times ends and they haven't made a movie they pay you again for another option period or they give it back to you. when they get it back to you you can resell it. "ugly americans" and "rigged" have a come back to me. we have screenplays written. very close with "ugly americans". "rigged" was wonderful. did the twilight movies. couldn't get it together. most movies don't get together and rights will revert to me and i will attempt to resell it. i always wanted to make "ugly americans" as a movie and "rigged" as well. our just need to find people who want to do it. >> host: that is normal? [talking over each other] >> guest: the word normal, the majority of books don't sell.

the majority of books if they sell some 5,000 copies. the majority of books don't earn that kind of thing. i have been very fortunate in that are sold all my books and two of them have been made. we sold -- scott rudin and michael luca, same producer as the social network. the guy who wrote and directed e z a and friends with benefit was doing it. i believe he is writing it now and hopefully will direct it. he is a genius. it will be amazing. i hope that will get moving. i know they're working on it in development. >> host: speaking of "ugly americans" who is john malcolm? >> "ugly americans" is a true story that takes place in japan around 2000. it is about a guy i called john

malcolm was a princeton -- he was an athlete. >> host: is that true? >> guest: he was my brother's roommate at princeton. he was a very good football player who wasn't big enough to go pro so he was physically not large enough to go pro so when he graduated from princeton he basically got a phone call from an alarm is set have you ever been to japan? i want you to work for me because i like to we play football. sea-tac the duffel bag and left new jersey. had never been out of new jersey before and worked for nick leeson and you might remember was the 26-year-old trader who bankrupt the oldest bank in england by betting the assets on the japanese stock market before an earthquake. he bankrupt that bank and went on the run. what he did is he wrote a letter saying i am sorry and put it in his desk drawer and took off. got caught on an airplane in thailand.

the gawker wrote about was his assistant and had been putting the trees through so he became this cowboy everyone wanted to hire even though his boss went to jail. he had been handling billion dollar trade and everyone thought he had this magic touch. he was working for a hedge fund which had mysterious origin and became the biggest trader in tokyo. that book "ugly americans" was one of my favorites that i wrote the wall street read it. nobody else read it. it became this act at book. i go to asia and every trader have a copy on their desk. i love that. it is a crazy story. a lot of business takes place in this underground world that is incredibly perverse. places called sexual harassment clubs which are clubs that look like subway cars and you go in and it even vibrates like a subway car and you pay a fee and there are women riding the

subway and you can molest them. there are clubs like soap world they are called. has anyone talked about so world on c-span? these clubs where there's a different floor with different women and as you pay more you go to higher floors. you get the idea. a lot of the book takes place in this world because this is where these bankers do their business. is a crazy world because these are american kids who grew up in a culture like we have which is very judeo-christian western culture were the norm are very different. in japan sex is considered a bodily function. just something that happens when men go on business trips their wives will pack condoms for them in case they need to do something. is changing now but that is the weight it was so he is thrown into this world and falls in love with the daughter of a japanese gangster who he meets at one of these post as clubs and has to leave japan quickly

after making a $500 million trade. it is a crazy book. >> host: is he still in bermuda? >> guest: that was not true. i had to change where he is from. when i wrote the book he did want anybody to know who he was. than a lot of people started to figure out who he was a. i get a lot of phone calls. everyone figured it out. >> host: you used kidder peabody. >> guest: he worked at some of the companies. i was not as careful as i should have been but i was being pushed by people like janet madeleine to put the facts and every now and then you have to be very careful because people don't want people to know who they are it is hard to tell stories like this and make it as accurate as possible but at the same time protect people. i remember when i wrote this book there was a chapter that takes place in hong kong where there was a hong kong businessman and a main character called me and said you have to get rid of this chapter. i was like why? notorious for killing journalists. that chapter is gone. a book like that i tried to

disguise who he was that people figured it out. a wonderful guy who has done very well. he is a billionaire by now. he is out there and still trading. >> host: ben mezrich is our guest. charlie in north carolina, you are on booktv. >> caller: i am enjoying you very much. thank you and thank you for c-span. i had a quick question about a scene in "the social network" were the winklefox twins go to interview with larry summers and larry summers in the film comes off totally dismissive and arrogant and i was wondering how accurate the dialogue was because this is a person advising on the national economy with people who are really hurting. are accurate was that interview? >> caller: >> guest: great question. the scene is directly from the book where the twins find out

that mark zuckerberg is launching facebook. they think it is their idea sunni schedule a meeting with larry summers because they want him to kick mark out of school. they go in and larry summers treats them like crack and tell them to leave. i read an interview with larry summers that came out recently in time magazine where he said it was incredibly accurate. everything in that scene happened except he didn't ask someone to punch them in the face. he said if you want to understand the twin these were guys who were accused everyday in college and he was dismissive of them. that is who he is. he is brilliant but he is arrogant and dismissive and thought what are these kids walking into my office for? this is not my problem. deal with it yourself and that is what he told them. he threw the out of the office. that scene is as word for word as i could do it many years later without having the tape recorder. that scene was very accurate and

they kept it perfectly. that guy really looked like larry summers for me. >> host: carolyn in california. good morning. >> caller: good morning. how are you? i have a quick question. are was wondering if you're interested in a true story that is extremely intriguing that involves a great amount of wealth, things that go on the people are not aware of and i am looking for the right writer and i know that this film or book or whatever would be a complete it and a smash. story i would like to offer the well for humanitarian projects and to help people all over the world and i am looking for the right representative. >> host: we got the idea. are you going to tell us what the story is? >> caller: it is danger and

intrigue involves about an individual who controls the largest oil resources in the world and what happened to that individual because they don't have an army to protect them. >> host: is it a true story? >> caller: a true story. it is in international criminal court, the netherlands. >> host: you say you get these random e-mails. >> guest: they go to ben mezrich.com. or you can go on twitter and tweaked the your info. that is the kind of story that on the surface sounds intriguing for me. to go forward with it, she would have to have a personal inquiry. i am not a journalist who will show up and knock on a door. i have to have the story. it would have to have the element that i am looking for and when it is in the paper with other journalists running around

it, i am also not a gun for hire. for me i have to want to go in and write it as my book but i intriguing. i would love to see an e-mail from her. dan@ben mezrich.com. it is something you have a handle on and i can talk to anyone and want to tell the story, i did write a book about oil but it was more in that new york merc exchange and dubai. it is intriguing but also i have these stories all the times again dozens of these and look into them and i will be like it is not really right for me or it is going to take too much time or be too dangerous. i don't like to put myself into real dangers along with not write a story where i had to go somewhere dangerous or get involved with mob people. i have gotten those e-mails from people who have done horrible famous. everybody e-mail me. .. elliot spitzer went down, the madam was e-mailing me, right? ..

>> host: nasa was very embarrassed by this guy. he was one of their own who robbed them. >> host: but a big trial. >> guest: was it public or not? i don't know how public it was.a the a federal trial, i would assume it would have had to have been. there were reporterss there. it was written about so little, and it never exploded. there was a wonderful l.a. times argue about it at the time whicr was a four-page article, and that was really it, and that wa. years ago. >> host: did nasa cooperate wit? you at all?: >> guest: no, no, no, they toldr everyone not to speak to me

which makes people want to talke to me. [laughter] i actually got there was the belgium mineral collector, collects rocks, his wife's name is crystal. it's perfect. he meets every week in an abandon wreck hall basically, and they trade rocks. he gets an e-mail out of the blue, do you want to buy a moon rock from the u.s.. he got excited, but then thought it was fishy. he decide something is going on and e-mails the fbi in the united states saying you might be interested in this. the fbi creates a case using axel as the main source, and he was my source, reached out to me, a wonderful guy, and nasa people were feeding him things they wanted me to know. i decidedded i wanted to go to nasa. they said no one could talk to me. i went on the website, nasa.com,

whatever it is. i signed up for a high security tour. they let ten people go doo it today. it's a government bureaucracy, so i show up at nasa, i get a security badge, and i'm inside nasa. then thad robert texts me, the main character saying, okay, there's a door at the back of the cafeteria, go through the door. i was guided by the guy who robbed nasa. i was able to get all the court documents. i have a little group who helped me. i have a lawyer's who is like the guys who can do anything lawyers, and he's got private eyes who can go to tampa and get me the records. >> host: they should be public anyway? >> guest: i got the fbi files. they took a year for them to send them to me. i was amazed they sent them at all. it was thousands of pages, and literally, so i knew everything

that was said was true. i knew i could back everything up. i had what was in his pockets when he was arrested. you see how hard the fbi works when you get those files. they had research an moon rocks for 200 pages to know what a moon rock is, so i did -- you get all the information that way, but, yeah, yeah. >> host: this is booktv's in-depth program. 202 is the area code if you want to talk with ben mezrich. you can also send us an e-mail booktv.cspan.com is the e-mail. >> caller: when you're an author and screen writer, what's the difference aside from the obvious, having a consolidating it down into a two hour movie

format, and is it frustrating -- it seems when you watch a movie after reading a book, like 99% of the time, you can see there was something left out. i just went to the movie and read the book, not yours by the way, but i was amazed that i think important things get left out of a screen play that were in the book. i understand you can't fit it all in, but can yak talk about it a little bit? >> guest: sure. i'm not a successful screen writer yet. i've done one or two plays. one adaptation of ugly americans 245 didn't get made, and when i sell my books, they bring in somebody else to do it. screen play is different than books. all the interior, dialogue, and all the motivations and all of that is left outside, and they have to write it very action-driven usually, and, yeah, often movies are not as good as the books.

i've been lucky. social network was a phenomenal movie. you know, they have to pick and choose. you can't put everything from the boot into the screen, and it's also not always relevant, but, yeah, i've seen movies before where, oh, they left something out, and then there's movies where they put too much in. it's all this strength of the screen writer, and as someone who adapts their own work, i think the hard thing is cutting things. most writers make the mistake of putting too much in. you want it phases and exciting and not -- fast and exciting and not just talking, and in books, you can get away with that, but my books are written like screen plays. i get adaked for that. -- attacked for that. i visualize every scene, i imagine justin timberlake doing it all, and that's how i sit down and write. i write a movie in book forms.

they are different. yeah, people who write screen plays don't usually write books. >> host: a tweet saying, mr. mezrich, what's the upcoming projects and story lines >>. >> guest: good question. that's from an incredible fashion designer in boston. he wantings me to tell secrets. i am working on a big new project, but i'm not yet at liberty to say what it's about. it might be a female main character, which would be new for me. i never wrote a female main character before. if i way this book next, that will be it, but i'm not sure i'm going to. i have not decided yet what the next book is, but i have projects, and working on a couple television shows. i have a scripted show that i'm working on and then i have a show, a reality show going inside stories every week that i've been working on sort of

like, you know, how there's big guys on tv, i'm the opposite of that. all the man verse wild, i'm the guy who doesn't succeed. i go in the stories, tell the story, and all the stuff people pitch to me essentially, and i become a part of it, and you see the story, but then i get out. that's another show, by i don't know yet specifically what the next book is. i have an idea of what it might be, but i have not fully decided yet. >> host: mud stick tweets read ugly americans. are you familiar with carson block, muddy waters, and the china media express fraud? >> guest: no. that sounds intriguing though. i am not. i have actually been pitched a bunch of china stories. they are tricky because there's so much corruption. it's dangerous spending any amount of time people making fortunes in china now doing crazy things, but it's a little

bit dangerous for me to do one of those stories. i don't know specifically what story he's talking about, but, you know, there's been good ones there. >> host: robert e-mails in, are you familiar with richard hogland's work in relationship to our moon? >> guest: richard hogland, it's familiar to me, but i don't know. if you gave me more, i might know what you're talking about. >> host: that's all we got. >> caller: [inaudible] it seems when the book is out, the movie is out. >> guest: people want to know, you know, a lot of people come to me to tell me their stories they want money. i think i have two types of people telling me stories, people who want money or people with so much money they don't want the money, they just want

their story told, which is often more fun, but it depends on the situation. i'm not really trying to write biographies of people. i really want to write my books that are about true stories that happenedded, so it's a little bit different want i have in the past main character for bringing down the house, the first non-fiction book, i gave him 10% of everything, and then the movie was separate. they can be consultants on the film, but it depends on the movie situation. you know, some of the books, they don't get anything, and obviously, the facebook, book, you know, they are all way richer than i'll ever be for the rest ofmy life, and it's just different for every situation. i -- my goal is to write the story and not have -- the problem when you're paying the characters is that you can become beholding to them. it's a weird partnership when you write a story about

someone. some of the things they'll dislike. when you tell a true story, you need all the elements. you want independence, you want to write the story as it happened and not necessarily as they want you to write the story. it's not a pay-for-hire situation where someone says write my story, and, no, that's not how it happened. it's more like this is a great story, and then i want to write it, and then we have to work something out. if someone is paid, it's because they enable the research, consulting on the facts, and they consult on the film, and if they help out with the film, yeah, hollywood wants to buy life rights when it makes the story, because they want the story to be accurate. i believe that hollywood studios much prefer someone who, you know, gives themselves the life rights and get involved to the point where it's accurate, but not trying to control everything on the set. the goal, of course, is a partnership in which i can write

the book however the book has to be. if a movie is made, they can be in some way to consult on the film, but it's a good question. it's different on every project. usually a main qark if the -- character if the book is a success, it has nothing to do with the payment. they can become famous, first of all, and use that any way they want. the people from the facebook book, i believe, profited well from it. i believe they all did well. i think the social network and accidental billionaires was good for them nor would they be worth what they are without the social network. it's a big part of making their image cool. he's cooler in the movie than before the movie, and everyone knows him, and they know him in a way they would never have known him, and that's a big positive. >> host: how could you use the picture of mark on the front of

your book? >> guest: ask the publisher that. >> host: public domain? >> guest: it's a photo of a public figure. you know, there's a lot of obama books with obama on the cover. i'm not a lawyer, but as long as -- it's true, you can't -- you're not liabling anybody. as for photos, if it's a public figure -- honestly, no idea how it works. no clue on the law of it, but there's people who do. >> host: will you ever get the chance to chat with him? >> guest: yes, i think we were. came up to me and said, you know, they did not like the book when it came out, they disagree with it, says it is not true, but everyone's cool with me, and it would be cool to talk. everybody's cool with me now. i have enemy for a year, and there's probably a dart board of me, but it worked out.

they'll be worth trillions of dollars. she's done amazing stuff there. i think she's an up credible person. i have no ill-will towards them, and i don't think they have any towards me. >> host: ben, in the digital age, do you feel managing your online presence, twitter, ect., often crowds out serious writing time? >> guest: well, first of all, i'm not a serious writer, but, you know, that's a really good question. all of this online stuff, i mean, it's probably just a fad. no, i'm kidding. it's probably going to be the future; right? we can't do anything about it. as much as i hate the idea of the kindle, i love the kindle. it's tricky as an author, and i know that's not exactly what you're talking about, but i do have a twitter and facebook. my web presence has been important in my career, and you're right, you can spend a lot of time playing around with that stuff, and what's is it all really doing? is it really doing anything? the content is what matters.

the people who write books, i think what you write in the book is the most important step, and then getting on twitter and facebook and all of that stuff is less important, but a lot of companies are diving into it saying this is the most important thing from a publicity stand point, all that manetters is that -- matters that you tweet. really? i don't know. i like to tweet and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't, you know. i mean, you guys, c-span's all over twitter; right? is it good or bad? i don't know. nobody knows. does advertising work on the internet? nobody knows. they pretend it does. facebook make money; right? but have you clicked on an ad there? no. has anybody? i guess somebody is because they're making lots of money. i don't get it. i try to ignore the ads when they appear. ads are everywhere, and you try to ignore them, and yet people make money. the internet's crazy. admit it up front. that a company's worth $100 billion that doesn't make

anything, but it's cool. and then there's groupon, really? how many billions of dollars is that worth? look at twitter. it's fun. i don't understand how they make money. i mean, do they? i agree with the question. all of the stuff online is crazy, but at the same time, i think that the future is going that way, not away from it, and people who say, you know, i'm not going to do twitter, not going to do facebook, you are sticking your head in the sand because that's the future. >> host: richard in connecticut, thank you for holding, on with author ben mezrich. >> caller: thank you very much. most fascinating interview. i enjoyed it. ever since the first mathematical studies came out pointing out the probabilities involving blackjack, i have been in a minor way, a card counter, and i read your book and seen the movie, and the one issue i

never understood, and i'm interested in it as you, given that the casinos that are -- highly regulated industry, why does the state of nevada allow the casinos to throw out people who are breaking no law and doing nothing wrong other than possibly causing the casinos to make less money. thank you very much. >> guest: great question, and good for you out there fighting the good fight. the casinos own nevada. that's the simple answer to the question. i mean, not necessarily in a bad way. i love casinos when i go to vegas, those big massive strip hotels and suites, but nevada knows where it makes it money, and it's not from mit kids, but billion dollar casinos. atlantic city is different. they are not allowed it kick card counters out. they have to deal to you, and what they do is shuffle every hand if they know you're a card counter.

in new jersey, not owned by the casinos, and they lost the battle and cannot kick you out, but in vegas, they are allowed to kick you out for card counting. nevada is a wu7b industry town -- one industry town in a lot of ways. they are tied to the casinos. yeah, and you know what? i get it. if i owned a casino, i wouldn't want card counters had there either. the way the casinos say it is when you go to a movie, you pay for the entertain m. the price of the ticket is your payment. when you go to the casino, there's an expected loss. i don't know the average today, but when i did the book, it's $400 a weekend. every person walking into the casino is expected to lose $400. that's the price of admission. if you are a card counter, you're not paying the price of the ticket, you snuck into the theater and didn't pay.

that's an ugly thought. they say everyone getting off the plane is a loser. they don't publish that thought and say you're losing $400, but that's the expected return for everyone coming into the casino. that's the reasoning behind it. nevada supporting them in that, and, you know, it's different in different places. >> host: now, you're a gambler? >> guest: i love to play poker. i used to play blackjack, but after being with the mit team, if i bet big, i was getting kicked out, but i know what it takes to win, and so playing blackjack is not fun for me because i know, you know, if i want to play it, i should relearn how to card count, practice, and then play, otherwise it's just luck, and then i'd rather play poker, but i have that gambling gene or whatever it is. if i'm in a casino, i want to play something. i shifted to poker because it's more social and fun, and we have a group in boston, 30 guys who

play a weekly game, and some are mit guys, some played in the world series. they are great players. my wife wins almost every other week. i like to gamble, yeah. i have that. i have that, whatever that is. >> host: you played on tv as well, vice president you? >> guest: i hosted the world series of blackjack. i have not played, but i co-hosted the show, aired a few seasons for game show network. i know if it's on anymore, but i did a season at the hitton for two weeks. i don't know, but it was a long two weeks where you basically -- you don't want to be in vegas more than two nights, but i spent a lot of time there, and it was fun and exciting, and i like doing tv. i enjoy television. i think, you know, it's fun. i mean, you got the best gig there is, i think, but it was just one of the fun things i did, yeah. >> host: holly, florida,

you're on. >> caller: hi, thank you. mr. mezrich, i understand you write controversial stories, and i wonder what your take would be on having a story submitted to you about fighting the good fight, a story about living against the odds, and if that's not something you're interested on taking on, who would you know in hollywood who would have a story like that pitched to them? >> guest: there's no detail. i don't know the details yet, i mean, i'm always interested in seeing stories. for me, it would have to have the elements that i'm looking for, so if there's not betrayal, sex, money -- it's probably not for me. there are great stories out there about fighting the good fight that don't have those almosts that can still get made, but they wouldn't necessarily be something i write. i go to dinners all the time and people say i have a great story, and then i have to say, have you read my books? it's a great story, but it's not

for me. that happens to me a lot. here's the thing, if you have a great story, you can find a way to tell it, you know, e-mailing someone like me. hollywood is tricky because they just don't -- there's no open door. there's no way to submit something to hollywood. in publishing, it's semisimilar unless you have a finished machine ewe script and submit it to agents and find a way. if you have a great idea, now, i think the best bet with it is to use the internet and find people who have done similar things and declare them, you know, one-page e-mails, that kind of thing. i would see more of something like that. the odds it's for me, you know what i'm looking for, so i'm not trying to save the world. i'm not trying to sort of just tell a story because it's a story. it's got to have the elements i'm looking for. >> host: if someonements to read articles you wrote. where can you find those?

>> guest: it's hard. i'm a long form guy. i wrote an article for my poker group for boston common, a magazine in boston. i used to write for stuff, the men's magazine before it disappeared. who else? i don't write that many articles. i've done stuff before for different magazines when i get asked to do it, and i'm always bitter and misrabble that i -- miserable that i accepted, but i just don't like to work. i don't like to write an article because it takes so much of your time, and then in the end, you don't have a book. people read it, and then it goes away, and there's something about the book that i'm willing to suffer through. i find writing very awful and miserable, torture. >> host: where do you where? > guest: i have an office. downstairs is the office, and the office was my apartment until i met my wife, then we had

a kid and had to get another apartment, and then i've wrote all my books in the same apartment since 1996. i represented so long i should own a building. i always rented. i was smart, then dumb, and smart, and then dumb. my intelligence goes with the economy. >> host: who is asher? >> guest: he's my son, 19 months old -- did he e-mail me? no, he's awesome. i dedicated my new book to him, and he's, you know, hopefully by the time he's old enough to write, it will be downloaded into your brain, but we'll see what he does, but it's great. i mean, it's life changing, you know, having a kid, it's like -- you're not -- you're -- there's meaning in everything. >> host: roger, ohio, you're on booktv with author ben mezrich.

>> caller: anyway, i hadn't herd of mr. mezrich, so i looked him up on the internet, so that gives me questions. >> guest: that's scarry. i don't know what you find on the internet. >> caller: there's one obvious one, it was either rigged or of the ugly american, maybe both was about a guy who used the stock markets to -- rigged the market to make a lot of money, and according to occupy wall street, that's what's going on now. it's the great recession that's all a result of the goldman sachs conspiracy. how much of that is true and is in your book? >> guest: i get so many pitches about evil conspiracy, wall street conspiracies.

i mean, i get ten of those a week. i wish i found a really good one, but i have not found a true one yet. i write about people who gamed the system or figured out a way to make money from a corrupt system. that's what ugly americans is, rigged is like that, but bringing down the house in a lot of ways, there's a system in place, but there's a way to make money off of it. you know, i'm not a big political guy, and i'm not that knowledgeable in the world of occupy wall street. you know, a lot of stuff happened, no question that a lot of shadiness went on, and i have been pitched some stories. i wish i found a solid one. i know michael louis goes there and owns that beat a little bit, and he's financially great at -- phenomenally great at it. >> host: did you hear from any

bernie madoff people? >> guest: if i did, it's people who got screwed by him, not by him. i heard from people who lost money to madoff. if he called me, i would have wrote his book as hateful as he is and what he did, i would love to get inside his head, but there were two books that just came out; right? they seem interesting. i have not read them yet. yeah, it's tricky with a story like that. you don't want to go into the depths too much. i'm an upbeat writer. i like the college kid, finds a schemes, makes the millions, and everybody loves it. i don't like the guy who screws everybody and makes a million dollars. there's plenty of people doing that. >> host: you said you're the go-to guy for college kids. is it because of bringing down the house? >> guest: that and 21. 21 was the movie everyone saw been before going to vegas still

ten years later. it's great. social network, and then all the internet people came to me like you have to write this or that story, and i mean, i wish i had got to steve jobs storiment i mean, i think that's an amazing book and story. yeah, i am that guy now. >> host: reading ugly americans and rigged, these are a lot of people who make a lot of money building nothing, adding value to nothing, is that a fair statement? >> guest: yeah, i guess i would put it like that, although, i don't see that necessarily as a negative in every respect. i mean, you could say the same thing about anything, really. i mean, facebook? it built something great, but at the same time, it's kind of nothing too. if it didn't exist -- it didn't exist before, and we were all fine. it's not building a building. it's not making food. it's creating entertainment or whatever you want to call it. yeah, so an ugly american, it's

a guy figuring out there's a mistake going on, the target is changing, and if you know ahead of time what's about to happen, you can make a fortune off of it. he's just creating his own personal wealth or company's wealth, and that's what wall street is essentially. a lot of is it gambling, and that's what gambling is; right? there's nothing wrong with gambling. it's an american institution. it's finish d you think about it, it's what the write is built on. erveg we do is a gamble. there's nothing wrong with gambling. that's my opinion. if you're sick and you have a gambling problem, that's a problem, but the idea of making money because you're smart is not a bad thing; right? it's a good thing if you can make wealth because you're smart. if you're smart enough to realize that, you know, nobody realizes that this company is bad over here, so i'm going to realize it first. that's not a bad thing; right? what's bad is when you take advantage of someone else to make money or when you screw

somebody else to take their money. that's bad, but making money off of a system that's ineffective or has problems, i don't see that as inherently bad. >> host: call from scott in georgia. you're on the air. >> caller: yes, earlier, you mentioned you viewed yourself as a cross between hunter s. thompson and woody allen. i assume with the nature of woody allen, what films of woody allen influenced you. i assume you view yourself that through his films. you mentioned the christian nature of the united states, and i was just curious if you don't mind, a personal question, your background as far as religion or spiritualty. >> guest: good questions, yeah. i'm jewish. my background is jewish, not -- i'm not religious per se. i'm sort of -- yeah, i guess i

call myself -- spiritual, i don't know if i call myself spiritual. i like the idea of it, but i don't think deeply about it. i don't know, people do that later in life really, i don't know. >> host: how old are you? >> guest: i'm 42, so maybe i am later in life. i don't know. i'm happy, does that matter? i'm a happy person. you know, i grew up jewish. woody allen movies, i obviously love them all. the whole idea of like the geeky little guy who is facing a world of big guys, that just -- i don't know that speaks to me. i was very small, 90 pounds as a high school senior, 112 pounds as a college senior. there's never in my life has anyone thrown a ball to me that i either caught or hit. i'm not an athletic person. i've been frightened of guys

over six feet tall, and, you know, that's -- manhattan, annie hall, bananas, and those movies were great. my parents are from brooklyn, i'm from jersey, boston is my home, and being in boston allowed me to hate the new york sport time. it's a pride of boston to heat the sports teams. i don't know what it is about that. want to be hunter at something, but i'm more woody allen. that's how i describe myself. >> host: this is booktv's in-depth program with one author and his or her body of work. ben mezrich is our guest today, and our live program will continue in just a moment.

talk about the technique you e-mails -- >> exactliment you employ that,i have to say in the "new york times" review that just came out yesterday. >> she hated me. >> she hates you. >> okay. >> he said it; right? that's part of it. that's the hangover of that. tell me why -- >> it's been like this my entire careerment i'm a thinker, and this is the stuff i like to read. it's a form of new journalism, i guess, but i get all the

information, interview about everybody, get thousands of pages of court documents, the fbi stuffer, and then i sit down and tell the story in a visual way. there's journalists who do not like it. she's one of them, but, you know, i don't necessarily write for janet, but i write for me and the people who like this kind of book, and the reality is it's a true story as any other thing on the non-fiction list. there's a biography of cleopatra. come on, nobody knows anything about her. you see biography of lincoln and obama's biography has invented characters. i mean, it's a process. you know, you have to take the facts and then write it in a certain way. i choose to write it in a very sinmatic way. for instance, i interview thad roberts, the other kid who is there, gordon. i know there's a conversation

that took place ten years ago between these people, i know what was said, but not the exact words. one journalist say they talked about moon rocks, but that's boring. i know they talked about it, i know what they did with the rocks, so i describe what they did. there's some who love it and others who don't, and, you know, it'll be a controversy forever in terms of certain people never liking it. with social network and accidental billionaires, mark said it's not true, it's not true, and called me the jackie collins of silicon valley, which i loved actually, that's great, but, you know, he never pointed out anything that was not true. he never said this is not true or this is not true. he said the whole thing was not true, and he said he didn't read the book. i don't know where go with that. [laughter] the reality is it's a very true story. he laid, you know, he meant to have sex on moon rocks because

he wanted it to be like having sex on the moon. he spread them on the bed and had sex on the moon. janet had a problem with the scene saying he just put them under the mattress. that's not true. he did it on purpose. i tell it in my style, and, you know, some people like it and others don't. >> right. >> host: ben mezrich, mentioned as one of your favorite authors earnest hemmingway, the sun also rises, why? >> guest: i would reread that for a month the first five years i was a writer. i tried to do a drinking tour of paris and drink everywhere they drink. i don't recommend that to anybody because you might die, but, you know, i think that book is perfect as a book, and it's sparse, and yet in a single instance, he tells you everything you need to know about a character.

i don't know. i love that book. >> host: we ask every author on this program, we ask them what their favorite writers are, what they are reading, and ben mentions both his father, mother, and, of course, my wife, is what he e-mailed back to us. we left it just like that. then there's jim morrisson. >> guest: yeah. i read that biography -- oh, i just lost the name. what's the name? i can't remember what it was, but it was -- something about the doors and the way he started, and i guess it's spiritual in a weird way. it fascinated me, and then the train wreck that became his life. you know, the doors movie, the oliver stone movie was just incredible. i don't know, fascinated by that music. i used to play one of the songs crystal ship over and over again as a struggling writer.

i, yeah, i write in the dark with music on, so i write in a very sort of psychedelic setting often depending on the scene i'm writing. in crazy scenes, there's doors and music blasting. i go through different phases, but a very big doors phase. >> host: who is george rr martin. >> guest: oh, game of throwns. that's amazing. i don't know if you saw the hbo series, but the books, i'm on book four now. i think there's five books, and he's going to have seven. it's like sopranos taking place in lord of the rings is how i describe it. i read somewhere it was called garbage. i couldn't believe that. he's missing something. the game of throwns is the best series i've read in a long time. i love lord of the rings and that kind of thing. i'm geeky, but if you have not seen the series, you should.

it's great. >> host: if you want to talk with our author, 202-737-001, and 0002 if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones. putting up the e-mail and twitter address as well. ben mezrich is the author of six non-fiction books "bringing down the house house" came out if 2002. ugly americans in 2005. busting vegas in 2005. rigged came out in 2007. the accidental billionaires, which you may know as the movie, "the social network" came out in 2009, and the most recent, "sex on the moon." what is the merck? >> guest: there's one in chicago as well, but i wrote about the merck exchange in new york, rigged, commodities are traded, oil was traded, used to be a physical exchange where you

stand in the pit, the tickets flying and you sell orange juice or whatever, but oil is the main one, and it's a physical place that where you stand matters because who you are trading with it's about real estate in the trading exchange. there was one guy who was a trader, but he was very small, so he hired clerks who were to just hold him in the put so he was not pushed out. rigged was about a guy who went to harvard business school, but grew up in brooklyn. >> host: a real life guy? >> guest: a real life guy. the merck is tough guys, jews and italians from new york who get a spot on the floor, and oil was traded insanely, like guys without a lot of education, it's gambling. it's about a market, and this guy with a foot in two worlds in the school world and brooklyn world goes to work there and sets up an exchange in dubai

that mimics the merck. he sets it up in dubai, and it's a story about a guy. i think i call him john, in the book i call him two names, but it's a fascinating story. some changed. the electronic trading tookover, 10 the physical exchange is not what it used to be when the book took place, but it's still crazy. >> host: what have you learnedded about economics through your writing? >> guest: it's gambling. the casinos and wall street are the same. no difference of being a card counter and doing well on wall street. that's what i believe. it's not a bad thing necessarily because just it's gambling. there's good gambling and bad gad bling, good guys and bad guys making money on wall street and from oil, and there's people making money because they are something wrong with the system, and there's people making money by making the system wrong, and

those are two very different things. there's a hedge fund trader who is doing white collar crime, sneaking out information, and it's screwing everyone, but there's another trader pointing out that a company is lying, and they are a bad company and bets against it. those are two very different things, right? the guy bringing down the bad company is a good guy even though he profits from it, and the guy who makes the company bad is the bad guy. that's what i think is left out of the whole conversation because, you know, you read a lot of articles about the bad guys, but not enough about the good guys. there are good guys on wall street, and there's good guys in oil, and, you know, yeah. that's the point. >> host: russ tweets in to you, how much time does one of your books take to conceive? >> guest: you know, it can be a quick process. it depends on the project. the first thing i do is research it, and when i say i research

it, i'm a method writer, i dive inside the story, become a part of the mit blackjack team as much as they let me. i want to go to is a and pretend to be the guy robs nasa. i spend three months researching, intensely, and then i write it in three months. it's a very fast process. i finish the drash, you know, it's a marathon, i go through it, write day, night, fall apart physically, look like a mess, eat the same meal every meal. i had a turkey sandwich three meals a day for four months. my life is consumed with the book, and then i hand in the book, and it's -- and then the editing, and everything, but six month process i say from start to finish. and then, you know, there's faster ones too with accidental billionaires, the proposal leaks out, one writes the screen play, so i have to write a book.

i wrote it quick, and then i handed them the chapters, and they went through it and wrote the screen play. i had not handed him the book yet. it was a crazy experience. he wrote it in about five weeks i'd say. i don't know for sure, but it's one of the best written, and he got the oscar for it, well deserved, but the book was written and then the screen play like one after the other. that's the luckiest thing to happen in hollywood. i don't know if there's a book to movie faster than the social network. >> host: which book was the turkey sand wish book? >> guest: that's back in my first days. with my wife, she's not allowed me to be the animal that i used to become when i write, which is a good thing, so i try to be much more normal human being when i write a book now, but although she was with me through the fishings too, so she saw he at my worst. that was back writing the book "reaper," the one that was the

tv movie fatal error. >> host: ben mezrich the guest, tom from new york city, tom, you're on the air. >> caller: how's it going? >> guest: excellent. >> caller: i'm a screen writer as well, and you seem like a very busy guy, so i wanted to call and put you on the spot and ask i if could work for you? >> guest: yeah, i mean, i don't know what you would do. i have such a strange lifestyle and writing style, the idea of like, you know, i've seen other writers who have like people who work for them, and i'm like oh, i'm jealous, but then i think what would the person do? when i'm in my stories, i really go inside, and often it would be hard for someone else to do that or to find a way inside. >> host: what did you do your butler in vegas? >> guest: we didn't know what to do. we sent him out for food. you know, i would like to have

someone work for me, but i have not figured out yet what the person would do and how i would do that. yeah, i mean, the other thing is i mean, people who want to break into writing, the best way to do it is just write. the thing about the business is it's really all about that great project, and that's how you break in. you write one story that blows everyone's mind, and then a apart from that, there's no way to break in nowadays. you know, working for someone, and yen where that goes. >> host: have you started the next process and the process of writing the book? >> guest: there's a few ideas i'm researching. there's one that might be the next book, which i have done a fair amount of research for. there's a couple others i've done a little bit less research for that also could be the next book. i have not really focused on -- when that decision is made, i'm like, okay, 24 is the -- this is the next book, and then i dive in. i'm at a point now where i want to have the book deal everything

set up before i dive in and having a kid, i don't dive in and then say i'm not writing it. i work on the research, and then i sell the book, and then i dive in and write it. yeah. i'm researching a few things, but not really -- there is one i think will be the next one, but i don't know. >> host: is book money different from hollywood money? >> guest: i mean, it's different for different people i'm sure. money is money; right? i don't know. it's, you know, there's so many different types of deals. it's different with every book and different, the economy changes every year. the books, i mean, borders doesn't exist anymore; right? i don't know the numbers. for me and my career, book money is better than movie money, but there's been some good movie money situations too, but, you know, none of us are mark.

it's a tough business. the book world is a tough business as you know. you know, i've been very fortunate to have books that have done well and movies that have been made, but i've had a career, you know, i had a crazy career. when i started out, i was 26. this is the part of the conversation where i ask my parents not to be watching. i was 26, and i sold a bunch of books, and tv movies, and i made a lot of money, and then i went nearly a million dollars in debt, so i owed doing what? exactly. i have no major vices, i don't really drink, don't do drugs, and yet i ended a year nearly a million dollars in debt. i had $75,000 in credit card debt. i owed taxes about half a million close to $700,000 in taxes. i had bills -- i had an irs agent knowing me by name. that's not a good thing. that's the point in life where that's not good like you have to

give us something. i mismanaged myself. i was like a sports figure who get paid a lot and thinks it will keep happening. this is what i would do. i woke up on wednesday and say i'm going to the airport. i went to the airport, no baggings, and i would buy a first class take into ticket to somewhere like paris, fly there, book a hotel room for two weeks, a major suite in paris, went to new york and booked into the plaza for three weeks, and i just stayed there and had friends and then i went to l.a., lived at a hotel for a month, and the end of the year i realized when they pay you in books, they don't take taxes out, so at the end of the year, you just spent all your money, and you have no money to pay the taxes. i learned a good lesson in my mid-20s, and now i'm smarter now. i lived the ups and downs. i had, you know, the lights

being turnedded off, and i couldn't pay -- i couldn't pay, and when i met the kids for bringing down the house, i had a stack of applications because i have in huge debt, no money coming in, i owed money to everybody, and my books were bombing. all my fiction bombed. i mean, i don't think -- you know, one of the viewers has read any of my fiction; right? they just -- i was highly paid, but the books were not selling, and that's not a sustainable writing career, and then i met the mit kids, and it was life changes. one of the moments where this is a great story, wrote the book in six weeks in vegas. went to vegas, sold it, and i have never looked back, and so i was at that point. i was at the bottom, the bottom of the bottom. >> host: is this the first time your parents heard the story? >> guest: i don't know that they heard the details or if they are hearing it now.

it's not a bad story. it had a good ending, and i learned a lot of valuable lessons. i don't know if i would have been the guy to write bringing down the house had i not lived like that. i was a crazy gambler. i without up $20,000 or down $20, but i didn't have $20,000, and i'd be in debt to casinos $50,000, and you learn how vegas works. you have the hosts and that system. it's a crazy world, and when i met the kids making a living in vegas, i knew that world, those suites and how high rollers were treated. i was able to write the story. i like to look at it as life lessons learned. i knew about wall street and understood the stock market and things like that because i would gamble on them. i mean, i was, you know, i understood most of the world i wrote about before i wrote about it, and now i'm smarter and calmer, and i don't have to necessarily live like that, by

the other thing is it allowed me to -- i befriend the people i write about because i'm one of them. when i went to tokyo for a month hanging out with ex-pat banker, and this is a world, i don't know if you know about that world, but it's crazy. american kids and british kids in their early 20s getting paid lavish amounts of money to go to hong kong or tokyo, and they land there, and it's a free-for-all. they are treated like rock stars because they are white and american. not now like it was in the 1990s, but they were dating ten girls who all knew about each other but didn't care. that culture is different. they went to bizarre sex clubs and worked the next morning joking about it while making millions of dollars. it's a crazy world. i went to research ugly americans, i landed, and this huge limo picks us up. they flew the limo in from new

york because they didn't like the ones in tokyo. we went straight to a concert, and because we were white people in a limo, people were trying to turn the car over. i didn't see a room for 24 hours. there's no way to be the writer i wanted to be without understanding how to live like that. that's where i learned a lot, and i learned, you know, i learned a lot, and i fixed it all lucky. i'm not recommending this path to anybody. always pay your taxes and always, the credit cards are bad news. i would use one credit card to pay the next card and then a credit card to pay the rent and the checks they give you, never use because they charge like $2 billion percent interest, and i was using those to pay other people. you have to be careful with yourself, and when you timely figure out a system that works, you know, you start acting like an adult. >> host: elaine from cleveland, one hour left with

our in-depth guest. go ahead. >> caller: well, thank you for taking my call. i was just on my way out to the library, and hearing your interview, i thought, well, i have to add all of your books to my list. >> guest: thank you so much. >> caller: have you ever read a book and has it been researched to the fullest and did you feel you could do better? >> guest: good question. you know, more usually what happens with me is i read a book, and i wish they had come to me rather than writing it themselves. not because it's a bad book, but i feel i could have really dug into the book. there's been a few books like that where i wish i got that story first, but yeah not so much i read a book -- i read books saying, oh, this is not a great book, but i have not read books where i felt, oh, they

didn't research it well enough. i'm trying to think -- i read a couple books -- what was the book that i last read, a non-fiction book -- no, you know. i'm more of a fan than a critic. i read the perfect storm, and i read he spent years living there in a frozen -- i'm like that's amazing. i wish i could do that, but i couldn't do that, or the wolf of wall street was a book, and i wish he'd come to me, not because it's a bad book. it's a great book, but i would have loved to have written that book, and that's what's it like for me. >> host: she's going to the library, picking up your books, but if she just got one, what one do you recommend? >> guest: that's a tough one. sex on the moon is the one she might een joy the most. i think sex on the moon is the one now people are getting libraries and people love it. i think that one and bringing

down the house are the two. ugly americans is, i think, maybe the best writing, but it's a darker story. you have to be -- you have to want to be interested in the banking world in asia to read that book. sex on the moon and bringing down the house. those are the two. they exemplify my style. sex on the moon is how i'm writing now, and i think it is some of my best work, and then bringing down the house is sort of, you know, how i started and how it works for me. >> host: bud from oregon, go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: hi, good morning, and thank you for booktv. mr. mezrich, i have to admit the being guilty of not reading you yet. i've seen a couple of your films, obviously. i will correct that mission sometime soon. you made a comment about gambling is good, and i can't disagree with you, but i want

you to comment, if you wouldn't mind, on derivatives and the potential chaos that they can cause and having, quote, "investment vehicles" not linked to value, basically gambling chips, and is that something that should be bringing down the economic system? do they leak derivatives. i'll get off the air now. thank you very much. my son is your age, and i identify with you in that way too. >> guest: oh, thank you. i appreciate the question. i want to preface this by i'm not an economist or that knowledgeable, and there's people diving into derivatives. i think the idea originally is not bad, they add liquidity, making the market movable, and there's a way -- you know, you can't -- with oil, for instance, this is so simple it's probably wrong, but you can't physically trade barrels of oil, so you

have to have derivatives to trade oil otherwise it's impossible to set the price correctly. there's something between supply and demand. that's how i was explained to it. a lot of horrible things happened on the other hand especially with the garbage derivatives and gamemanship with big banks. yeah, i think to an extreme these things are very bad, but i think my point more is that there's nothingnhery ..using your intelligence by gam ling on a system -- gambling on a system. going to wall street to make money off the stock market is not a bad thing in itself.. ..

however, when things got over the top and people making these junk derivatives and doing some >> guest: thseemed illegal to me, that is when things atgo wrg t -- and now. elone tonight in into the complexityh. ia it, and i can't.caforn >> jackie, santa fe, california. you are on book tv.and c >> i really enjoy youanr butt. you have a great personality.s di question is, as a young how writer, how difficult was it for you to find an agent? i, guarded the district publisher?y >> yes.ute. i went every route. w

i lost myself an apartment in w. boston.d i wr the road and ran and ran and no and wrote nine novels and one of they w. many thousands of pages.in a deep, dark story that took place in new york city. i thought that is what i want.ot >> have you lived the new york city life? >> a little bit. and will watch the then lived it. could not sell anything. 190 rejections, rejected by every single person in new yorki had been taped to my walls. even brought back rejected as aa janitor. a sent a letter to an editor wht was no longer working there. they get from the garbage and then read it and rejected me. w rejection door ejections andages rejection, and it is, agents,ess anybody with an address. re back then there really was in the internet.1993. 1993. up all th i would give it those books and look up all the addresses andane

send everything. rejected by everybody.i'er >> seven -- simon and schuster. ar had never published with himl he was similar in age, butady ap already a big up-and-coming and there.said, i'not g not going to publish in in the t coverage riding. we you write well. r come back to me in the year. i e i read john grisham and i've enish read michael crichton and robert love low and every book and give my hand on. okay. i did write a thriller. i i rode a medical thriller.l averell letter again. gn j and managed his signed john was bishop's agent. he managed to someone but.

that was my first book. i wrote another book. wro, skin. the road and the road in the wr. road. i kept.ne some writers write one bulletinn time spare rita had to write one before wrote my first.write i read like a maniac.e it was for me it was all volume. t, yeah, it i was a process.1, gasol then 94. >> added to support yourself. >> a variety of ways. my parents who are not thrilled. this supported me for onei year i work for a city year, public service organization. i i read the brochures. for howard law school, a researcher or never for six months colleger is crazy.of all, he

brilliant in the hen was incredible cases. tyson, the biggest cases in the world. letters all this hate mail. and one hundred letters a day.ld. it is a while the world, and it of those was just, you know, one of thost to my did our jobs and things like that the rita barely in supported myself.ve very cheaply.ing in boston. my roommate now runs the th atln atlantic monthly magazine.montya he ziwas my college roommate as well. he's he has done very well with hiswn own writing career. those two struggling writers. he was working at a bookstore. e we were both want to do oratorse bottles of scotch on the table.f d was fun. you know what, that is the mostn romantic fun time of your life. and now it seems like it's miserable because you can sell anything, but that is the exci exciting time when you'reand writing and sending a rejecting. you have to live for rejection.n

becomes a life.tting they rejected person. i was getting every weekly for f the rejection. p i put it all pretty literally take them to the walls. you have to get rejected.xcitint it was a fun and exciting time. i get lucky.l >> are you and he still friends? with my best friend, the besthe man at my wedding. at his and he is doing great. >> ... my for me.ow. >> david bradley. we well, sendll a tweet. ever consent to doing a livestto debate with the new york times about the nature of nonfiction.,

>> i would love to.ve to. my publishers would love to gete on the stage. out in both of them and call me on a negative way.done they don't like what i've done to nonfiction. i think that a lefty and honest is to talk to them. i think that they're doing an suchervice b to nonfiction by attempting to categorize it ina. such an old-fashioned way.nfict at think that the greatead like nonfiction books are the ones that read like movies, like thr. thrillers. would classify books like the pt perfect storm and hunters hunt. if they want to set up by beer and a second. a great thing to discuss. mposit if you're going to use a use composite character and dialogue

you have to say so. once you said so, don't seei me, what's wrong with that.as true a listen. biogra as sure as any biography of s cleopatra. you sit down and read aed how my biography of cleopatra her dad how many years ago. we know nothing about it.e's n the bill the story in is nothing wrong with that.author note >> the authors note in the front of sex on the moon that mr. measure puts in his book. somerset county, new jersey. bkv yuan book tv on c-span2 talkingh with the metric.>> callekay. >> hello.ed on t >> i will go and turn on tv in and their your. m you really surprised me.exactly. that did not realize you were. now i do. regarding your comment and your the odds on the stock exchange,y

it counted thinking. think i'm very curious what you think about and it may be you are wrt thinking about writing something about group on. if you were to bet on your pondw which buy it would be? gr >> you know, held the honest.ana i don't know all lot of them ever on the internet. to m when it first came on and youout were talking about it, i thought it personally was ridiculous. bk at that this is a coupon book. buy everyone canit buy something. . everyone wants to buy it and it will be cheaper.e b at the same time they builtup so themselves of so quickly and a o never making a lot of money andt aren't of o money. know ougo goere is that.t's i don't know enough about it to know wherlie will go.getting amazon is getting into it. everyone is eating into the same business.so how does how did they stay relevant and y powerful? i don't know. into i don't know enough about it.noo

i am at a loss.e a hell of a friend's or internen millionaires, close toires, cle billionaires' to start companien in their dorm room. one of my best friends is rooms, danielle who had 18 server the company and sold for $280 million.35 he is like 35 now, ingenious theories to the three companiesd disney company is owned by thehn will. he is my partner e.and kind. analysts think my don't understand what you do.i don ge, don't get it. it? ll yi do it? out ? will use of a company with me ly tee you have any ideas?the in no, the internet. it will then and in the companye it's like that simpsons episode. when do i get my money?he's that is what it is to me.y it seems crazy. crazy. but that was agreed at dieppe.t i have invested.i'the wo and the worst person to talk stu i invest i invest in the company's ago under the next day. and literally investing companies to come under the nex

day. and the worst person-.lo it. and don't get the internet, butn i love it. with ticket, but the 90tha bi tomorrow. there you go.ities to me. more about the personalities. they go out there. so much energy.nergy, this is it and people give them money. >> william. enjoyed >> i really enjoyed sex on the moon and bring down the house. " i really looked forward tord reading and the americans did he issue interesting. i have a philosophical questiond about what you referred to asea the gambling and the in on maastricht. i took a beating on lending -- lehman brothers.hedea i was sold.id compa 157 year-old rock-solid companyu and dissing, you see like to ga. gamble, i would not imagine you tnd take your parents' retirement

tond to vegas.you coulspeak so if you can speak to the eddyt that these guys are not gambline blth their own money, but moneym that is a vulnerable people, iny my late fifties in my retirement fund has been beaten of. and they grab the guy.n't want > i don't want to make it soune like people didn't get hurt. people got hurt dramatically. no qan, it is a lot of horrible things. no question. pert and not an expert.really i feel like a lot of crimes were mmitted lommitted.one on wal there were a lot of things donel on wall street that went beyond. the line of just trying to put money.an it really crossed that line. you know, the problem is that is guess in writing the books iwrii have written a have never they'b trusted companies likely meni kn because they have beenow arounda

i know about these 26-year-old traders toit bankrupt the bank. it happens all the time, and it, has many times in history. wh it is scary, and it is bad whatn has gone on, the bernie madoff of the world have taken advantage. have taken there is not much i can say abot other than, you know, people whe did these things ought to beo rought up on charges when they did things that were illegal.bu at the same time the systemen. itself is not necessarily all i. run. there are just run people wheni, it. >> justin, milford pennsylvania you are on book tv. >> hello and thank you for question.this my question is, the social was network was released in 2010. ere when that things are aspects of the book they you believe or nos translated as well as you had en envisioned when you're making >>e book? >> could you h repeat that last part? thin

>> were there things in the sial social network the you think are not as translated as, as you trt head out while envisioning the book or thiu ngs that were bettr >> gthe movi the book? >> thanks. the movie was amazing. i remember sitting down and a theater in one of the early lines acrostos as dating you is ke dating like dating a stairmaster. i was like, this is great. wri, talk about great writing. this of good. i thought it captured the book very well.ught it the thought of as very close. th one scenese in the court room,pi depositions in to our new.e he read the scenes that were not in the book, with scenes that pl took place at harvard were directly from the book, and that very c that there are very close to its very accurate. at that it was wonderful.they al was amazed at how well theyme captured the hanley scene when they're falling.how do y how beautiful was the scene in w act the music was amazing. his contract, the trendid you w

atorser. >> did you get to know the>> gyu actors? >> i'm at the mall. i get to hang out with justin t make a little bit. my wife enjoyed that. jesse eisenberg is awesome. and i more like the market toward the you want to hug. and at the mall. i got to have dinner with david ventura who is one of my idols.w my favorite movie command now i. think the social network is.you a great experience.uestion about moviuestion about it. the dream as a writer to have af moving me like that of one ofthc your books. the oscars, to get the go to thd oscars and sit there and that s airing perkinsn cnn, my sulfonic loaded. shall we go out there and said that. for >> good for him, and it for me.

there was nothing in that movie and i felt like i did not like. in coming you know what, as an author i think that is theab to, luckiest thing to be able to say so many movies get made that are about not too great. >> twenty-one. >> gue >> of 21. some much fun, different than the boat, much more, you know, th it's not -- there is noarkn darkness. a very upbeat story. very visually incredible. direcy it is aimed directly at 21 to year-old to want to go to vegas, and it was perfect in respect.,t i loved it.every that movie and get to spend pretty much, every day on said, and the actors were in my in apartment. i get to know them very wellart, because they were stuck in the winter of the three months. as a bostonian, that is selling live, but for all these l.a.peo people, they were miserable. alv did was almost like having ay fr little family for three months.r in vegas for a month. it was fun.. it was crazy.

at one. bin this from the said. we were eating the actors to the drunk to show us to their spot.k and then one quick story.il whod my friend to my told you aboutar the engine and millionaire kiddy goes to vegas and win out for 48 d it straight hours. a ansett. ke area, filming a scene. cameras are set up.he he wonders on to the senate, sits down thinking it's a real order budget table and tries to order a drink.t. they have to stop coming. comes, the director comes over. what you doing to read what you? doing, i can't get a drink.and o this is a movie set. we had some much fun. d the dolphin was a party, and in the view is great. it did w great. >> you mentioned early on in oun conversation here, when you're t writing the book you are i sit ning them of the. >> i sit down with the movie ins mind, and what start a book unless second see a movie. and believe that the format,

this is the way that it should mo be.vind i the book should be a movie, andl now want to read a book that reads like a movie.m a i grew up, television movies, ae very visual person, and so i'mgi imagining it, which is why terme of bullets in my writing room. i want to get into it and livens it to be writing becomes the conduit to show what and see. sg so, yes.riter. and i'm not the literary writer. amice cinematic writer, and i, like the dewhscription. i sat down, alice thinking about -- i was picturing the characters as actors.ve i don s't have specific actors hunt. way, dollywood does not work thatomen way. you can't pick somebody.certaine i certainly see it while i'm it writing it. it. jill in chambersburg, pa. thank you for holding. yawn. >> height. have been holding a while, so you kind of answer my question in the way in between.my but what i was wondering, really

you said you were back in your n pastor pretty well paid fiction writer whose books were notbookt merely selling.stand you in a down-and how you could be well paid --either >> adopted the publishersne understand it either. what happened was, did you haveo any more follow up that you mr.i wanted to gichve before he answs >>? >> no. h >> thank you. >> host 45, 26.ing w basically publishing was aan ita different and will then it washe today. it was the mid-90s. you were throwing big financesno and new ways to date and have potential of becoming the next john grisham.irst they're or a lot of reviews ofse my first book that said you are possibly the next johnor grisha, that kind of spirited them to make offers that the book didn'i sell a block. al i was able to get the next booke deal because there was still the you potential.

you know, when i sold bring dowm the house the deals were, and iw dwindling. smalle the smallest deal it ever made.e this little book. and simon & schuster bought it and said the first printing's going to be 12,000 copies, and then it spent 63 weeks on the times list. it came out of nowhere, and it was a very small advance. but my fiction were getting these huge advances and not selling. i mean, the industry was crazy back then. i remember, i mean, these stories are, you know, i came up with an idea, and i wrote a paragraph, and i faxed it to my agent, and within two hours i had a $400,000 offer. and it was an idea i came up with in the morning and had an offer by noon. and that just doesn't happen anymore. it's, like, the industry doesn't work that may anymore. maybe it does in hollywood. >> host: did you say yes? >> guest: of course. it was just crazy, and then i spent it all, and i'd go into debt and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

i was really stupid. i should have put it all in lehman brothers. [laughter] no, i'm kidding. you can never tell what's going to happen in the future. invest in yourself, right? isn't that what they say? is. >> host: next call is from joe in los angeles. >> caller: hi. really enjoy the interview, and i'd be first in line for the debate with maslin. just want to ask you two questions. the first is getting back to "the social network," and -- >> guest: oh, i was unplugged. sorry, i was missing joe. >> host: just a minute, joe, we've got a technical problem. okay, go ahead, joe. >> guest: this technology. >> host: two questions, one about "social network." i think zuckerberg denied that he started facebook because of a breakup with a girlfriend, the beginning scene in the movie where he has a breakup with the girlfriend. was that factually accurate? and the second question is on your list of authors you said that you admired the two authors, um, britain ellis and jay -- i can't pronounce his

last name be, you said for what they represented. i wanted to know exactly what you meant by that. thank you very much. >> guest: sure, great questions. first of all, about "the social network." so we have zuckerberg's blog from that night. he blogged as he hacked into harvard's computers and pulled up every picture of girl on campus. we have his blog in which he describes this girl, it starts off erica, blank, is a bitch. and it goes from there. we know that he went on a date that didn't go well, that he was mad and that he wanted to get his mind off her, that's what he was talking about. the specifics of that relationship, i don't know. in this -- in my book, the opening scene in "social network" aaron wrote. i don't know what research he did separate from me. but we do know there was a girl, he went on a bad date, he gets home, and he hacks into the computers at harvard. those are actual and factual. so, i mean, there you go. what more do you need than that? mark said that he didn't start facebook to meet girls.

come on. i interviewed a lot of people who knew mark in high school and college. i spent a lot of time with eduardo and that scene. these guys started facebook to meet girls. not necessarily to get laid, but because they had a lot of trouble talking to girls. these were not guys who were surrounded by the cool kids on campus. they weren't able to go to these parties and walk up to a girl and say hi. these were guys who played dungeons and dragons, who played with their computer and wanted to find an easier way to make social relationships, and for him to sit there and deny that now, i understand as the ceo of a company you can't say that. remember in facebook he used to poke people? that was when it first started the whole idea was you poke a girl who you wanted to have sex with. these were things we know -- it's not that he started the company to meet girls necessarily, he started the company because he couldn't meet girls, you know? and as a geeky guy who went to college as well, i get that. that's why most people do everything, why you became a

rock star because you couldn't meet girls. you become a writer because you couldn't meet girls. mark and eduardo created an internet company, and i don't know why that's so, you know, difficult to admit. [laughter] but the loftier reasons were, of course, there. he wanted to change the world. but he was 19. let's be honest. when you were honest, were you thinking about making a more easy way for people to stay in touch with their families? do you think that's what 19-year-old guys are thinking about? so anyways, getting to the authors, um, they broke ground in such an amazing way, and i wanted to be them so badly. i wasn't, i was a child in the '80s, i was high school, but i wanted to be that writer to who, you know, from that point of view, the crazy kind of -- so alive and so vivid. and it was a form of writing that you today you don't do. it wouldn't even necessarily

work today, but for that moment they were the two it writers, um, and they exemplified everything i wanted to be as a writer. and then i got older and realized i didn't want to do all that, or i would die if i did all that. but i think they represented something, um, that was amazing to me. >> host: okay. e-mail from danya suc,er. many items in the screenplay are closer to mr. sorkin's life or imagination than to mr. zuckerberg's, like the girl who dumps him with whom he reconnected at the end? and she says that the zuckerberg to whom i refer is not mark zuckerberg, the proud son of dobbs ferry, new york. the one under discussion is with ton created by fincher and sorkin, not the real-live boy billionaire, and that's from a daily beast article. it's a little confusing, i know.

>> guest: right. >> host: but then danya says she lives in eugene, oregon, and new york city and a graduate of amherst school of education. >> guest: it's a great question. the reality is, you know, i don't want to get into mark's personal life that much. but the reality is when "the social network" and my book, "accidental billionaires" takes place, although he did know the girl he ended up being with, for the first six months they were just friends. they didn't start dating seriously until after the events of "the social network," and even then people say they were not that serious according to people i talk to, but they didn't become the item they are today and now i believe they're engaged, and it's wonderful, and that's all great. the reality is when he met eduardo, they were two guys who were not in serious relationships, they were guys looking for girls. the scene where they meet two girls and hook up with them in the basement, that was all word for word from eduardo who was

there and other people also said that they were told that story. um, mark denies certain aspects of it. he never denied that specifically, that he hooked up with groupies in the basement of a bathroom. i don't know what his opinion of that is. it's tough. when you write a story like this, there are people who know nothing about the story but who want to defend someone they perceive to need their defense, so they write articles saying this isn't true, mark this, mark's great. i didn't want say mark's not -- i didn't want say mark's not great. i think he's a genius. however, the element that i wrote about in the book did happen. they don't make him any less great, but he did hook up with a girl in a basement according to the sources i asked. he did go out sometimes, you know? there's nothing wrong with saying that. um, i don't know. i can't answer specifically about what sorkin's life is like, about the girlfriend. [laughter] i do think that having the girlfriend then come back at the end of the movie was a plot

element that made the movie hold together. i assume, i don't know, i assume that scene at the end where he's trying to reconnect with the girl, i don't know where that came from. that's not in the book. that doesn't necessarily say that aaron didn't find it somewhere, but i'm not sure why that matters to anybody. i mean, the facts of the story, that's not a fact of the story. i think the facts of the story are all very clear in the movie and seem very real to me. um, i don't think there's anything negative about mark in it. i think the idea, you know, that he and a couple guys were geeky and trying to meet girls, i just don't see how anyone can argue against that. i really don't. except for mark himself. but when he argues about it, it's not that he denies the things that happen in the story, he just says he has a girlfriend. i mean, you know? >> host: ruby in toledo, good afternoon to you. you're on "in depth" on booktv. >> caller: hey, hey, ben. >> guest: hey, how are you?

>> caller: how's it going? >> guest: excellent. >> caller: really enjoying the interview. you are definitely holding our intention. you brought up eminem a couple of times in the interview. what is it about eminem that interests you? >> guest: i mean, that's a great question. are you a big eminem fan? >> caller: yeah. like eminem. [laughter] >> guest: excellent. you know, i think when i'm writing certain types of scenes, you have to get your energy level up, so when i'm writing an active scene like a chase scene or a sex scene, something like that, i will drink two red bulls and then turn eminem on really loudly. you can't really breathe well, but you write really fast, and at the end, you know, you need to come alive when you're writing. i've actually lately been dictating into the dragon software, so i can talk and move around, and then i have to go back and refix it because the dragon software's not quite ready yet, so a lot of the words don't make sense.

but, yeah, you know, you've got to get into the scenes. i'm a very active writer. i read somewhere that aaron sorkin broke his nose when writing a scene recently, and i'm like that. yeah, eminem, i think it gets your blood going. >> host: and once you have written that scene -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- when you go back, how much editing -- >> guest: well, when i actually finish the book, the editor usually, you know, a great editor at doubleday who finds the things that i need to fix, um, but when, when i first sit down, i don't usually reedit myself much once i'm done with that chapter. i'll reread it a bunch of times and go fix and fix, but when i finish the chapter, i don't touch it again. and usually i finish the book, and i don't re-edit it at all, i hand it in, and then bill thomas is my editor, he's amazing, and he'll find things in it that i have to fix. but overall editing has become less and less -- i don't self-edit much, or at all.

>> host: the stories of your research are so vivid, movie translations are great. have you ever thought of doing documentaries? >> guest: yeah. i mean, i want to do a week weekly documentary type show. i haven't ever thought of doing a one -- it's too much to spend years. and the people who do it, you know, it's great that they can do that, but i personally could not spend three years on one subject to create a great documentary which is what you kind of need to do. but i like the idea of doing something on tv where i can go in and out of something very quickly and tell a story. so, yeah, i like the idea of documentary television. doing a long-form movie documentary to me, it would just, i would probably go crazy. >> host: we have about a half hour left with this month's "in depth" guest, ben mezrich. he is the author of six nonfiction book beginning in 2002, "bringing down the house." "ing i ugly americans came out in '05.

"rigged,"2007. "the accidental billionaires came out in '09, and "sex on the moon" is his latest book. that just came out this year. neil in shaker heights, ohio, you're on book the. booktv. neil? >> caller: yeah. i just wanted to say that i don't really think you should be using the word nonfiction for his books. i think they're non-nonfiction -- >> host: what does that mean, neil? >> caller: it means that the research isn't very careful, and there's lots of mistakes, and why doesn't he just call them fiction? i mean, you know, he can write thrillers and not make a claim that he can't really substantiate. >> host: could you give an example of what you think is not accurate? >> caller: you say that when zuckerberg started face match he crashed all the computers at harvard. it's just not true. >> host: well -- >> guest: he crashed his own computer. >> guest: okay. >> host: now, i mean, neil,

where do you get your research? >> guest: my son was at harvard at the time. he started a web site that zuckerberg was aware of -- >> host: your son did? >> guest: r. >> caller: yes. that had numerous features of use to undergraduate students start inside august of 2003 months before face mash or facebook. he met with zuckerberg before facebook went live, and zuckerberg visited his site which had a component which was called the facebook. this is all documented in my son's book called "authoritas." and all the documentation is available online. e-mails, server logs, documents, etc. >> host: okay. what's your son's name, neil, if people want to research this? >> caller: aaron greenspan. >> host: thank you, sir. >> guest: yeah, his son is

mentioned in my book, actually. first, it's a crazy discussion, but, yes, the way it is in the book is correct. my books are nonfiction, and i am very accurate about what happened in the face mash incident. the computer servers were stopped, were crashed, i use the word "crashed." mark's computer froze. i think we all know what it means when we say a computer crashed. and as it is in the book and the movie, that's exactly how it happened. the discussion about his son ended up suing facebook, i believe. i think there's some litigation going on. i don't know the details of it. >> host: people really care. >> guest: yeah. i mean, you know, this happened at college recently. it wasn't that long ago, so there were kids who were there. there's been a lot of lawsuits, not just eduardo and the winklevosss, there's that other big one, there's his kid about the name facebook. i don't remember how that worked out. i stand by the weeks. -- books. and, you know, the things that

people point out, like, this is a perfect example of it. it's a person who has a personal beef with zuckerberg or with facebook, and they're bringing it out in the way they can in this conversation. it really has very little to do with my book. the fact that i say the computers crashed because his computer froze, and the network slow today the point where -- slowed to the point where the person who ran the network had to come in just like it is in the movie, mark had to go in front of the ad board. how are you not saying that the computers crashed? i don't get where that is inaccurate. how, i mean, this is what always boggles my mind about the attack on my book. there's nothing inaccurate about that. and yet someone will say, well, the computers didn't crash. but the computers crashed. we know it crashed. he was called in front of the ad board. he almost got kicked out of school. that's how the winklevoss' saw him, so what are you arguing with? i don't get it. maybe you have a definition of what a computer crashing than i

do. and it goes on and on like this. my books will get attacked, people say, it's not true, and you'll say, well, what's not true? and they'll point to some tiny thing on page 273 where something was blue instead of red. you can pick up any book in the world and turn to page 273 and find something that was blue that was actually red. that's not what we men between we -- we mean when we say nonfiction and fiction. what we mean are the facts of the story correct or not. it's nonfiction if story is true. these are true stories. it would be inaccurate to call them fiction. if i published these as fictional thrillers, the audience would be losing something because they wouldn't realize that these are true stories. the only people who would benefit are the characters in the stories who don't want them told. right? the character who doesn't want this story told would benefit by it being called fiction. the character who does want it told is benefited by its being called nonfiction.

i as a writer have to write the book as truthfully as i can, and the publisher has to decide whether they want to call it fiction or nonfiction. and that's really it. and me and my publisher sit down with my books, we vet every page. the lawyer edit is the largest eddy of my book. we sit there for hours going through every page to make sure it's all, you know, we have documentation for it all. i mean, do we argue about what it means to crash a computer? if a computer screen freezes, is that a crashed computer? i think so. i mean -- [laughter] you know, you just can't go down this line of questioning. it just goes on and on, and you don't know where to go with it. >> host: john in orlando, you are on with ben mezrich. please, go ahead. >> caller: first of all, i'm enjoying the conversation, i'm a big nfl fan, i've graduated to c-span2, and i'm not going back to the nfl -- >> guest: oh, no. what about the pats/giants? >> guest: well, i'm a steelers fan, and we won last week against the giants. [laughter]

i have the car keys in hands, and i'm getting ready to go get "ugly americans" because one of my friend's brothers was living in the far east at the time, and he was basically explaining what life was like while he was there, and he basically compared it to being a rock star or an nba player without having an talent. [laughter] >> guest: there you go. >> caller: now, regarding the people protesting about your books being nonfiction, if you called them fiction, people would be protesting just as much saying it's about them. >> guest: yeah, you're right. you know, it's a funny discussion, and it keeps coming up, and i don't mind talking about it. the controversy is good. it's good for me, it's good for everybody to talk about what is fiction and nonfiction. i just think in the end, you know, people just have to realize that if you're open and honest about how you write, don't read it if you don't like it, you know? you know what you're getting into. i'm not trying to trick anybody. this is a true story, but it's written like a movie. if you have a problem with that, go read an encyclopedia.

that's my opinion. i like the way i write, and i like to read books like this, and i think a lot of people agree with that. and, you know, you can pull open the book and turn to a page and find, you know, somebody describes his shirt as gray and maybe it was off gray. i'm sorry. but the reality is, this is a true story. >> host: we have about 20 minutes left with our guest, ben mezrich. milt in paradise, california, please, go ahead. >> caller: hi, thank you. i think some of the controversy about the fiction/nonfiction, i think it's ultimately jealousy. mark zuckerberg, people are jealous, and i think maybe some of that jealousy is directed towards the author. what do you think? >> guest: i mean, you know, it's interesting. i always, you know, no author really loves the critics of their books. no author really likes to read critique of their books, but i do think it's jealousy, but it's also, you know, there are a lot of journalists who are looking for, um, a story. and for a long time it was very easy to write a story about a nonfiction book that may or may

not have true elements. and so it's very easy to write an article that gets printed in the newspaper if you can point out something wrong with a book. so i think that's where it all comes from, it comes from journal is looking for a story -- journalists looking for a story. i mean, all writers are jealous of each other. we're all jealous of each other. we're all filled with envy. every time you read the newspaper about some big advance, you feel envious. it's part of our birthright. oh, that guy got a million dollars if that are? i hate him. but you don't really hate him. it's that whole feel. i don't know what it is specifically. i think that i have become a lightning brand for a certain form of writing. and the people will, you know, some people will hate it, and some people will like it. >> host: by the way, the pats/i giants game doesn't start until 4 this afternoon, so you'll be able to watch it. >> guest: great. >> host: just to recap, this feet is from max. before you became a writer, what

had you been interested in or what did you want to be when you were youngsome. >> guest: yeah. i've wanted to be a writer since i was 12, so before that -- i don't remember much before that. i've really wanted to be a writer since i can remember. you know, i did dabble in, like, acting or the idea of movies and things like that, but i've always wanted to write books. just, you know, my parents' love of books translated to my love of books, and i wanted to be earnest hemingway. i wanted to be one of my idols and do that. and as i got older, i wanted to be michael crichton very badly for many years because i loved his books, and i just wanted to write like that. and then i moved on and wanted to be sebastian younger without running around in afghanistan. [laughter] so i've wanted to be a writer since i was little. you have to decide that this is really what you want to do because it's very hard, and i don't mean that writing is hard, i mean breaking in is hard. it's a hard, hard business to

make a living at. it's like the scene in the terminator where he's describing what a terminator is, and he absolutely will not stop until you die. that has to be about writing. this is all you're going to do, and somehow i'm going to break in. and that's the way i was since i was 12. >> host: just to follow that up, marshall carper's tweet. i'm a young writer, published four books and am looking for a big break. what do i do, ben? >> guest: i mean, publishing four books is in itself phenomenal. i think the key is a story that translates well in a sentence. i think for me the key was that one sentence in bringing down the house, six mit kids who took vegas for millions. that was my subtitle. you want to know more. and the way television worked today, it's all a little sound bite. so if you can become that sound bite, next there's a book, you're going to have a big bestseller. but without that one sentence, you know, there's nothing to sell. and the movies work the same

way. they've all got one sentence, you know? so you've got to come up with a story that can come down to one sentence that makes everyone want to read it. and even myself i still struggle with that. i'm like, i need that sentence. where's that snook so my advice to young writers is come up with a story that you can really write that you have a personal connection to and that you could write it that no one else could write it and then enjoy it. and hopefully, you know, fight the good fight and go out there and try to sell it. >> host: we've got about 15015 minutes left to take -- 15 minutes left to take your calls. the next is alan in bellevue, nebraska. >> caller: hello. >> guest: hello. >> host: go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: i was going through the channels and happened to turn on week tv which i enjoy very much on the weekends, and i just wanted to call to convey my observations and reactions to your program. mr. mezrich, your free spirit and your incredible focus, and you bring a wonderful boy

minneapolis to booktv. and you can make up your own question for me to answer. i will read your books in the future. thank you. >> guest: oh, i appreciate that. [laughter] thank you very much. >> host: booktv is now buoyant. >> guest: i like being described as boy yafnlt i'm very full of energy. >> host: and this is another topic we just mentioned in passing, but dorothy mollton from new york city, i have never heard of ben mezrich. i'm a woman well past a certain age. he's charming and delightful. best "in depth" i've seen, and i'm going to read his books. i'm curious, how old is he? >> guest: yeah. i look really young because i sleep in a hyper bollic chamber. not really. i live in a mall, basically. wego underground to get anywher. i can get from new york to boston without stepping outside, so i get paler and paler, and i don't age. i'm actually 42, so i know it's funny when i do book stuff, everyone thinks i'm, like, in my

20s, and i'm really -- i like that idea, but i'm starting to, you know, i'm old. i'm old. i'm, yeah, i'm 42. >> host: what were your grades like as harvard? >> guest: i think they were good. i was one of those students, i knew i wanted to be a writer, so i took the easiest classes i could find. i took, i literally would follow the hockey team to whatever classes they would go to because i knew they knew the secrets. and my roommate scott and i who, i said, runs the atlantic monthly magazine, we would compete to see who could start our papers later and hand it in. we would have a paper due tuesday morning, and can it'd be mold night at midnight, and we would compete to see -- so we were, i did well, but i was very much -- i knew what i wanted to do, so what i wanted out of college was to be able to be a writer. so i took a lot of, like, theory and social theory, and my dad always makes fun of me because i

took a class called caribbean cultures. it was a great class, you know, i was just interested in everything, and i wrote my thesis in pop culture on new kids on the block. >> host: what did that cost your parents a year? the. [laughter] >> guest: that's what my dad always says. it cost them a lot probably. [laughter] you know what? i think the thing about college is it's a time to figure out what you're going to do, and if you figure it out, you've done better than the people who just study. because that's life. once you know what you really want to do in life, that's how you solve life. that's my real belief. now that i have a kid, and i'm trying to figure out things to say to him, figure out what you really, really want to do, and if you figure it out early enough, you're way ahead of everybody else. >> host: is it tanya that's your wife? >> guest: yes. she's a local fashion consultant in boston, and she started a fashion line with one of our earlier callers. it's a fashion line,

ready-to-wear. she's a hot ticket. she's, you know, i'm very unfashionable, and she's super hot and always knows how to dress, so she's got this fashion line launching and doing very well. >> host: marie in boise, good afternoon. you're on booktv on c-span2. sorry about that, marie, i forgot to punch the button. go ahead, marie. >> caller: oh. great interview. i wanted to make a comment, then i have a questionment in my writers' group we would call what you write creative nonfiction, that's what massey wrote when he wrote knicks las and -- nicholas and alexandra, and our school librarian had it cataloged under fiction. now, my question. and this concerns your whole life. what was your earliest childhood memory? thank you. >> host: marie, why do you ask that question? >> caller: oh, well, because the study is out that your earliest

memories do change your life. do control your life. >> guest: wow. >> caller: let me give you an example. john sargent as a baby had a nursemaid who took him out every day -- [inaudible] , and he found a red cobblestone in a building, and he fell in love with that. and every day he would make his nurse do, show him the red cobblestone. well, he became a genius with the paint brush, you know. so i'm studying this about people. i'd like to know. thank you. >> host: thank you for calling in, marie. >> guest: wow, that's great. >> host: creative nonfiction and earliest childhood memory. >> guest: well, yeah, i've got to think what my earliest childhood memory is. i don't remember a lot. you know, they come in like glimpses, you know, of what you remember. i'm trying -- well, creative nonfiction, i mean, i don't know what the categories are in bookstores. my books have always been nonfiction, you know, since i

started writing nonfiction. sometimes i see it in the business section which i always think is kind of funny, and sometimes i see it in the gambling section. my books get moved all over the place. i do remember when "wringing down the house -- bringing down the house" came out, and the such a battle getting it out of the gambling section. bookstores like to categorize things, and it's not really a book about gambling, although it takes place in casinos. yeah, i would say nonfiction. i wouldn't call it creative nonfiction unless we're talking about creative black tie and everybody wears a tuxedo. it's nonfiction. you could call it nonfiction. this whole debate, you know, you looked at the nonfiction bestseller list, and the number one book was "america: a fake history of the united states," by jon stewart. never one book on the bestseller book. it was a book of made-up facts, and no one has a problem with that being called nonfiction.

and then i write a book that's all true but written in a cinematic way, and people want to writing articles about it. it's bizarre. but anyways, earliest memory, i'm trying to remember something really early -- >> host: well, you just think about that as we move on, and this is an e-mail from todd margo. what does ben mezrich mean when he says he approaches nonfiction from the perspectiveover a thriller? perspective of a thriller? how does that impact the story? it implies he plays up something. >> guest: right. it's a great question. so when i go inside the story and i spend the month researching it, i try and find what the beats of that story are that matter to me and would matter in retelling that story. whenever you tell a story, you make decisions no matter what it is you're talking about. if you're going to talk about the invention of the telephone, there's a who, what, where, when, why. and how you order those things is important to how you tell that story. so when i want to order the story of "the social network,"

eduardo has come to me and told me this crazy story between him and mark. i get all the court documents, i interview everybody except for mark who won't talk to me. spend a lot of time talking to everyone who knows him, people at harvard, spent a lot of time getting the scene right, and then i decide what the beats of that story are. and as a thriller what works to tell that story in a very exciting and phenomenal way. you could start that story anywhere, right? you could sit down and start with the millionth facebook user and then go back from there. you could start the story him having sex with a girl in the basement of a club. you could start the story with, you know, justin timberlake, sean parker getting caught with cocaine at a party. these are all facts, by the way. you know? but where you put them in the story is your decision as a writer. doesn't change the fact that they're facts. it doesn't change the elements of nonfiction. but every writer makes those decisions. so i make those decision as if

i'm writing a thriller. how does this read like a thriller? these are the facts. and then you order them. i mean, there's nothing wrong with that. you make it as orderly and thrillerresque as you can within the framework of a true story. >> host: this e-mail, ben, ever consider an autobiography? that might be the project you were looking for. that's from mike -- >> guest: you know, i have been getting a lot of that recently. i do a lot of speaking, and the stories are getting crazier and crazier with the things i've gotten into. i think i will write, i want to write, like, an entourage-y, sex in the city book of all of my incidents because, i mean, i've had people come to me, people who claimed they robbed the art museum in boston, and they had some really interesting evidence, and then i got too scared because i almost got killed. and things like that happen to me all the time. at some point -- i don't want to call it a memoir, but it would be, you know, yeah, the true

story of all these different stories. >> host: another e-mail from cuba in new york, based on your statements regarding your beliefs on risk and gambling, you seem to believe that powerful players in the market are taking risk. i do not believe this is true, and i believe this is the root of all the problems which has led to the occupy wall street movement as well as the tea party movement. >> guest: i mean, interesting. i think you're right in some respects. i think that there are elements in the market or very, very powerful people who -- rig is too strong a word, but certainly can game the system in directions nonpowerful people can't. yeah, i don't know. i don't know what to say about that. i don't have any inside information on wall street. on what's gone wrong and what's gone right. um, but, yeah. i mean, i think risk is the, it's the mechanism, you know? but your -- you're right, there are people who are above it.

>> host: anthony in long island, you're on booktv. >> caller: thank you. mr. mezrich, it's an honor to speak with you. i'm very proud of you. i can only imagine how your parents must be. you're a very nice yes han. -- gentleman. i would ask you to comment on mark zuckerberg, basically, exposed everybody's lives to the corporations and has been made man of the year, and julian assange and bradley manning for exposing the the corruption in high levels of government have been made marked men if not national criminals. i mean, they're whistleblowers that are now being held, you know, to a high degree of persecution or prosecution by the authorities which they've exposed destroying our constitution. so i would just ask you to comment on that if you could. >> guest: great question. you know, it's, it's very interesting. zuckerberg and facebook, they really do believe that having

your information public is a good thing. i think that mark, i believe that mark believes that a more open world is a better world. and they do profit on that. um, and a lot of people have called them to task for opening up our lives to corporations, but not, you know n a malicious way. it's just that, you know, your information -- you're putting your information there. i think that's the one thing we all have to remember. they're not coming into your house and taking pictures of what's in your house. that's what google does. [laughter] they're basically asking you to use their site if you want, ask then you put your information -- and then you put your information there, and then that information is not as private maybe as you want it to be, but it's not necessarily all their fault. they do change the rules every now and then, and that's when things become bad. um, and then you're right, then the wikileaks, you know, publishes information that the goth doesn't want out there -- government doesn't want out

there, and that's a little bit different. i don't know if i have a major comment on that. i think, i personally think that we are all to blame for what we put on our facebook page. i mean, really, you have to take some responsibility. if you put a photo of yourself drunk at a party and it ends up somewhere, it's not mark zuckerberg's fault. if you, you know, you have to be more careful with what you put out there. >> host: sharon in chicago, we have got just about two minutes left. >> caller: hi. this is sharon greenspan from chicago, actually a suburb of chicago. i'm not related to the earlier -- [laughter] although i think that's pretty funny that i'm watching a show, and i hear my name. but that's the way it goes. um, i'm a retired attorney, um, but i teach a book club of suburban women in the northern suburbs of chicago. and as you were speaking, before i texted one of the other people in my book club who helps pick books, and we will probably do

either the ugly americans or sex on the moon this coming year, especially since a number of these women, you know, have had their dealings with hedge funds, etc. so the ugly americans, i'm leaning towards. but the thing that i wanted to call in about the most is, ben, you know, i'm sure your parents are totally excelling. i have a 20-year-old, and i only hope in another ten years she will succeed the way you've succeeded with yours -- >> host: sharon, what is -- >> guest: you don't know that? >> caller: that's why i called in. earlier you had asked ben what a men. was, and he didn't really answer you. >> host: okay, very quickly. you answer men, and ca vellic. >> caller: i'm going to ask ben to answer what a men, is. ca velling means that you're, like, bursting at the heart, you know?

>> guest: got it. >> caller: like you watch your child or anybody, you are so proud when you're watching somebody do something incredible. for me, my kid's a singer. she's studying music education, and when i see her do an aria, i can't even explain what it feels like. so that's ca velling. you're full at the heart. >> host: all right, sharon, thank you very much. and, ben, she wallets you to -- >> guest: yeah. i wish my mom would call in. the i think a men. is like a special person who does good. i think there's a specific definition that i don't have, but it's -- >> host: it's a positive thing? >> guest: yeah, it's a positive thing. it's someone who does something great for other people but also for themselves at the same time. i think. >> host: don e-mails in, did your success with nonfiction translate into success with your earlier fiction? have any of them been rereleased? >> guest: amazingly not. i wrote two books under the pen name holden scott -- >> host: where'd you come up with that? >> guest: that was my ideal

dream non-ethnic dream. [laughter] it's really lame. but, you know, i had written two thrillers which i think, actually, were really good books, and i have thought about rereleasing them as pic. i would like to get back into fiction. but i don't know if people could even find my fiction. it was years ago, ever since bringing down the house, i've been known as a nonfiction guy. >> host: and just again to recap, kirsten tweets in, who are some of your favorite authors and what are you reading now? >> guest: well, i am still reading the game of thrones, five books. i'm on book four. he's great. my favorite authors were definitely michael crichton, i thought he was great. i love, god, there's so many now. intas yang younger. be. >> host: you've also listed ray bradbury, hunter s. thompson, ernest hemingway. >> guest: that's a good list right there. >> host: yeah.