HE EXPECTED fame, fortune and happiness when he went to New York to be a journalist, but bombed. Then he wrote a book after his failure Zodiac Watch that became a hit.
Now in an irony lost on no one involved in the project, the London-based writer Toby Young is the toast of Cannes as the film of the book of the failure was launched with one of the most lavish parties of the festival so far.
At a villa on the hillside above the harbour, hundreds of guests including movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, Mischa Barton, Natalia Imbruglia, Gillian Anderson and Lily Allen with her father Keith watched a female string quartet play by the pool before fireworks and a DJ set to distinctive Gorillaz graphics projected onto the grand house frontage. The British magazine GQ and a new vodka, Akvinta, backed the bash.
All this when the film, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, is yet to be finished and a full five months before the British release. Simon Pegg, the Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz star chosen to play Sidney Young, the character loosely based on Young's shortlived time on Vanity Fair, could scarcely believe the scenes. But he thought they were utterly apt. "I think it's brilliant. I can't help but think how Toby is feeling. He must be at his most insufferable right now.
How exciting must it be to have a film of your life." Young, whose self-publicising streak was last night kept under control by publicists, has built a career on never unknowingly underselling himself. But it is his self-deprecating book about lack of success that is proving his biggest triumph.
Pegg said the Young he eventually met in real life was far more agreeable than the public image. "I was surprised.
I couldn't quite equate who I was meeting with this horror I had heard so much about." But the actor still feared public reaction. "I've seen a rough cut and I think it's funny. But I've never been part of a film where the knives are out already. There are people out there who don't want Toby to do well." It is a problem the producers anticipated and why they chose Pegg for the part. Stephen Woolley, the man behind hits including The Crying Game, said: "Simon is someone who can do rude things, but you still like him." He added: "This is exactly what Toby dreamed of it's the biggest party in Cannes."
embroidered patches
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