How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is a 2008 British comedy film based upon Toby Young's 2001 memoir How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. The film follows a similar storyline, about his five-year struggle to make it in the United States after employment at Sharps Magazine. The names of the magazine and people Young came into contact with during the time were changed for the film adaptation. The film version (adapted by Peter Straughan) is a highly fictionalized account, and differs greatly from the work upon which it was built.