How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is a 2008 comedy film based upon Toby Young's 2001 memoir of the same name. 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 is a highly fictionalized account, and differs greatly from the work upon which it was built.