Ben Mezrich '91 (Author, BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE, THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES)
By D. Dona Le '05
"I think I want to live vicariously through my characters, so I’m always looking for something exciting and interesting.”
An unexpected statement from an author whose career has certainly been exciting and interesting in its own right.
Ben Mezrich ’91 has written a number of non-fiction works about young college students whose talent and intelligence enable them to "beat the system, something we all aspire to do.” BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE: THE INSIDE STORY OF SIX MIT STUDENTS WHO TOOK VEGAS FOR MILLIONS, published in 2003, was the work that truly launched Mezrich into the spotlight. Adapted into the film 21, the book describes how a group of MIT students became a team of expert card counters who jetted off to Las Vegas every weekend.
Most recently, Mezrich has gained acclaim for THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES, a factual account of the creation of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg ’06. Director David Fincher’s THE SOCIAL NETWORK, featuring Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield, is based upon Mezrich’s book. Both Mezrich’s book and the movie adaptation have been explosively popular, confirming his great success as a writer.
"I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. While I was at Harvard, I was already writing novels and sending them out and getting rejected. I was a cartoonist for the Crimson and wrote for the Independent, but the stuff that I wanted to write was books.”
After graduation, Mezrich moved to an apartment in Boston with Scott Stossel, deputy editor of The Atlantic magazine, and the two spent the year under lockdown to write feverishly. In fact, Mezrich completed nine novels in only one year. To assuage his parents’ concern about the viability of a literary career, Mezrich applied to law school but deferred, with no intention of attending.
Initially, Mezrich began as a fiction writer, interested in scientific and hi-tech thrillers. Now, however, Mezrich considers himself the pioneer of "a new form of journalism. It’s my own genre at the moment. It’s a very valid form of nonfiction.”
He acknowledges the controversy surrounding the accuracy of his non-fiction works. For example, some critics have argued that Mezrich takes too many liberties with dialogue and event details.
Mezrich says, "Everything that takes place in [THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES] and in the movie is all true, and nobody disputes that. So what they dispute is the style. There are plenty of journalists who dislike the way I write, but they’re lodged in old-school thinking. The New York Times are the people who called me a journalist, not something I set out to be, but definitely for THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES, I consider myself a writer, but you could also call me a journalist.”
Perhaps Mezrich’s willingness to thrive in this gray area of journalism reflects the subjects of his books. He pursues characters that are "also looking for the gray area, not between the illegal and the legal, but using brains to make money and change the world—but they never flip over or into crime.”
Likewise, the absolute facts recounted in Mezrich’s works are always accurate, and what distinguishes Mezrich’s style from other examples of journalism is its thriller nature. It is no coincidence that his works are so seamlessly transferrable to film.
"With my non-fiction, I always envision it as a movie, so I write cinematically and I write in a visual fashion. I always think about how it’ll look on screen when I write it.”
Mezrich was instrumental in the creation of Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for THE SOCIAL NETWORK. Sorkin traveled to Boston to meet Mezrich, and the two worked together in a hotel room, Mezrich handing over chapters of his manuscript to Sorkin as they were completed.
"He would ask me questions when there were things about Harvard that he wanted to know, so I was very focused on helping him so that he could go forward and build that incredible screenplay.”
Mezrich was even more heavily involved in the creation of 21 (2008), starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, and Laurence Fishburne. 21 was filmed in Las Vegas for one month and in Boston for two months.
"It was literally all the actors hanging out in my apartment every night, a hometown movie.”
Although he was raised in Princeton, New Jersey, Mezrich has certainly made Boston his town. The publicity surrounding THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES and the huge success of THE SOCIAL NETWORK have made Mezrich a literary celebrity. He has done countless television interviews, attends movie premieres, and ultimately receives attention uncommon for an author of non-fiction.
Despite his celebrity author status, Mezrich values and retains his close ties to Boston.
"In Boston, I'm a well-known quantity. It’s a small town in a lot of ways. It’s been great to have a city like Boston to live, where you can find the stories that are here and write stories about this area, and everyone knows about it and reads it.”
Mezrich has recently completed another book to be released in July. Though Mezrich can only reveal that the book describes "another trust story about a heist,” he is upfront about his plans to transfer this project to the big screen as well.
"I’m the only non-fiction author with two hit movies. I’d definitely like to go for three, and it’s been cool so far.”
A self-proclaimed "geeky Harvard student” chasing stories about brilliantly successful whiz kids, Mezrich has proven to be equally as compelling, brilliant and successful as his protagonists.