You walk into a bar. The tall bit of gorgeous that’s bored with her friends looks at you, decides that you look more like her worn-out running shoes than a guy she wants dripping sweat on her for eight minutes, and turns away. What do you do? If you’ve read The Game by Neil Strauss, which chronicles the author’s rise as a pick-up artist, you ignore the signals and walk right up, confident that you’ll have her panting like a dog three drinks and nintety minutes later.

But since most Americans can’t read, we’ll soon have a film version of the book, which will no doubt emphasize (paradoxically) the hotness of the protagonist’s partners in emotionless coupling and the problems he faces when he realizes he can’t pull that ‘game’ shit on someone he actually wants to stick around for a while.

Spyglass has the option, for which rewrite artiste Dan Weiss will adapt. Once intended for adaptation by that great romance shadow-auteur, American Pie‘s Chris Wietz, the film fell into the company of the directorless when Wietz moved on to the religion-free version of The Golden Compass. His only religion, I hear tell, is ass.