Neil Strauss on sex, Tinder and why he’d ‘never write’ The Game now

NEIL Strauss hit paydirt with his pickup guide The Game, which is about to become a Hollywood film starring James Franco. So what does he regret about it?

Game over. Los Angeles-based Neil Strauss’s memoir The Game is being turned into a movie starring James Franco. Picture: Getty Images

SEX addiction, sex parties, group sex, polygamy, cheating ... Neil Strauss has done it all (and then some).

He famously “negged” Jessica Alba and Britney Spears using techniques from The Game, his hugely successful book about picking up women.

But Strauss admits he wouldn’t write it now.

“Looking at The Game in retrospect, I’d never write it now because I’m just different,” Strauss said.

“If I was interested in just having sex, I would get into one of the sex positive communities where you can just actually walk up to someone and be like, ‘let’s have sex’, and they’d be like ‘yes or no,’” Stauss notes.

“So maybe I would just cut to the chase.”

Strauss’s New York Times best-selling memoir is being turned into a movie by James Franco, who will star as Mystery who was Strauss’ mentor in the “secret society of pick-up artists”.

While the Malibu-based writer no longer lives The Game lifestyle (his latest book, The Truth, is, in part, about his journey to monogamy), Strauss said the experience of writing it “really opened up self-improvement for me”.

“It was a way for guys to get together, be vulnerable and connect with each other, and show their fears, insecurities and form real male friendships, which they had never had,” Strauss said, sitting in a cafe wearing thick-rimmed reading glasses and drinking a flat white.

“The negative side is it’s a world where women are ‘targets’ and sexually objectified. I feel sad when I hear stories about jerks going out and saying shitty things to people.”

Though Strauss admits some of his MO in The Game era was probably just as bad.

“The stuff that makes the least amount of sense would actually work,” Strauss said, of how he would pick-up potential “targets” (translation: girls).

“I still don’t understand why, when I was doing The Game, say I was on a date at a bar and we’d go to kiss and she doesn’t want to make out.

“I remember a couple of times, I would go and make out with someone else at the club and come back to her and we’d make out.

“Logically, someone would say, ‘that’s a douche bag and I’m leaving this date.’”

HOW THE GAME INSPIRED TINDER

The founders of Tinder were fans of The Game, to the point where it inspired them to come up with the dating app.

“I met with one of the guys who founded Tinder and he said one of the reasons they started it was ... beacuase they read The Game,” Strauss said.

“He’s like, ‘yeah, it just seemed like a lot of work to find out if they were attracted to you. We thought, what if we could skip all that and I could just know if someone was attracted to me?’”

So what does Strauss make of the so-called Tinder generation?

“I think every generation likes to say that people are getting more promiscuous but that’s just part of being young and growing up,” Strauss said.

“I’m sure every generation had it. When you’re young, you want to explore your sexuality and when you’re older, you want to commit.”

GAME OVER

Neil Strauss gets real, very real, in his latest book The Truth, which documents his road from rehab (for sex addiction) to putting a ring on it (he is now married to wife Ingrid, a model, and has a baby).

“I don’t know if I was a sex addict and I don’t know if it matters,” Strauss said later, at a cocktail bar.

“At the most extreme there’s a group called Sexaholics Anonymous that says if you have premarital sex, you’re a sex addict.

“Here’s the way I think about it. (If) your willpower is not strong enough to keep you from doing something, then maybe it’s a problem.

“I guess it’s a compulsive behaviour. The definition of addiction in rehab that I liked the most, that made the most sense, was it’s chronic, escalating and it has life-damaging consequences.

“It doesn’t have to be sex or drugs. If you’re doing something to avoid feeling connected with others or some kind of emotions.”

So how did Strauss get to the settled, almost Zen emotional place he’s at now?

His regular therapy-esque surfing sessions in Malibu with legendary rap producer Rick Rubin certainly help.

“The first step is the self-awareness — this is my pattern, these are the things I do, this it where they come from,” Strauss said.

“I think the misinterpretation of The Truth is that it’s some kind of endorsement of monogamy — it isn’t.

“It’s an endorsement of emotional health before getting into a relationship.

“I tried all the monogamy, polyamory, and open relationships, swinging, and living in a free-love commune, and they all ended disastrously.

“The problem was me, not the relationships. If you’re unhealthy, every relationship you have will be unhealthy. It’s still you doing it.

“To me, I’d much rather be a person that has a tonne of baggage and got rid of it because all that I learnt along the way versus the person with no baggage.

“And I’m still getting rid of my baggage. It’s a lifelong project.”

SEX SELLS

In The Truth, Strauss documents his role in an open, group relationship with multiple women.

“I think in theory, it sounded fun — to explore your sexuality and be in this alternative relationship,” he said.

“I guess I knew they were open to like sexual exploration, they had had sexually adventurous experiences.

“(But) I had more sex in a relationship and wilder sexual experiences in a relationship than I did when I was single in The Game. I think there’s more sex.”

The huge commercial and critical success of his books means Strauss, 47, has almost groupie-style fans — the kind usually reserved for the subjects of his books (he has co-written memoirs with Marilyn Manson and porn star Jenna Jameson).

Case in point: An awkward moment at a sex party in San Francisco.

“After we did our thing, the guy literally next to me who was doing his thing with someone else next to me, was like, ‘oh hey I’m a big fan of your work. If it wasn’t for your work, I wouldn’t be here’”.

Fans aside, Strauss measures the success of his books based on whether he is scared to put them out.

“I always discourage doing anything for a story because it’s not authentic,” Strauss said.

“When The Game was about to come out, I was scared to put my name on it.

“Anyone I’ve done a biography with has been scared to put it out.

“I always feel like if you’re scared to put a book out, if you’re scared that people are going to know this stuff, then you’ve written a good book.”

The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships is out now. See neilstrauss.com