Martin Kihn, Fallon’s Director of Strategic Analysis, set aside his quant skills recently and talked to the agency about his other career as a successful author. His memoir “Bad Dog (A Love Story)” was released in April by Pantheon Books at the same time as his first book, a satirical memoir called “House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time,” was acquired by Showtime as the basis for a new series. “House of Lies” the series debuts in January and stars Minnesota’s own Don Cheadle as a much more interesting version of Marty.
Our Marty presented a timeline that showed “How to Get a Hollywood Deal.” Turns out, it’s not so easy. The timeline shows how Kihn slogged for more than a decade in obscurity, writing unpublished horror novels and screenplays, before becoming a writer for “Pop-Up Video.” After business school, he wrote many more unpublished pages before Warner Business Books put out “House of Lies.”
His words of wisdom to aspiring writers: “It’s easy to get a Hollywood deal — just spend fifteen years writing three hours a day, every day, and getting nowhere, and you can be an overnight success like me!” (10,000 hours is also what Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” claims is the time required to master a skill.) So get to it — and tell Hollywood Marty sent you.
Martin has two upcoming reading:
Sat. 5/21 @ 2pm – Stillwater, MN
Valley Booksellers – DOGS WELCOME! WIN SPECIAL PRIZES!
217 North Main St.
Sun. 5/22 @ 4pm – Uptown Minneapolis
Magers & Quinn Booksellers
3038 Hennepin Ave South
