Kiss and sell: ’10 Days’ began as a joke between friends

The new film “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” started simply, as a homemade book with stick-figure drawings. Five years ago, Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long used crayons and construction paper to create a gag gift and made six copies.

The idea for the book came to them after a night of drinking and heartbreak at Sloane’s bar in West Hollywood. The two 32-year-olds, childhood friends from Tallahassee, Fla., were slumped on the couch in their Fairfax Avenue apartment, watching football and riffing on “The Rules.” That book, full of anti-feminist dating dictums, had persuaded many of their friends that playing hard to get was the secret to nabbing Mr. Right. (Examples: Don’t talk too much about yourself. Make him call two or three times before you return his call.)

But the pair thought “The Rules” didn’t even scratch the surface of the really obnoxious female behaviors that repel men.

“We got talking about all the things girls really do, like calling guys endlessly and driving by their houses all the time,” Long said during a chat over breakfast recently at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “Eventually, Michele pulled out a notebook and we started writing.”

They came up with a list of things women can do to guarantee a 10-day expiration date for any new relationship.

Some examples: Start calling him your boyfriend; have sex and let him know he’s not the first; accuse him of flirting with the waitress; tell him he reminds you of your dad; ask him, “Do I look fat?”

They gave one of the homemade books to Alexander’s brother, Brian Alexander, a literary agent. “He showed it around the office and everyone thought it was hysterical,” she said. A few months later, he sold it to Bantam. The book was published in 1998 with the original stick-figure drawings, and it has sold about 28,000 copies.

Around the same time, producer Christine Peters was in New York shopping at literary agencies for film fodder. At the bottom of one agent’s list was the book, just a joke at the time.

It jumped out at her. “I was going through a romantic hiccup at the time,” said Peters, who is divorced from the producer Jon Peters. “I kept hearing the same story over and over again. But I was realizing, he’s not going to change. I have to get out of this.”

Peters, who is president of the Robert Evans Co. at Paramount, immediately thought of a film. “I imagined this crazy setup where you have a girl writing a column about trying to lose a guy, and a guy in a 10-day bet that he can keep her.”

She bought the book on the spot. “We got the offer on Valentine’s Day,” Long said. “We thought it was pretty cute.”

Although Long and Alexander won’t divulge how much they were paid for the film rights to the book, they will joke about it. “Our friends think we’re set for life,” Alexander said. “People keep calling me asking, ‘So, do you have a house in Bel-Air yet?” added Long, who works for ADD, a marketing firm.

For nearly four years, the film was stuck in development. Peters, whose last film with Evans was “The Out of Towners,” hired Brian Regan, Kristen Buckley and Burr Steers to write the screenplay. And eventually Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey were cast as lead characters.

“All along the way, we tried not to let ourselves get too excited,” Long said. But now that the movie is in theaters, they are thrilled. “The first time I saw a billboard for the film, I almost ran into a bus,” said Alexander, who works in radio promotions at Capitol Records.

The duo’s next book is titled “How to Tell He’s Not the One in 10 Days.” A few examples: When he picks you up for a date, he honks the horn; he suggests you join a gym; he introduces you to his friends as his designated driver. “It’s the flip side,” Long explains. “All the stuff he does wrong.”

Although Long has yet to find Mr. Right, Alexander has been with the same guy for a year now. “We had a period of time after we wrote the book that if we ever started dating someone, we would always try to get past the 10-day mark. And we never could!” she said. “We started thinking that we were destined to be alone, that we had written this book and that it was going to be a self-fulfilling prophesy.”