I’ve been amazed by how well the films turned out
Michael Lewis’s books inspired Oscar-winning movies like The Big Short and The Blind Side. He tells HANNAH STEPHENSON about the ‘odd’ relationship at the heart of his new work, The Undoing Project
HE HAS been a regular on the American talk show circuit for years now, fielding questions on subjects like the global financial crisis, how low-budget sports teams achieve success and, more recently, the psychology behind the Trump presidential victory.
New Orleans-born author and financial journalist Michael Lewis, 56, whose books have been made into movies including The Big Short, Moneyball and The Blind Side, has now focused his attentions on a true, but unique, love story.
The Undoing Project follows the story of two psychology professors, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who met in war-torn 1960s Israel and formed an extraordinary intellectual collaboration.
Together they developed the field of behavioural economics, with Kahneman winning a Nobel Prize (his acclaimed book, Thinking Fast And Slow, sold 1.7 million copies).
“It’s a love story at the heart of it, which gets sadder and sadder,” Michael reveals. “They fell for each other because each had something the other wished he’d had. Amos wanted to be a literary poet, but he was a logician, a scientist type. Danny, when he was young, forced himself into science, but I think he was really a poet or a literary type.”
The story has the potential for a great movie – two heterosexual intellectuals fall in love through their work, spend so much time together that their wives and families feel neglected, then fall out when one is feted more than the other and finally reunite before a tragic ending.
“I’ve had offers, but I haven’t sold it,” he says. “I want to give it more time. Someone will buy the film rights. The issue is, will they make it? I’ve learned through experience that it really matters whose hands you put the thing into.”
Michael has been to Oscar ceremonies when his movies have been up for awards – Moneyball received six nominations, The Blind Side scooped a Best Actress gong for Sandra Bullock and The Big Short won Best Adapted Screenplay – despite having limited involvement in the films.
He says: “I’ve loved the films. I’ve been amazed by how well they’ve turned out. One of the reasons they’ve come out that well is because nobody’s listened to me!”
He did, however, hang out with Brad Pitt and Christian Bale when The Big Short was being made.
“They are amazingly normal people. With three movies, I’ve met nobody who behaved badly, or tried to pull rank or seem important. The environment feels like a collection of craftsmen who really care about how they do the work.”
He says he could see Christian Bale in the role of Tversky, and Sacha Baron Cohen as Kahneman: “To have him play a depressive neurotic – and he is half Israeli – I think he’d completely get it.”
In real life, the two psychologists published a series of seminal articles in the field of judgment and decision-making, discovering that we are programmed to make certain kinds of mistakes, not just out of stupidity. “Collections of minds can make errors, markets can go wrong, elections can go wrong,” Michael explains.
What makes the story so compelling is that the men were complete opposites.
“Danny was always sure he was wrong. Amos was always sure he was right. Danny didn’t go to parties. Amos was the life and soul of the party. Danny was massively untidy. Amos was pedantically neat.”
Throughout their collaboration, during their waking hours they could usually be found together.
Their close asexual relationship affected their families, Michael agrees. Kahneman married and had a son and daughter, but seemed to live for his work and wasn’t a very happy person. He later left his wife to marry psychologist Anne Treisman, but there’s no doubt the wider family felt neglected because of their friendship.
“Danny’s first marriage unravelled and his second almost did. Amos made it clear that Danny was the most important relationship in his life.
“The moment I love most in the relationship is when Danny leaves his wife for another woman, and with that other woman on what’s supposed to be an incredibly romantic trip to Paris, he’s engaged in writing love letters to Amos.”
Their partnership soured when they left Israel for North America in 1981. As Tversky embraced the stardom, they lost touch for more than a decade – until Tversky discovered he was dying from cancer, and called Kahneman to tell him he had six months to live.
Tversky died in 1996, aged 59 but spent the last six months close. “They didn’t work together, but they talked every day,” says Michael. “Among the last things Amos said to Danny was, ‘I want you to know that out of all the people on the planet, you’re the one who caused me the most pain’.”
THE Undoing Project by Michael Lewis is published by Allen Lane, priced £25