From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

My guest, actor and writer Simon Pegg, has found a way to integrate many of his

exceptions into the pop culture things he's done.

His work with Edgar Wright and, of course, the great TV series space, which Edgar spoke

on the show bar a few weeks ago.

His new film is the adaptation of how to lose friends and alienate people.

He plays a writer whose obsessions with pop culture get in his way.

Simon, first of all, thanks so much for being here.

Pleasure. Nice to see you.

Is it weird playing a real person?

I was kind of spared that.

I think it must be...

Because, I mean, you're not really, but you're sort of...

Yeah, fortunately, it's a fictionalized version of Toby's book.

So I play Sydney in the film to actually set it in a universe where we could play with the truth a little bit and not feel obliged to tell it how it was.

I mean, Peter Strawn, who adapted it, he took the spirit of Toby's book and several of the events that took place in it.

And he made a film out of it.

So I didn't feel beholden to Toby to do him, as it were.

I think it would be weird anyway because not many people, a lot of people know Toby's book

and they know his writing, but they don't know the man.

Sure.

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