Rich Kid Talks About Riches With Rich People For Your Poor Pleasure
Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune and awkward filmmaker, dimly fascinated us with his 2003 documentary Born Rich, in which he interviewed his other entitled friends about what it means to be fabulously and accidentally wealthy. These friends ran the gamut from relatively normal to about to spin off the planet, and it was fairly entertaining, if not all that enlightening. Now he's got a more expansive follow-up premiering on Cinemax (only the best) this week called The One Percent (though it originally showed at the TriBeCa Film Festival back in 2006.)
The film deals with the ever-widening wealth and poverty gap in these ramshackle states of ours, and he managed (somehow!) to score interviews with such notables as presidential also-ran (and my mom's favorite candidate) Ralph Nader, and wee little former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. These interviews will, I'm sure, be cobbled together poorly and a bit obtusely, if Born Rich can tell us anything. Johnson apparently studied film making at NYU, but it didn't really show in his last effort. Oh! And apparently there's a clip of Nicole Buffet, daughter of surprise philanthropist Warren, reading a letter in which gramps disinherits her for appearing in the first film. Bwahahaha. Here's a trailer. [NYP]