Born Rich (2003)

Interesting facts

Born Rich is a 2003 documentary film about the experience of growing up in wealthy families. It was created by Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, and filmed primarily between 1999 and 2001. The film consists primarily of Johnson interviewing 10 other young heirs. These interviews are offset by Johnson's exploration of his own experience and family as he comes into a large inheritance on his 21st birthday. He seeks out how to be a productive person, avoiding the dysfunction that he sees affecting many of the very rich. The film explores the taboo the ultra rich have against talking about their wealth.

Production

Made over a three-year period while he was a history student at NYU, the documentary started out as his graduation thesis. At the age of 20, Johnson came up with the idea for the film through conversations with his uncle, Dirk Wittenborn, a novelist and screenwriter, who is also a producer of the film. Having been brought up reading F.

It took three years to make as most of the young heirs contacted to participate in the film turned him down, sometimes harshly, due to parental objection, fear of losing their inheritance, or fear of violating social taboo. A Campbell's soup heir and a Rockefeller initially agreed to participate but both of them backed out due to a parent's objections.

By summer of 2000, after a year of filming, most of those interviewed were asking Johnson to take them out of the movie. Carlo von Zeitschel threatened a lawsuit but never filed. Johnson recalls people approaching him at parties telling him that he was a traitor to his class, that making the documentary was the "stupidest thing" he could do, it would not benefit anyone, and he would regret it and lose all his friends.

The editing process took over a year, with 45 hours of footage to edit. While the film was being edited, Wittenborn wrote an article about the film that appeared in the September 2002 issue of W magazine. After hearing early reports about the film, Luke Weil filed a lawsuit on September 4, 2002, demanding that his scenes be removed. The lawsuit was featured in the film.

Weil alleged in the lawsuit that he had been "tricked" into participating in what he thought would solely be a school project. Wittenborn recalls that when he was questioned by Weil during the filming, he told Weil about his work in film and television, and that they hoped to sell the film to HBO.

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