Friday, December 9, 2011

Listening to ‘The One Percent’

Endless Conversation

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By TONY EVANS
Express Staff Writer

If you too are growing weary of Occupy Wall Street's separation of Americans into the have-it-alls and have-nots, you may be ready for some more complicated and interesting stories about the fabulously wealthy.

These stories will leave you thankful for those things in life that have nothing to do with money.

Start with newsman Anderson Cooper's memoir, "Dispatches From the Edge," in which the Vanderbilt heir describes the loss of his brother Carter, who dropped 14 stories to his death when Anderson was 23.

Cooper wrote that his brother chose suicide because he could not bear the fact that the "Great Gatsby" era no longer existed. In facing his brother's death, Cooper said he learned early in life just "what money cannot do."

Despite his loss, or perhaps because of it, Anderson went on to become a reporter on conflicts and humanitarian crises around the world. Today he is a serious newsman and trusted television darling, despite his silver-spoon status.

Johnson & Johnson Co. heir and documentary filmmaker Jamie Johnson directed "Born Rich" in 2003 and "The One Percent" in 2006, films that explore the antics and ideologies of the very rich in light of the ever-widening gap between rich and poor.

The stars of "Born Rich" include Ivanka Trump, Georgina Bloomberg, Si Newhouse IV and others. It isn't easy to find a hero in this tale of teenagers' dropping $5,000 on handbags, an Italian Baron's fascination with pornography and intertribal lawsuits seen as rites of passage. But Josiah Hornblower comes close. After going through an existential crisis, he drops out of college, and the party circuit, to work for two years in the Texas oilfields.

"They were the best two years of my life," said Hornblower, who found redemption in work. He went on to become a professional financial analyst.

The stars of "The One Percent" include publisher Steve Forbes, economist Milton Friedman, arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi and Nicole Buffet, a disinherited granddaughter of Warren Buffet.

The film takes aim at explaining the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor in America. It features revealing, ambush-style interviews with members of Jamie Johnson's own family, including his father, who was reprimanded by the Johnson family many years ago for making a documentary criticizing the policy of apartheid in South Africa.

Stories such as these are important because they get beyond polemics to the universal and timeless issues that face us all.

During the filming of "The One Percent," amidst a scene of modern indentured servitude in the sugar plantations of Florida, Jamie Johnson gets a spiritual lesson from a black taxi driver.

"My family is one of the richest in the world, but not with money. We are rich with love, kindness, tolerance and patience," he said.

In the end, we learn that it isn't what you have that matters, but who you are. But wouldn't it be great to just win the lottery and find out for ourselves?

"Lucky" is a documentary by Jeffrey Blitz about several families that were changed forever after winning the Powerball Lottery. A Vietnamese immigrant grandfather goes from a grueling meatpacking job in the Midwest to buying businesses and building homes for his sons, and a towering home for 80 relatives back in Vietnam.

A single man with 10 children and five former wives goes wild, spending lavishly and living recklessly for a few years, until the money runs out. He became the target of assassination attempts by greedy siblings, and lives out his years destitute and alone. In the words of one of his old friends, "Winning the lottery can be like pouring Miracle Grow on all of your worst character defects."

A mathematician who won it big chooses to remain in his modest home and take singing lessons. He spends his days executing his "required duties" as a philanthropist, but confesses to a former colleague that he would rather have solved a major mathematical problem than have won more than $100 million.

If there is a theme that runs through these stories, it is about the quest for dignity and self-respect, whether or not we have deep pockets.

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