British director Julien Temple’s new doc “I Am Curious Johnny,” about industrial heir, photographer, art collector and philanthropist Johnny Pigozzi, is set to world premiere Friday at the Rome Film Festival ahead of its Nov. 3 bow on HBO Max.
“I Am Curious Johnny,” the trailer for which Variety can debut exclusively below, follows the French-born Italian heir and CEO of automobile brand Simca, who now lives in Los Angeles. Long before the advent of social media, Pigozzi “invented the selfie” in the ’70s, according to the film’s synopsis, capturing celebrity moments from New York’s Studio 54 to the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills.
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The fun doc features affectionate tributes from Michael Douglas, Martha Stewart, Mick Jagger, Diane von Furstenberg and Graydon Carter, to name a few celebrities the up-until-now elusive Pigozzi has become close with over the past five decades. Pigozzi, incidentally, owns one of the top collections of contemporary African art in the world.
In his director’s statement, Temple describes Pigozzi as “an enigma, not unlike a modern-day Mr. Arkadin,” referring to the elusive billionaire in the eponymous Orson Welles film. “Johnny has spent his life escaping from the shadow of his extremely wealthy but cruel and distant father, constantly trying to define who he is through his restless creativity.”
The statement continues: “For over 50 years, he has made an art form out of taking selfies with his friends — the richest and most famous Hollywood and rock stars, socialites, media billionaires and Tech Bros on the planet. A Zelig-like figure, Johnny knows everybody who’s anybody, yet in the context of the wider public, no one knows who he is — until now. It’s a film about wealth and its effects on those who possess it, but also about what to believe and what not to believe about a human being, and humorously explores the potential pitfalls of AI and its ability to hallucinate alternative versions of the truth.”
Temple, a onetime punk-scene enfant terrible, began his career filming the Sex Pistols and turned the footage into the feature films “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” and “The Filth and the Fury.” His more recent work includes “The Eternity Man,” “Oil City Confidential” about British band Dr. Feelgood, “Requiem for Detroit” and his doc about London “The Modern Babylon.”
“I Am Curious Johnny” is produced by London-based Jeremy Thomas via his Recorded Picture Company, Temple via his company Nitrate Film and P.J. van Sandwijk at Storyteller Productions.
Watch the trailer below.
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