<\/p>\n
British director Julien Temple\u2019s new doc \u201cI Am Curious Johnny,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI Am Curious Johnny,\u201d 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 \u201cinvented the selfie\u201d in the \u201970s, according to the film\u2019s synopsis, capturing celebrity moments from New York\u2019s Studio 54 to the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills.<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In his director\u2019s statement, Temple describes Pigozzi as \u201can enigma, not unlike a modern-day Mr. Arkadin,\u201d referring to the elusive billionaire in the eponymous Orson Welles film. \u201cJohnny 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement continues: \u201cFor over 50 years, he has made an art form out of taking selfies with his friends \u2014 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\u2019s anybody, yet in the context of the wider public, no one knows who he is \u2014 until now. It\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Temple, a onetime punk-scene enfant terrible, began his career filming the Sex Pistols and turned the footage into the feature films\u00a0\u201cThe Great Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll Swindle\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cThe Filth and the Fury.\u201d\u00a0His more recent work includes \u201cThe Eternity Man,\u201d \u201cOil City Confidential\u201d about British band Dr. Feelgood, \u201cRequiem for Detroit\u201d and his doc about London \u201cThe Modern Babylon.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI Am Curious Johnny\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Watch the trailer below.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source malaysia.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" British director Julien Temple\u2019s new doc \u201cI Am Curious Johnny,\u201d 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. \u201cI Am Curious Johnny,\u201d the trailer for which Variety can debut exclusively below, follows the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2092129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[394639,342007,394638,394635,394636,312463,305352,394637,312645],"class_list":["post-2092128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-art-collector","tag-diane-von-furstenberg","tag-graydon-carter","tag-johnny-pigozzi","tag-julien-temple","tag-michael-douglas","tag-mick-jagger","tag-rome-film-festival","tag-world-premiere"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Julien-Temples-Johnny-Pigozzi-Doc-\u2018I-Am-Curious-Johnny-Featuring.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2092128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2092130,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092128\/revisions\/2092130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2092129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2092128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2092128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2092128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}