BILLIONAIRE FEELINGS

What an existential true crime drama from 1983 can tell us about today's billionaires

In his book Jackpot, author Michael Mechanic argues that the extraordinary sudden wealth of Silicon Valley and Wall Street is having profound effects on the not just the very rich but everyone else. (And for the middle class this era’s lust for premium, posh, and top-drawer everything is starting to clash against the dying myth of social mobility.) But how do the billionaires feel in this new gold rush moment? Other than Mechanic’s book there is scant research on how oligarchs think of their wealth, and how its sudden arrival changes them.

We do, however, have movies and billionaires can seem more real there than they do in life.

All movies inspired by William Hearst or Howard Hughes are essentially nepo-baby stories. There Will Be Blood is a portrait of a man who does not change, no matter his material wealth—it’s everyone else around him that changes. Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday is a Cockney gangster looking to level up to founder mode in Thatcher’s Britain, but a single bad…