John Paul DeJoria is a good guy. In the brisk documentary Good Fortune, a charming look at the life of the billionaire philanthropist, we’re presented a likable yarn about a man who proves that being rich and being compassionate aren’t mutually exclusive traits. It’s such a friendly and inspiring tale that you may spend its entire running time fighting an uncomfortable sense of dread. When shown the story of a guy this pleasant and this good-natured, especially one so affluent, it’s natural to wait for the other shoe to drop, wondering when we’re going to be told how much of a secret piece of shit he really is. While that loafer never thuds, there’s still something troubling at the heart of this feel-good movie.
DeJoria’s rags-to-riches story is a straightforward one. He grew up from meager beginnings in Echo Park, was in a street gang as a youth and was homeless twice in his adult life before revolutionizing the hair care product industry with Paul Mitchell and later innovating the luxury tequila market with Patrón. Filmmakers Josh and Rebecca Tickell smartly dole out the important dramatic beats of DeJoria’s saga in nonlinear fashion to keep things interesting, intercutting testimonials from famous friends with slice-of-life interactions in his current billionaire lifestyle. The setup is designed to get you used to the idea of this uber-rich hero before we’re told how he got there.
The effort largely works, if only to make DeJoria seem oddly intriguing to the uninitiated. Honestly, any guy who can count Arianna Huffington, Ron White and Danny Trejo as friends is probably a good subject for a documentary, regardless of net worth or cultural impact. But that’s just JP, as the film repeatedly shows us. He’s a cool guy, a forward thinker, restlessly caring and generous in a way we’re just not accustomed to imagining the 1% even being capable. DeJoria says that success unshared is failure and that dedication to giving back is rampant throughout the doc. Its closing credits, in addition to throwaway quotes from Pierce Brosnan and Roger Daltrey, is a long crawl of charities DeJoria supports. The maxim and how it motivates his movements seems to situate him as the anti-Trump in the pantheon of famous American entrepreneurs.
The film is book-ended by interactions with kindly farmer Johnny Georges, the creator of Tree-T-Pee irrigation system. Good Fortune begins with Georges getting ridiculed by every judge on “Shark Tank” for not thinking enough about profit before DeJoria decides to invest with him. The film then ends with Georges getting a call from DeJoria checking in on the business. “I love talking to JP,” he says with a mile-wide grin on his face. This is a guy who, in real life, behaves the way the monied secret identities of comic book superheroes do, a guy who is more Tony Stark than Lex Luthor.
Narrated by Trading Places star (and JP buddy) Dan Aykroyd, the documentary feels designed to instill some much-needed confidence into the dated concept of the American Dream. JP is worth north $3 billion because he persevered, was resourceful and didn’t get bogged down by blaming others for his early misfortunes, so of course he still believes in the aspirational myth of America, but so many little details of his tale remind you that the American Dream has always been about luck and not a one-size-fits-all game plan for success.
Trejo, in one of his interviews, talks about how DeJoria was able to get out of a gang as a youth and rededicate himself to work, something a lot of young people in gangs in other cities in America can’t do for a variety of systemic reasons. DeJoria’s story is an entertaining one and his inspirational disposition is genuine, but Good Fortune is more concerned with leveraging his unique success as a defense of capitalism in an age where we could all stand to question its toxic strictures more openly. Some folks are going to see this movie in a tough time in their lives and get that extra push to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and pursue their dreams, but countless others won’t be able to, because they’re held back by the same system that helped DeJoria make it in the first place.
It’s laudable that DeJoria is so sincere about giving back and paying it forward, but it’s a damn shame this film didn’t offer even the slightest counterpoint to his idyllic take on the nature of success.
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