If you’re going to insist you named Google and they won’t give you any money for it, you might as well do it from inside a shiny white coffin. So goes the thinking of self-described ‘San Francisco icon’ (is there any other kind?) Bob Pritikin, who has self-released a documentary about his life and legacy. Pritikin narrates his nostalgia with the bombast of the Dos Equis guy and the face and sensibility of mid-2000s William Shatner.
I mostly mean that as a compliment, and you should watch his bonkers movie.
Pritikin, known for owning the largest private residence in San Francisco, buying a globe that used to belong to Hitler, and generally being a hella rich eccentric old-man dandy who throws ragers in his mansion, can add another title to his inflated roster of accomplishments: Greatest Vanity Documentarian of Our Time.
Here are some of the things the ageing ex-ad man millionaire talks about in his meandering life story: Being good as hell at playing the saw, cocaine, coffee commercials, Jennifer Grey, war, hotelier life, magic shows, Tammy Faye Messner, a chilli lunch prepared by Johnny Cash, ecology, and telling Google they can give him money still if they want to pay him.
“I never got a nickel!” he says.
The video is more puffed-up than a Marmot jacket full of helium, which is the puffiest thing I could think of. But to be fair, Pritikin has had a legitimately bananas existence and I’m very much in favour of encouraging our dwindling supply of quirky hoteliers to record their life stories.