When David Scarpa heard that a producer wanted to make a movie about the 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, the teenage grandson and namesake of the oil tycoon, the screenwriter wasn’t sure there would be enough content for a feature-length film.
“I said, ‘Well, you’ve got the whole business with the ear, but you can’t base an entire movie on that,” Scarpa told Vanity Fair, recalling the kidnapping’s grisly, most-remembered detail—how Italian captors sliced off the ear of the teenager while he was held hostage.
It was only after Scarpa learned that J. Paul Getty was the richest man in the world at the time—worth approximately $2 billion—and still refused to pay his grandson’s ransom of $17 million that the screenwriter became interested and wrote the script that became Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, which opens on Christmas Day.
“It became a story about money and the power that money has over people in my mind,” said Scarpa. “And not just the power that money has over poor people, or ordinary people, but the power money has over the people you think would be most free from it.”
By 1973, the five-times-divorced Getty (played in the film by Christopher Plummer, who replaced Kevin Spacey in a much-publicized story of actor-swapping) was spending most of his time in his 16th-century manor house, Sutton Place, in England, isolated from the four sons he rotated in and out of his will at whim. He was driven to accrue his fortune out of the deep-seated desire to disprove his late father, who expected him to destroy the family business. As Getty’s bank account grew, though, so did his obsession and paranoia. By the time his grandson was kidnapped, Getty had hired his own security team, stationed Alsatian dogs around his estate, and famously installed a coin-operated pay phone in the mansion for guests to use.
“This was happening against the backdrop of the oil crisis of 1973, when the price of oil skyrocketed to the point where Getty’s profits daily would’ve been enough to pay the ransom,” pointed out Scarpa. “Yet the wealthier he became, the more dependent he became on money, like an addict. This idea of that gnawing insecurity never really going away seemed like an interesting jumping off point for kind a Shakespearean drama.”
Getty’s relationship with his fortune was tested, in extreme circumstances, when Italian kidnappers demanded $17 million in exchange for the safe return of his grandson Paul. John Pearson’s 1995 book, Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty—on which Scott’s film is based—details the magnate’s flimsy family ties at this point in his life. Getty was not speaking to his son and Paul’s father—John Paul Getty Jr., who had squandered his own business opportunities, divorced Paul’s mother, Gail (played by Michelle Williams), and was sliding in and out of drug addiction. The elder Getty disapproved of the bohemian lifestyle of his teenage grandson—who had become a minor celebrity in Rome because of his surname—and suspected that the kidnapping was a hoax concocted by Paul to extract money from him. Though Getty would not return frantic phone calls from Paul’s mother, he did speak to the press, explaining why he would not pay the ransom: “I have 14 grandchildren, and if I pay a penny of ransom, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.” (...)
Paul’s mother, Gail, could not get through to Getty. Paul’s father, John, haunted by his own demons and unable to return to Italy for complicated reasons, would not call Getty on the grounds that he was not speaking to his father. Five weeks into the kidnapping, Getty’s only gesture of goodwill was sending former C.I.A. agent J. Fletcher Chase (played in the film by Mark Wahlberg) to Rome to help Gail. Chase, who believed, along with Italian police, that the kidnapping was a hoax, only affirmed his employer’s suspicions. Gail, without the money to pay her son’s ransom, and not in a position of power for anyone to take her seriously, was left helpless.
“Interestingly, the F.B.I. agent I spoke to while researching, who worked on the case, was actually sympathetic to Getty,” said Scarpa. “At the time this was very much a man’s world, so the men, be it Getty or Chase, felt that this was no place for a woman. Today we would assume, if a woman’s child got kidnapped, she would be in charge in a sense. Yet at the time the attitude was, ‘Well, you can’t possibly involve a woman in all this business, right?’ ”
All Gail could do was wait for phone calls from one of the kidnappers, “Cinquanta,” who found himself, ironically, sometimes pleading on Paul’s behalf.
“Who is this so-called grandfather?” Cinquanta told Gail, according to Pearsons’s book. “How can he leave his own flesh and blood in the plight that your poor son is in. Here is the richest man in America, and you tell me he refuses to find just 10 miliardi for his grandson’s safety. Signora, you take me for a fool.”
Though the idea of a kidnapper actually protecting his hostage—as Cinquanta does in the film—sounds like a fictional flourish, it was not.
“He can’t even conceive the world of these wealthy Americans . . . It’s like, how can you have all this money, and yet the money is more important to you than your kid, and he finds himself sympathizing with the kid,” said Scarpa. “Cinquanta eventually found himself negotiating kind of on Gail’s behalf with the kidnappers.
“I said, ‘Well, you’ve got the whole business with the ear, but you can’t base an entire movie on that,” Scarpa told Vanity Fair, recalling the kidnapping’s grisly, most-remembered detail—how Italian captors sliced off the ear of the teenager while he was held hostage.
It was only after Scarpa learned that J. Paul Getty was the richest man in the world at the time—worth approximately $2 billion—and still refused to pay his grandson’s ransom of $17 million that the screenwriter became interested and wrote the script that became Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, which opens on Christmas Day.“It became a story about money and the power that money has over people in my mind,” said Scarpa. “And not just the power that money has over poor people, or ordinary people, but the power money has over the people you think would be most free from it.”
By 1973, the five-times-divorced Getty (played in the film by Christopher Plummer, who replaced Kevin Spacey in a much-publicized story of actor-swapping) was spending most of his time in his 16th-century manor house, Sutton Place, in England, isolated from the four sons he rotated in and out of his will at whim. He was driven to accrue his fortune out of the deep-seated desire to disprove his late father, who expected him to destroy the family business. As Getty’s bank account grew, though, so did his obsession and paranoia. By the time his grandson was kidnapped, Getty had hired his own security team, stationed Alsatian dogs around his estate, and famously installed a coin-operated pay phone in the mansion for guests to use.
“This was happening against the backdrop of the oil crisis of 1973, when the price of oil skyrocketed to the point where Getty’s profits daily would’ve been enough to pay the ransom,” pointed out Scarpa. “Yet the wealthier he became, the more dependent he became on money, like an addict. This idea of that gnawing insecurity never really going away seemed like an interesting jumping off point for kind a Shakespearean drama.”
Getty’s relationship with his fortune was tested, in extreme circumstances, when Italian kidnappers demanded $17 million in exchange for the safe return of his grandson Paul. John Pearson’s 1995 book, Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty—on which Scott’s film is based—details the magnate’s flimsy family ties at this point in his life. Getty was not speaking to his son and Paul’s father—John Paul Getty Jr., who had squandered his own business opportunities, divorced Paul’s mother, Gail (played by Michelle Williams), and was sliding in and out of drug addiction. The elder Getty disapproved of the bohemian lifestyle of his teenage grandson—who had become a minor celebrity in Rome because of his surname—and suspected that the kidnapping was a hoax concocted by Paul to extract money from him. Though Getty would not return frantic phone calls from Paul’s mother, he did speak to the press, explaining why he would not pay the ransom: “I have 14 grandchildren, and if I pay a penny of ransom, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.” (...)
Paul’s mother, Gail, could not get through to Getty. Paul’s father, John, haunted by his own demons and unable to return to Italy for complicated reasons, would not call Getty on the grounds that he was not speaking to his father. Five weeks into the kidnapping, Getty’s only gesture of goodwill was sending former C.I.A. agent J. Fletcher Chase (played in the film by Mark Wahlberg) to Rome to help Gail. Chase, who believed, along with Italian police, that the kidnapping was a hoax, only affirmed his employer’s suspicions. Gail, without the money to pay her son’s ransom, and not in a position of power for anyone to take her seriously, was left helpless.
“Interestingly, the F.B.I. agent I spoke to while researching, who worked on the case, was actually sympathetic to Getty,” said Scarpa. “At the time this was very much a man’s world, so the men, be it Getty or Chase, felt that this was no place for a woman. Today we would assume, if a woman’s child got kidnapped, she would be in charge in a sense. Yet at the time the attitude was, ‘Well, you can’t possibly involve a woman in all this business, right?’ ”
All Gail could do was wait for phone calls from one of the kidnappers, “Cinquanta,” who found himself, ironically, sometimes pleading on Paul’s behalf.
“Who is this so-called grandfather?” Cinquanta told Gail, according to Pearsons’s book. “How can he leave his own flesh and blood in the plight that your poor son is in. Here is the richest man in America, and you tell me he refuses to find just 10 miliardi for his grandson’s safety. Signora, you take me for a fool.”
Though the idea of a kidnapper actually protecting his hostage—as Cinquanta does in the film—sounds like a fictional flourish, it was not.
“He can’t even conceive the world of these wealthy Americans . . . It’s like, how can you have all this money, and yet the money is more important to you than your kid, and he finds himself sympathizing with the kid,” said Scarpa. “Cinquanta eventually found himself negotiating kind of on Gail’s behalf with the kidnappers.
by Julie Miller, Vanity Fair | Read more:
Image: Fabio Lovino
