Interview with Christopher Tennant | Sound Authors Radio

December 18, 2008

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors! There’s a lot of talk these days about the rich and the poor, Wall Street, the scoundrels and the elite and all sorts of things. There are some television shows on all about the lives of the rich and famous; Gossip Girl is out there for kids and the author of The Official Filthy Rich Handbook is Christopher Tennant and he’s on the show with us today. Welcome to the show.

Christopher Tennant: Hi how ya doing? Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about the lifestyles of the filthy rich in a nutshell here.

Christopher Tennant: Let’s see, it’s the .001 percent of Americans who as you might have read made a ton of money in the last decade basically. There’s always been the rich, but never this sort of filthy rich, which are people with more than well 30 million in liquid assets. And they’ve never had a book; they’ve never had a guidebook in like every exclusive club. Every exclusive club I’ve been to I didn’t see one so I decided to write a book for that. It’s a hysterical tongue in cheek book that is really a cradle to grave guide of how to fit in with the filthy rich.

Sally: This is so funny Christopher. I was reading your website last night and right now I’m actually looking at the heiress and can you tell us a little more about how you came up with the whole idea for how you’re labeling her earrings and her dress. Did you have any sort of models or guides for this particular photograph and picture?

Christopher Tennant: Yeah, basically from my end I’ve been a journalist in New York for about ten years working at page 6 of the New York Post, and a bunch of different New York magazines; New York Magazine and a newspaper called the New York Observer and ran into all of these people. I started thinking there’s a lot of, it’s a subculture like any other subculture. They have their own kind of ways of speaking and dressing and their own social rules that guide how they all behave.

And the official preppy handbook you might remember came out in 1980 and basically the publisher I ended up going with actually published the preppy handbook in 1980 so I got to work with the same designer. The preppy handbook was kind of a first satirical guide and that was about the declining species of the 80s, which was certainly the pop color, glossy, New England preppy. So the format kind of worked for it.

Dr. Kent: The book is amazing. It pops on every page and I’ve got to say I sat there for about an hour just reading page after page when I first picked up the book. It’s fantastically put together. There’s so much information in there, this must have taken you for ever.

Christopher Tennant: It took about a year and a half. It started out being late so I kind of when I was finally done I looked back on it and said oh my god, how did you do that? It was really kind of, I worked at 100 percent true and I wanted it to be 100 percent funny but I settled for 90/80 to be charitable. Yeah, it was just tons and tons of research. All of the information is kind of out there and I did a lot of interviews with a lot of very over privileged people in different parts of the country.

Dr. Kent: This week is a big week in politics along with just the Wall Street stuff and I got to say I’ve been hearing about a lot of really rich folks scrambling a little bit because they know their taxes are going to be going up.

Christopher Tennant: Yeah, they’re just, they seem, the filthy rich are just suffering the same kind of lack of awareness as everyone else. It just seems like the country as a whole everyone is kind of pulling back in anticipation of something really bad happening, which I think is going to be a self fulfilling prophecy. I’ve heard of people canceling their job charters in St. Bart’s over Christmas and all that. It’s those tough decisions but it seems like nobody really knows what’s going to happen so they’re saying oh, maybe its not a good idea to you know go on a three week golf excursion in Scotland this year. Everyone has this wait and see approach. So their obviously doing fine, they’re going to be just fine.

Sally: I’d love to know in terms of you working with your publisher and editor, how much input did you have and how much editorial control did you have to give up? Were you involved in picking the photographs of the models? Were you involved with a lot of it?

Christopher Tennant: I actually did, yes. The design was really a collaborative effort and I was involved in every step. I recluded people for the photo shoots and it was really a back and forth effort. Because there are so many pieces in it, I think there’s over 300 little pieces of independent boxes or little charts or whatever so I would kind of map out what the chapter would look like and the designer would go into it and we’d go back and forth.

Sally: It’s just a great job. As somebody that did my own book I just want to say it’s great.

Christopher Tennant: Thanks, they really wanted to kill me by the end of it. They gave me a lot of rope because it was this sort of seminal book for me. I always wanted to write a book like that and I think its pitch perfect satire so that was kind of hanging over me. I wanted to produce something that was at least as good as that so I was really, we didn’t speak for a few weeks after the book was done, they were like okay crazy person go away.

Dr. Kent: Were these models or were they people playing the part?

Christopher Tennant: Half of them are friends of mine and the other half are people that work in publishing companies.

Dr. Kent: How about you? Did you model the filthy rich on yourself?

Christopher Tennant: No, not at all. For better or for worse, no.

Dr. Kent: Is that your goal with this book and all the rest to become on of these filthy rich?

Christopher Tennant: It’s got to sell an awful lot of copies because it’s only $11.95. So 100 million copies might put me up there. If I had known what I was getting into from the beginning because it really took from cradle to grave to cover everything. So I would go around and talk to people at parties or read something and go wait we have to mention that. There would always be something. Or ooh, there’s this picnic boat, this boat made by Hinckley and its 36 feet long and costs $750,000 and John Kerry has one and all these people have one. And it was like no, I didn’t know about the Hinckley boat. So then all these little kind of bits of information was tossed at me from different research excursions and I would add it in. I really did want to be all inclusive.

Dr. Kent: The book is called The Official Filthy Rich Handbook. It’s really something that all Americans, especially middle class Americans have to read. It’s about the lives of the filthy rich and how to get there by Christopher Tennant. It’s a beautiful tongue in cheek satire, I love it, we both love it. Thanks so much for being on the show.

Christopher Tennant: Well thank you, so much. It’s at Barnes, Borders and Amazon and I have a website filthyrichhandbook.com.

Sally: By the way congratulations for being number three today in the sociology class at Amazon. I’m very impressed with your ranking so good job.

Christopher Tennant: Thanks, yeah I was worried about the total economic implosion but we’re hanging on. But its still fun to read even if you’re hurting for cash.

Dr. Kent: Thanks so much and have a wonderful day.

Christopher Tennant: You too man.

Dr. Kent: Right after the break we’re going to have book marketing strategist Warren Whitlock, legendary book marketing fellow and he’s going to be twittering at the same time as he’s talking with us on the show and I’m twittering here as well. Come on back for Warren Whitlock.

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