Ezra, Google "Video Biography" and you'll see a wealth of companies (pun intended) that will produce a video biography of your loved one for just the price you quoted.

That makes much more sense. After all, as Steve Jobs said, people don't read books anymore.

(On preview: maybe for $50 I can get someone to blog my father's life.)

Good idea -- go for it.

If you want to make lots of money, just figure out what really, really rich people want.

What's with all the extraneous apostrophe's?

I heard a story about some guy who sold his specially-tattooed skin as a piece of art for a couple hundred grand. Apparently, when he dies, he skin will be removed and mounted for the purchaser. Seems like we can combine this development with traditional portaiture to come up with the ultimate in extravagance.

Andrew's right, Marketplace recently did a pretty funny story on this --> http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/05/28/coming_soon_the_cash_peters_story/

The only real way to immortality is through your children.

Portraits and polaroids. No apostrophes in plurals.

So do I get the writing gig?

I've always thought that the next frontier in vanity industries should be commissioned biographies. Someone should set up a company employing out-of-work, or in-school, writers, and charge $30-$40,000 for beautifully bound, broadly positive, built-to-order biographies. They can even include some pictures.

A law school classmate (who had a history PhD) actually did do this for a few years before going back to school. The books took about a year apiece, and he charged (this was the mid 1990s) $40k a book. Plus travel expenses, which were important -- both of his clients were wealthy oil sheiks with vast real estate holdings around the world (if memory serves, they both spent a lot of time in Connecticut, which is how he hooked up with them).

while in college I frequented an irish pub that was filled with old style portraits of rich old irish dudes. one day a friend of mine asked the manager where he bought them, turns out a local artist made them. so for $300 he had a self portrait painted. its really lovely, and hangs above his rickety grad-school desk covered in papers and coffee cups.

I guess Ezra fixed the apostrophes because they're fine now. Now, if we could just address his use of "and nor...."

I would get a life-sized hologram of myself made.

Oh this is done all the time, and then they hire a publicity firm to send them to libraries around the country, hoping that we'll put them in our collections. I get 3 or 4 a year.

Corporations, law firms and big nonprofits have been commissioning histories of themslves for years. Most are fluff, of course, but occasionally a "kept" writer will turn in an unblinkered history that gets published despite its truthfulness.

Then there are all those "authorized" biographies and ghosted autobiographies. Not to mention self-published memoirs, which can be truly hilarious. Somewhere around the house, I've got an autobiography by a guy who claimed to be directly descended from both Charlemagne and Tamerlane (his ancestors got around) and claimed to hold title to almost all of North America. This tome also showed his design for the "first computer," composed entirely of grocery barcodes.

Better yet, they can offer copies of said biographies free of charge to university and other public libraries, to assure their essentially infinite existence.

a painted portrait will last many hundreds of years if kept under the proper conditions (out of direct sunlight, not too humid, etc)... we have paintings kicking around museums that are nearly 1000 years old. most photographs will fade after 200 yrs or so (if they make it that long). even modern printing of digital images won't last as long as an oil painting. i also imagine the hand-made, one-of-a-kind nature of a painting factors in.

as a painter myself, i highly encourage people to engage in such commissions :)

Ezra...dude.

Have you seen any portraits?

I'm pretty sure you've read some biographies.

Think J.P. Morgan really wanted his life story out there?

Well, what a painting does is extract a cost from the heirs for their inheritance. Somebody will have to display it. Or trash it. I don't suppose either will be particularly appealing.

Still, it's a nice gig if you can get it.

sarah - you are a fucking idiot

Those potraits were either a)Irish writers b)Irish patriots
or c)some combination of both

If you weren't too busy trying to get some drunk Paddy to plough your furrow you might have realized this

I used to be represented by a certain gallery (on Zelda Fitzgerald Rd. in the state capital they were in) who's main business was producing portraits: they would take photos of the subject and send them to an atelier (French for 'sweatshop')(that's a joke) in Shanghai for the 'artists' there to render in oil, or acrylic. A photo of the place looked like an assembly line out of Manet's nightmares. Size and style were negotiable, and the markup was over 500%.
They were generally competent but hardly good.

Ezra, wake up. Commissioned biographies exist, and have for a long time. A relative of mine, who ran a huge necktie and textile concern in New Orleans until the mid-'90s, did just that.

It was self-published. Of course.

Ezra--WTF, man? Offensively stupid post on your part. Get a grip.

After black Monday, I suppose we'll have to wait a bit to see who remains rich. Great idea, though, think I'll put an ad on craigslist.

See "The Final Cut" with Robin Williams. A futuristic version of these self-edited, positive biographies.

Nathan Glass, the protagonist in Paul Auster's book BROOKLYN FOLLIES (2006) ends up doing this for a living.

When I was a little kid (6), my parents commissioned a children's book starring me. Seriously. I mean, it had my name throughout it as the protagonist, and drawings of a little boy that might've even looked a little bit like me. I'm sure thousands of other kids around the country were reading the same book starring THEM, but still. This whole vanity biography thing sounds a lot like that.

It may seem like shameless self promotion (even though I have my
doubts about who is reading these comments at this point) but I just created new branch of my company devoted to creating the films of which you speak. It's called www.filmofyourlife.com. It evolved out of the death my parents and the desire to create sincere and multi-media review of their lives. Thanks Ezra