NEW YORK — Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki has followed an unlikely path to documentary fame.
Along with his father, the Princeton graduate founded the ticketing service Moviefone in 1989 and sold it to AOL 10 years later for $388 million. Before he tried his hand at directing, he co-wrote the theme song to the 1990s drama “Felicity” with fellow emerging director J.J. Abrams.
In some ways, Jarecki acknowledges, his background shares similarities with that of Robert Durst, the subject of Jarecki’s HBO documentary series, “The Jinx.” Durst, the eldest son of a family that control’s some of Manhattan’s priciest real estate, was arrested Saturday in connection with the 2000 slaying of his friend, Susan Berman.
Jarecki grew up in the tony enclave of Rye, N.Y., and now lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. His father, Henry, is a Yale-trained psychiatrist turned highly successful commodities broker, and his mother, Gloria, was once a film critic for Time magazine.
“There are obviously huge differences between our lives, but I do know the feeling of growing up in NYC, growing up in Westchester (County),” Jarecki, 51, said in an interview with The Times last month, noting that re-creations of Durst’s mother’s suicide that appeared in “The Jinx” were actually filmed at the house where he grew up as a child.