Books by Jay Shapiro
How three books helped shape the mindset, mythology, and production vision behind Buddy from Brooklyn
Before Buddy from Brooklyn became a motion picture project, it grew from years of writing, research, business development, personal history, and a fascination with the psychology of ambition. Jay Shapiro’s recent books helped refine many of the ideas that now influence the film: wealth, legacy, faith, performance, reinvention, and the strange relationship between success and destiny.
Together, PERFORM LAB — Perform Like a Billionaire, Luxury is a Mitzvah, and Think and Grow Rich: Kabbalah Edition form a creative bridge between Shapiro’s publishing work, luxury business network, spiritual philosophy, and the cinematic world of Howard “Buddy” Jacobson.
PERFORM LAB — Perform Like a Billionaire
PERFORM LAB — Perform Like a Billionaire explores the habits, behaviors, discipline, social intelligence, and performance rituals that allow high achievers to operate at elite levels. The book is not simply about money. It is about conduct.
The central idea is that extraordinary success requires more than ambition. It requires presence, timing, resilience, networking ability, presentation, calculated risk, and the capacity to function under pressure. These themes are deeply connected to the world of Buddy from Brooklyn.
Howard “Buddy” Jacobson was a man who understood performance. He performed at the racetrack, in the owner’s box, in Manhattan society, around models, in courtrooms, and eventually as a fugitive attempting to reinvent himself. His life demonstrates the power and danger of personal theater.
In that sense, PERFORM LAB helped sharpen the film’s understanding of ambition as a performance. Buddy was not merely living a life. He was constantly presenting a version of himself to the world — horse trainer, businessman, lover, boss, defendant, survivor, legend.
Luxury is a Mitzvah
Luxury is a Mitzvah approaches wealth, taste, and success from a more spiritual and cultural perspective. It suggests that luxury is not merely excess. At its best, luxury can be refinement, hospitality, generosity, beauty, connection, and the elevation of everyday life.
That idea connects directly to Jay Shapiro’s broader world of Luxury Chamber of Commerce, cultural events, philanthropy, publishing, and relationship-building. It also provides a meaningful contrast to the world of Buddy from Brooklyn.
Buddy Jacobson lived around luxury: racehorses, Manhattan real estate, stylish women, nightlife, restaurants, clothing, cars, money, and status. But the film asks an important question: when does luxury elevate life, and when does it become a trap?
In the story, luxury is both seductive and dangerous. It attracts people, creates opportunities, and builds image. But it can also intensify jealousy, ego, appetite, and competition. Luxury is a Mitzvah helped frame this duality by showing that wealth and beauty need moral direction. Without purpose, luxury can become vanity. With purpose, it can become legacy.
Think and Grow Rich: Kabbalah Edition
Think and Grow Rich: Kabbalah Edition, credited to Dr. Napoleon Hill and Jay Shapiro, reimagines classic success philosophy through a mystical and spiritual lens. The book connects the pursuit of achievement with deeper questions of thought, intention, destiny, and divine order.
This project influenced Buddy from Brooklyn in a powerful way because the film is ultimately about the consequences of desire. Buddy wanted to win. He wanted women. He wanted influence. He wanted property. He wanted recognition. He wanted to escape limitations and create a larger life.
Those desires made him successful, but they also helped destroy him. The same force that can build a fortune can also become obsession. The same imagination that creates a dream can create a delusion. The same willpower that drives achievement can become recklessness when separated from wisdom.
By looking at ambition through a Kabbalistic lens, the film gains a deeper philosophical dimension. Buddy from Brooklyn is not only about crime. It is about cause and effect, appetite and consequence, ego and correction, light and shadow.
How the Billionaire Book Influenced the Film
Of the three books, PERFORM LAB — Perform Like a Billionaire had a particularly direct influence on the production mindset behind Buddy from Brooklyn.
The billionaire mindset is not only about wealth. It is about scale. It asks a creator to think beyond small presentation, small ambition, and small audience. It encourages a larger frame: bigger story, bigger world, bigger emotional stakes, bigger cultural relevance.
That way of thinking helped transform Buddy from Brooklyn from a fascinating family-connected true-crime story into a major motion picture concept. The film is not being imagined as a small crime tale. It is being developed as an American epic — a story that can include horse racing, organized crime, Manhattan modeling, courtrooms, family legacy, glamour, violence, prison, faith, money, and destiny.
The billionaire book also influenced the website itself. Rather than presenting only a brief film synopsis, the site is being expanded into a full historical and cinematic archive. Each page adds context, authority, and depth — from Bobby Ussery and Sonny Franzese to 1975, the HBPA, New York racing, and the men who shaped Buddy’s world.
From Author to Producer
Writing books and producing films may seem like separate disciplines, but they share the same foundation: storytelling.
A book allows an author to build ideas slowly. A film requires those ideas to become visual, emotional, and immediate. Jay Shapiro’s books helped develop the themes that now give Buddy from Brooklyn its larger meaning: ambition, identity, luxury, spiritual consequence, power, reinvention, and legacy.
The result is a film project with more than a plot. It has a philosophy.
Three Books, One Larger Vision
Each book contributes something different to the creative foundation of Buddy from Brooklyn:
- PERFORM LAB — Perform Like a Billionaire contributes the psychology of elite performance, ambition, and scale.
- Luxury is a Mitzvah contributes the moral and cultural meaning of refinement, generosity, and wealth.
- Think and Grow Rich: Kabbalah Edition contributes the spiritual framework of desire, thought, destiny, and consequence.
Together, they help explain why Buddy from Brooklyn is being developed not merely as a crime film, but as a story about the American hunger to become larger than life — and the price that hunger can demand.
Books by Jay Shapiro:
A literary foundation for the ambition, luxury, spirituality, and cinematic scale behind Buddy from Brooklyn.