The Queen of Versailles
Presented as part of our Doc-A-Day Series
Showing March 18 at 12pm
PG • 1h 40m
A film by Lauren Greenfield
Starring Jackie Siegel
About the film
David Siegel is the wealthy owner of Westgate Resorts, a timeshare company in Florida. His wife Jackie Siegel, thirty years his junior, was the winner of the Mrs. Florida pageant in 1993.[2] They begin construction on the Versailles house, a vast mansion named after the Palace of Versailles. Located on the outskirts of Orlando, it would be one of the largest single-family detached homes in the United States if completed (the largest being North Carolina's Biltmore Estate at 178,926 square feet).However, Siegel's company is badly affected by the Great Recession in 2008, and his family struggles to cope with their reduced income.
If you don't want to feel rich, opines David Siegel, you're "probably dead." That's a pithy summation of the logic of capitalism—and not coincidentally, of Siegel's own life, as portrayed in the new documentary The Queen of Versailles. Siegel, a time-share apartment mogul, made himself a billionaire by giving middle-Americans the chance to spend their vacations in luxury for only a low, low, low down payment. He catered shamelessly to their dreams of wealth—a dining room that can serve 14! Enormous flat screen TVs for all!—and in return they ... catered shamelessly to his even more extravagant dreams of wealth.
Noah Berlatsky
The Atlantic
