Bigger than the White House

In the last days of August while my neighbors were all gone and the streets were so silent you could hear a pin drop, Mr. Sax and I had a “staycation,” in our own neighborhood. One afternoon we traveled to Cold Spring; another day, we hit Fahnestock State Park. In Portchester we had drinks and appetizers outside at BarTaco, and on the final day of our holiday, we drove to Pleasantville to catch a film at the Jacob Burns. The film we saw was “The Queen of Versailles,” which I’d read about in The New Yorker and was a topic of conversation at a sophisticated cocktail party in Pound Ridge we’d been to the night before. At the party, several people were talking about the film. “She got what she deserved,” one woman carped.

The film, a documentary by Lauren Greenfield, details the rise (and the fall) of David and Jackie (mostly Jackie) Siegel. David Siegel is a time-share magnate, founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts. The couple live the American Dream, but SuperSized. In 2007, when filming started, the Siegels are building a 90,000 square foot home in Florida they call the American Versailles. Larger than a 747 airplane hangar, featuring 9 kitchens, 30 bathrooms, two movie theaters, and a bowling alley, the home, if it is ever completed, basically dwarfs the White House.

In interviews before and after the film was released, Lauren Greenfield explains how she first met Jackie, who is fairly down to earth. The filmmaker, who has had a long career photographing images of extreme wealth for “Elle” magazine, encountered Jackie Siegel when she was taking pictures of Donatella Versace for the opening of the designer’s new store. Jackie is/was a valued Versace client. Soon Greenfield was helping Jackie convince her husband they should make a film about themselves.

At the beginning of the film, both the Siegel’s are open and voluble, clearly loving their extravagant lifestyle. In addition to Versailles, David is opening Westgate Resorts in Las Vegas, meant to be the largest and tallest building on the strip. Mr. Siegel talks about his modest youth in Indiana, and his father, who was addicted to Vegas. Siegel hints on film it was his money and influence that got George W. Bush elected. Jackie, a former Mrs. America and pageant queen, is 30 years younger than her husband (she’s Wife #3). Her joy and enthusiasm for spending and consuming is almost childish. What Jackie has most going for her is she’s not a snob. Cameras rolling, she’s just as much at home with McDonald’s as she is with caviar.

While the film play for laughs some of Jackie’s worst foibles, like asking for the name of her driver when she’s renting a car from Hertz, the real story begins after the financial collapse in ’08 when Westgate’s business stumbled, and its timeshare customers couldn’t make their payments. Six thousand employees are let go, the creditors close in, and construction stops on what was supposed to be the largest private house in America.

Greenfield is calm but ruthless as she continues to document the Siegel’s downfall. Chauffeurs, housekeepers and nannies are let go, dog poo collects on the marble floors. The Siegels are living in the 26,000 square foot home in Orlando the family still inhabits, and Jackie does her Christmas shopping at Walmart instead of Neiman’s. To ease the distress of the Orlando-based, Westgate ex-employees, on her own she in a warehouse a kind of Salvation Army. Kept mostly in the dark about her husband’s troubles, she tells Greenfield that it’s only through the filmmaking process that she understands what is happening.

While Jackie comes off as likeable if a bit dim, by the end, David Siegel is anything but sympathetic. One wonders why he permitted Greenfield to keep filming. As of this writing, he is suing Greenfield and the Sundance Film Festival for defaming his company. His lawsuit against them was filed about a week ago in Orlando in U.S. District Court.

When the Siegels initially decided to be filmed, they thought they were creating a legacy. At the end of the day, that’s still what happened, even though the story arc changed. In the film, David Siegel said, “This started out as a rags to riches story, and now it’s riches to rags.” By the end of the film, he is angry. He’s mean. He dislikes his wife and children, who go on blindly loving him. When Jackie says on camera that if it ends up the family lives in a modest $300,000 house, “with lots of bunk beds,” and that’s OK with her, you know she means it. Unlike a real floozy or gold digger, she did marry for better or worse.

 “The Queen of Versailles,” is, of course, a parable about legalized vice and greed. Siegel’s father ruined himself gambling at the casinos; Siegel gambled with the banks. On the Today Show a few weeks ago, Jackie appeared with Greenfield. They both want the film to succeed. Jackie said her husband’s company Westgate is “doing great,” and that they still have dozens of time share resorts in operation. She believes they will finish building Versailles. “We came through the recession,” she said proudly. “And the house was never at risk.”