Review of The Queen of Versailles (2012) by Gary C — 27 Aug 2013

A fascinating documentary that David Siegel, the husband of the title character, summed up best: "It's like a pilot episode for the Real Housewives of Orlando." The movie covers over two years of the Siegel's life (during which time the amount of cleavage Jackie shows grows exponentially to her age) and gives the impression they're going to lose everything, but in fact if you read up on their life after the movie you'll find that not only did Siegel turn his company around but he managed to stave off the foreclosure of Versailles, pay off the mortgage, and is now finishing the house.

If you get past all the staged family drama nonsense, there's actually some great information here about how the banking industry screwed over companies like Westgate Resorts by not using a penny of the $700+ BILLION the government "loaned" them to reinvest in American business & the economy, and the saga of the PH Westgate Towers in Las Vegas shows first hand how the banks sole motivation was to try and drive owners of any worthwhile property (whether they were corporations or individuals) into foreclosure so they could profit themselves.

There's a scene at a Christmas party where David is telling his friends how the bank was refusing to work with him on an $18M loan and so he used a third party to buy the loan from them for $3.5M.

"I'm glad they were dumb enough to do it, but really, who's making these decisions?", he asks his friends. There's actually some really interesting stuff regarding the 2008 debacle in this movie, it's too bad they didn't focus more attention on that.