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Documentary time: The Queen of Versailles and The Captains
As a recovering, or perhaps recovered, historian, I don't tend to watch that many documentaries. But recently two caught my attention for entirely different reasons, so I thought I'd blog a bit about both here. My comments got a bit long, so, cuts!
The Queen of Versailles gained a lot of attention on the independent film circuit, largely because of a serendipitous moment for the filmmakers, who assumed that they were creating a documentary about how the Siegels, owners of Westgate Resorts, were building America's largest private home, and instead ended up creating a documentary about the Great Recession and the horrific effects a massive drop in money has on people.
I was curious for a different reason: it was filmed in my area. This may surprise people who have visited my very working class street and the roads that approach it – as one of my cousins said when I mentioned that there'd been some discussion of a Whole Foods arriving here (it never happened), "Oh, this area couldn't support it."
"Oh, yes it could," my brother and I said.
In fact, the Target/Barnes and Noble/Best Buy area I sometimes mention borders one of the wealthier areas in Florida: the Windermere/Lake Butler area, where the Seigels lived at the beginning of the film and where they were (and apparently, now are again) planning to build the largest private home in the U.S. This is also why the Publix I shop at -- which services the Deer Island neighborhood -- carries luxury items while sitting across the street from a trailer park, and while the Bravo, located on a not particularly nice looking bit of road, but in location passed by people heading to historic, lakefront homes, carried, on my last visit, frog legs, quail eggs, USDA Prime steak next to the shelves and shelves of huge bags of beans and rice, since it's a combined bargain store catering to Hispanic shoppers and luxury meat market. Though it's also sometimes difficult for us to realize that we do live so close – within trike distance – just because we also live so close to collapsing shacks. It's a Florida thing. But anyway.
Watching the film was both fascinating and disorienting. Fascinating, because watching these once hideously wealthy people (if you'll see the film, you'll see why I'm using "hideous") deal with their sudden lack of money has a horrific train wreck quality to it. As the film begins, Jackie is both delighted that she is building the largest private home in the U.S. – her closet in the planned house alone is larger than my perfectly adequate house – because, as she says cheerfully, they just can't fit in their 12,000 square foot home anymore. The camera shows us overflowing closets and attempts to entertain every single Miss America contestant which, and I admit I never thought about this before, is a lot of people to put on a staircase, which you should all think about when planning YOUR next stairwell. Plus, the new house will have an indoor rolling skating rink, which, as we all know, is a necessity for anyone.
Moving on. Jackie is also terrified; a former model, she's had a lot of pregnancies and Botox, and her husband's eye is wandering. Not mentioned in the film but fairly well known locally and in South Florida (there's a Nova Southeastern story that I'll spare you): her husband's previous marriage had ended in a bitter and very expensive divorce; the marriage before that had ended in a less expensive but still bitter divorce. An adult son comments that he barely knew his father, but has no real resentment. Jackie has both terror and hardness in her eyes. Her niece, who has lived in considerably less fortunate circumstances, points out that living this way is very different.
And then the housing market collapses.
As the film explains, the source of their wealth, Westgate Resorts, was based on timeshares which in turn were based on the ability to get mortgages quickly. Expenses were paid completely on the basis of new sales, and although at least some of the owners continued to pay their mortgages after the September 2008 financial collapse, no one could make any new sales; banks absolutely refused to issue mortgages for timeshares. Some of the owners also stopped making payments on old mortgages, not helping the situation, and Westgate Resorts had recently built a large, brilliant building in Las Vegas which was not yet paid for.
David Seigel spends much of the rest of the film trying to keep his Las Vegas building open, against all financial and practical advice. Employees are laid off, both at Westgate and the house. Get ready to feel very very sorry, everyone – they now have to deal with having only six nannies, instead of six nannies AND housekeepers and drivers and cleaners. Though given the number of dogs that apparently no one ever takes outside and Jackie Siegel's apparently complete inability to cook and clean, maybe they are suffering. Certainly their pets are (this is a very sad scene.)
The film shows us just how much money has changed Jackie Siegel – she was raised decidedly middle class, but when she rents a car from Hertz, she's genuinely surprised to learn that it doesn't come with a driver, and she has to relearn how to take commercial flights. Her niece, who experienced dire poverty more recently, has some sharp insights on this. Nonetheless, if she often comes across as completely clueless – the most devastating line in the film from her is when she tells the camera that she thought the financial bailout was meant to help "ordinary people. You know, like us." – she, unlike her husband, displays genuine concern for the laid off employees and servants and does what she can for them, even as her husband grows emotionally abusive (I suspect that David Seigel did not realize the cameras were rolling; Jackie Seigel does, and tries to cover up the situation). She opens up a thrift store in an attempt to help, which, incidentally answers my "what was up with that thrift store?" question.
But Jackie Seigel is also furious. She's not just dealing with outright abuse, but as a sad little scene at the end shows, her husband is keeping her in the dark about their finances – she's never told that the new house is in foreclosure, for instance. The film wants me to be appalled at Siegel's continued, uncontrolled spending, and I sorta was, but I also couldn't help feeling sympathetic, which was odd because despite her occasional forays into compassion she seems like a pretty awful person. But local knowledge also let me know how sharply and in some cases cruelly the film had been edited. For instance, one scene shows Jackie Seigel riding comfortably in a limo, chatting with a driver, just as the family finances are starting to crash. They pull into a McDonald's; she orders a large bag of food and offers to share it with the driver, who refuses; they pull into her driveway and she pops out, still eating, offering French fries to anyone nearby.
The implications of the scene are clear: Jackie Seigel orders a limo just to go get McDonald's. Except that as they are riding in the limo, they pass a housing/condo complex and discuss how the units aren’t getting sold. I recognized the complex; it's in Orlando Metro West. I also recognized the McDonald's, on Kirkman Road. None of this is particularly close to where the Seigels live or plan to live; given where Westgate is, and given Jackie Segal's other activities, it seems more likely that she was running another errand and decided to stop by McDonald's for lunch on her way back.
In another scene a teenager complains that she was unable to get to the pet store. I'm not all that sympathetic – the kid also failed to give an animal water – but the reality is, where she currently lives she cannot get to a pet store on her own, even with walking. At the new house, she would be able to shop at the same pet store I do – assuming she has a bike and assuming her parents are willing to let her bike four to five miles up the road and under a six lane highway. On the bright side, she'd have sidewalks. And, as the documentary also shows, the family has been selling off cars and it's not at all clear if all of the nannies can drive, or if, with Jackie Seigel now attempting to work sorta, anyone has thought of this problem.
I mentioned my disorientation. It came at several moments – when Jackie Siegel, attempting to save money, heads to the same Walmart I occasionally go to with my brother. Her experience there is a bit...different, to put it mildly. We get milk. (We're very exciting shoppers.) She, determined to make Christmas wonderful anyway, packs several shopping carts with clothes and cheap games and toys – in many cases multiple copies of games so that each kid can have one. A nanny helps her. They can barely fit everything into the SUVs. It's kinda jaw dropping, and yet I kept thinking – hey, damn it, that's the only parking space with shade! MOVE IT.
But my main disorientation came from realizing that you can follow such similar journeys – both Jackie Siegel and I went more or less from Binghamton to South Florida to central Florida, with different interruptions along the way – and end up so close, less than ten miles apart, and yet see the world so completely differently.
Anyway, it's a fascinating film. Recommended.
The Captains was conceived, written and directed by William Shatner, aka Captain Kirk, who spends most of the film wandering around talking to the other people who have played captains on the various Star Trek franchises and Christopher Plummer and visits a Star Trek convention. What's kinda amazing is how, even in a film meant to show that Shatner is not just an arrogant dick, he comes off as, well, an arrogant dick. If a charming arrogant dick.
Part of the problem is that Shatner doesn't really know how to conduct interviews, or how to make the interview about something other than Shatner and The Way Shatner Thinks About the World, Death, the Universe, and Shatner, and part of the problem is that Shatner just Doesn't Get Stuff. For instance. Shatner, while interviewing Kate Mulgrew of Voyager, suddenly interrupts her discussion of how she had been pulled between the dueling needs of parenthood and career (to sum up, no sleep, and your kids hate your work, and you always wonder if you really did your best work) by announcing that this means that women can't possibly work as starship captains and Secretaries of State and so on because of hormones (no really.) Shatner's not kidding. Mulgrew realizes he's not kidding, so after some gracious comments about Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton, she tries again to explain the realities of being a working mother in what she calls the boys club of Hollywood, and Shatner, who just seconds ago informed her that women can't be Secretaries of State because, hormones, says, what boys' club? Mulgrew makes a valiant third attempt, but it just doesn't work.
He also doesn't get Avery Brooks (Deep Space Nine). It's hands down the least successful of the interviews. I can't tell if Brooks was on drugs or just messing with Shatner – maybe both – but the result is a lot of playing the piano and singing and handwaving which sounds a lot more fun than it actually is. And even when Shatner manages to interview the captains, in most cases this ends up being All About Shatner. The exceptions are the interviews with Bakula, who is relaxed enough not to care that much about Star Trek, and aware that his show was not exactly one of the franchise's shining moments, and bits with Sir Patrick Stewart. Although even with Stewart, as the New York Times correctly notes: " Mr. Stewart can only nod, his face frozen in what looks like deep apprehension for what his supposed interviewer will say next." (Hey, New York Times? It's SIR Stewart to you, thanks very much.)
The film has another problem: Star Trek very obviously impacted Shatner and Stewart, who remain identified with their iconic roles, far more than the other three. (It's a bit early to determine how much it will affect Chris Pine.) Bakula even admits that he worked fewer hours and found Enterprise less difficult than Quantum Leap, and for Avery Brooks, Star Trek was just a job that he did until he could get back to his music. For Mulgrew it appears to be something she would prefer to forget. More importantly, all three of them could conceivably walk down the street without having something Star Trek related yelled at them; indeed, of the three, Bakula is probably the only one with major name/face recognition, although again, that's more from Quantum Leap.
That could have been interesting to explore: why did the last three Star Treks, in general, fail to become as iconic? Well, ok, when it comes to Voyager it's probably not that hard to answer that question – or is it? Why weren't Voyager and Enterprise, as potentially high earning segments of a popular franchise, given better writers/better budgets? Did producers decide to coast on the Star Trek brand? With Deep Space Nine, the writing was less of an issue, but did the comparatively more serialized show Deep Space Nine, by appearing just a few years before the spike in marathoning shows on DVD or (gasp) VHS, appear just a touch too early for its success?
But the film doesn't explore this, in part because Shatner can't recognize it – he assumes that Star Trek had the same life changing, fundamental iconic impact on the others that it did on him, and that therefore Avery Brooks will always be known as a Star Trek captain, and so on. Shatner is so convinced of this that he just can't identify with Brooks and Mulgrew, who didn't experience this, and can only really talk to Bakula since Bakula sorta experienced this with another franchise, and because Bakula has the sense to flatter Shatner like mad.
It's not all bad. The interview with Sir Patrick Stewart, where he talks about the failure of his marriages and blames himself, and discusses how he'll be remembered in the future, is brilliant and personal and moving. Still, I can only recommend The Captains to Star Trek fans or people wondering if they should really pursue a career in television (unless you really love acting and TV, this suggests, absolutely not.) The rest of you will be bored or irritated or both. But for Star Trek fans, there's a lot here.
The Queen of Versailles gained a lot of attention on the independent film circuit, largely because of a serendipitous moment for the filmmakers, who assumed that they were creating a documentary about how the Siegels, owners of Westgate Resorts, were building America's largest private home, and instead ended up creating a documentary about the Great Recession and the horrific effects a massive drop in money has on people.
I was curious for a different reason: it was filmed in my area. This may surprise people who have visited my very working class street and the roads that approach it – as one of my cousins said when I mentioned that there'd been some discussion of a Whole Foods arriving here (it never happened), "Oh, this area couldn't support it."
"Oh, yes it could," my brother and I said.
In fact, the Target/Barnes and Noble/Best Buy area I sometimes mention borders one of the wealthier areas in Florida: the Windermere/Lake Butler area, where the Seigels lived at the beginning of the film and where they were (and apparently, now are again) planning to build the largest private home in the U.S. This is also why the Publix I shop at -- which services the Deer Island neighborhood -- carries luxury items while sitting across the street from a trailer park, and while the Bravo, located on a not particularly nice looking bit of road, but in location passed by people heading to historic, lakefront homes, carried, on my last visit, frog legs, quail eggs, USDA Prime steak next to the shelves and shelves of huge bags of beans and rice, since it's a combined bargain store catering to Hispanic shoppers and luxury meat market. Though it's also sometimes difficult for us to realize that we do live so close – within trike distance – just because we also live so close to collapsing shacks. It's a Florida thing. But anyway.
Watching the film was both fascinating and disorienting. Fascinating, because watching these once hideously wealthy people (if you'll see the film, you'll see why I'm using "hideous") deal with their sudden lack of money has a horrific train wreck quality to it. As the film begins, Jackie is both delighted that she is building the largest private home in the U.S. – her closet in the planned house alone is larger than my perfectly adequate house – because, as she says cheerfully, they just can't fit in their 12,000 square foot home anymore. The camera shows us overflowing closets and attempts to entertain every single Miss America contestant which, and I admit I never thought about this before, is a lot of people to put on a staircase, which you should all think about when planning YOUR next stairwell. Plus, the new house will have an indoor rolling skating rink, which, as we all know, is a necessity for anyone.
Moving on. Jackie is also terrified; a former model, she's had a lot of pregnancies and Botox, and her husband's eye is wandering. Not mentioned in the film but fairly well known locally and in South Florida (there's a Nova Southeastern story that I'll spare you): her husband's previous marriage had ended in a bitter and very expensive divorce; the marriage before that had ended in a less expensive but still bitter divorce. An adult son comments that he barely knew his father, but has no real resentment. Jackie has both terror and hardness in her eyes. Her niece, who has lived in considerably less fortunate circumstances, points out that living this way is very different.
And then the housing market collapses.
As the film explains, the source of their wealth, Westgate Resorts, was based on timeshares which in turn were based on the ability to get mortgages quickly. Expenses were paid completely on the basis of new sales, and although at least some of the owners continued to pay their mortgages after the September 2008 financial collapse, no one could make any new sales; banks absolutely refused to issue mortgages for timeshares. Some of the owners also stopped making payments on old mortgages, not helping the situation, and Westgate Resorts had recently built a large, brilliant building in Las Vegas which was not yet paid for.
David Seigel spends much of the rest of the film trying to keep his Las Vegas building open, against all financial and practical advice. Employees are laid off, both at Westgate and the house. Get ready to feel very very sorry, everyone – they now have to deal with having only six nannies, instead of six nannies AND housekeepers and drivers and cleaners. Though given the number of dogs that apparently no one ever takes outside and Jackie Siegel's apparently complete inability to cook and clean, maybe they are suffering. Certainly their pets are (this is a very sad scene.)
The film shows us just how much money has changed Jackie Siegel – she was raised decidedly middle class, but when she rents a car from Hertz, she's genuinely surprised to learn that it doesn't come with a driver, and she has to relearn how to take commercial flights. Her niece, who experienced dire poverty more recently, has some sharp insights on this. Nonetheless, if she often comes across as completely clueless – the most devastating line in the film from her is when she tells the camera that she thought the financial bailout was meant to help "ordinary people. You know, like us." – she, unlike her husband, displays genuine concern for the laid off employees and servants and does what she can for them, even as her husband grows emotionally abusive (I suspect that David Seigel did not realize the cameras were rolling; Jackie Seigel does, and tries to cover up the situation). She opens up a thrift store in an attempt to help, which, incidentally answers my "what was up with that thrift store?" question.
But Jackie Seigel is also furious. She's not just dealing with outright abuse, but as a sad little scene at the end shows, her husband is keeping her in the dark about their finances – she's never told that the new house is in foreclosure, for instance. The film wants me to be appalled at Siegel's continued, uncontrolled spending, and I sorta was, but I also couldn't help feeling sympathetic, which was odd because despite her occasional forays into compassion she seems like a pretty awful person. But local knowledge also let me know how sharply and in some cases cruelly the film had been edited. For instance, one scene shows Jackie Seigel riding comfortably in a limo, chatting with a driver, just as the family finances are starting to crash. They pull into a McDonald's; she orders a large bag of food and offers to share it with the driver, who refuses; they pull into her driveway and she pops out, still eating, offering French fries to anyone nearby.
The implications of the scene are clear: Jackie Seigel orders a limo just to go get McDonald's. Except that as they are riding in the limo, they pass a housing/condo complex and discuss how the units aren’t getting sold. I recognized the complex; it's in Orlando Metro West. I also recognized the McDonald's, on Kirkman Road. None of this is particularly close to where the Seigels live or plan to live; given where Westgate is, and given Jackie Segal's other activities, it seems more likely that she was running another errand and decided to stop by McDonald's for lunch on her way back.
In another scene a teenager complains that she was unable to get to the pet store. I'm not all that sympathetic – the kid also failed to give an animal water – but the reality is, where she currently lives she cannot get to a pet store on her own, even with walking. At the new house, she would be able to shop at the same pet store I do – assuming she has a bike and assuming her parents are willing to let her bike four to five miles up the road and under a six lane highway. On the bright side, she'd have sidewalks. And, as the documentary also shows, the family has been selling off cars and it's not at all clear if all of the nannies can drive, or if, with Jackie Seigel now attempting to work sorta, anyone has thought of this problem.
I mentioned my disorientation. It came at several moments – when Jackie Siegel, attempting to save money, heads to the same Walmart I occasionally go to with my brother. Her experience there is a bit...different, to put it mildly. We get milk. (We're very exciting shoppers.) She, determined to make Christmas wonderful anyway, packs several shopping carts with clothes and cheap games and toys – in many cases multiple copies of games so that each kid can have one. A nanny helps her. They can barely fit everything into the SUVs. It's kinda jaw dropping, and yet I kept thinking – hey, damn it, that's the only parking space with shade! MOVE IT.
But my main disorientation came from realizing that you can follow such similar journeys – both Jackie Siegel and I went more or less from Binghamton to South Florida to central Florida, with different interruptions along the way – and end up so close, less than ten miles apart, and yet see the world so completely differently.
Anyway, it's a fascinating film. Recommended.
The Captains was conceived, written and directed by William Shatner, aka Captain Kirk, who spends most of the film wandering around talking to the other people who have played captains on the various Star Trek franchises and Christopher Plummer and visits a Star Trek convention. What's kinda amazing is how, even in a film meant to show that Shatner is not just an arrogant dick, he comes off as, well, an arrogant dick. If a charming arrogant dick.
Part of the problem is that Shatner doesn't really know how to conduct interviews, or how to make the interview about something other than Shatner and The Way Shatner Thinks About the World, Death, the Universe, and Shatner, and part of the problem is that Shatner just Doesn't Get Stuff. For instance. Shatner, while interviewing Kate Mulgrew of Voyager, suddenly interrupts her discussion of how she had been pulled between the dueling needs of parenthood and career (to sum up, no sleep, and your kids hate your work, and you always wonder if you really did your best work) by announcing that this means that women can't possibly work as starship captains and Secretaries of State and so on because of hormones (no really.) Shatner's not kidding. Mulgrew realizes he's not kidding, so after some gracious comments about Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton, she tries again to explain the realities of being a working mother in what she calls the boys club of Hollywood, and Shatner, who just seconds ago informed her that women can't be Secretaries of State because, hormones, says, what boys' club? Mulgrew makes a valiant third attempt, but it just doesn't work.
He also doesn't get Avery Brooks (Deep Space Nine). It's hands down the least successful of the interviews. I can't tell if Brooks was on drugs or just messing with Shatner – maybe both – but the result is a lot of playing the piano and singing and handwaving which sounds a lot more fun than it actually is. And even when Shatner manages to interview the captains, in most cases this ends up being All About Shatner. The exceptions are the interviews with Bakula, who is relaxed enough not to care that much about Star Trek, and aware that his show was not exactly one of the franchise's shining moments, and bits with Sir Patrick Stewart. Although even with Stewart, as the New York Times correctly notes: " Mr. Stewart can only nod, his face frozen in what looks like deep apprehension for what his supposed interviewer will say next." (Hey, New York Times? It's SIR Stewart to you, thanks very much.)
The film has another problem: Star Trek very obviously impacted Shatner and Stewart, who remain identified with their iconic roles, far more than the other three. (It's a bit early to determine how much it will affect Chris Pine.) Bakula even admits that he worked fewer hours and found Enterprise less difficult than Quantum Leap, and for Avery Brooks, Star Trek was just a job that he did until he could get back to his music. For Mulgrew it appears to be something she would prefer to forget. More importantly, all three of them could conceivably walk down the street without having something Star Trek related yelled at them; indeed, of the three, Bakula is probably the only one with major name/face recognition, although again, that's more from Quantum Leap.
That could have been interesting to explore: why did the last three Star Treks, in general, fail to become as iconic? Well, ok, when it comes to Voyager it's probably not that hard to answer that question – or is it? Why weren't Voyager and Enterprise, as potentially high earning segments of a popular franchise, given better writers/better budgets? Did producers decide to coast on the Star Trek brand? With Deep Space Nine, the writing was less of an issue, but did the comparatively more serialized show Deep Space Nine, by appearing just a few years before the spike in marathoning shows on DVD or (gasp) VHS, appear just a touch too early for its success?
But the film doesn't explore this, in part because Shatner can't recognize it – he assumes that Star Trek had the same life changing, fundamental iconic impact on the others that it did on him, and that therefore Avery Brooks will always be known as a Star Trek captain, and so on. Shatner is so convinced of this that he just can't identify with Brooks and Mulgrew, who didn't experience this, and can only really talk to Bakula since Bakula sorta experienced this with another franchise, and because Bakula has the sense to flatter Shatner like mad.
It's not all bad. The interview with Sir Patrick Stewart, where he talks about the failure of his marriages and blames himself, and discusses how he'll be remembered in the future, is brilliant and personal and moving. Still, I can only recommend The Captains to Star Trek fans or people wondering if they should really pursue a career in television (unless you really love acting and TV, this suggests, absolutely not.) The rest of you will be bored or irritated or both. But for Star Trek fans, there's a lot here.