Fancast: The Big Picture

Rich people like to be pampered.

One might think that no one is going to pay $35 dollars to go see a movie, but would it be worth it to have a recliner seat with a footrest, a concierge service, valet parking and cocktails and appetizers (sold separately, natch) that you can order just by touching a button on your seat?

The life of the wealthy is often ludicrous. Looking around Los Angeles, you see the strangest things that are apparently perpetuated by people with money burning holes in their pockets. $300 pants, $500 sandals, giant urban assault vehicles used for stop-and-go rush-hour traffic, seemingly designed to aggravate the living hell out of the people in respectable cars who can't see a damn thing on the road if they're stuck behind one of them. Stretch SUV limousines, $600 hotel rooms, fluorescent and antiseptic mall stores with six items total to choose from, $1500 yellow suits or $30 for tiny, decorative meals. Press junkets are routinely held in high-end hotels like The Four Seasons - sometimes the press is flown in from out of state or out of country and put up for a night - and honestly, the amount of pampering, tending and hand-holding going on makes one think that the super-rich who regularly stay at these places are interchangeable with stroke victims relearning their motor skills. People who can't cope in the real world, so they have to pay people to help them.

These people are insane if you look at their habits objectively, but they have their money and want big-ticket items to flaunt it. Paying more than triple the cost of a movie just to be catered to by people who can scarcely cover their laundry costs and quietly despise the people for whom they must toady. It's not just going to the movies, now. It's one more way to bring attention to rich people's richness, which is very important for rich people. They are very special people. As Mr. Show's Value Magazine says: "more money equals better than."

50 new luxury movie theaters, fittingly called Village Roadshow Gold Class Cinemas (not unlike the Colbert Platinum segment), will be opening around the country in the next five years, starting in Chicago and Seattle, expanding to Dallas and Scottsdale, Arizona next. So get ready to either shell out some cash to eat sushi and drink red wine while watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, (aka 2 Sisterhood 2 Pants), or get ready to point and laugh at everyone who does, because they'll probably dress up all fancy to park their butts in La-Z-Boys for two hours. Welcome to America.

(Scrooge's Money Bin model pictured here)