Please Look at My Metal Credit Card
Although it may be difficult to imagine a universe in which George Clooney needs a little help charming women, that’s the case in Up in the Air, the 2009 movie in which he plays a frequent-flying HR consultant in charge of executing mass layoffs. In a Dallas hotel bar, he flirts with a comely business traveler played by Vera Farmiga, needling her over her preferred rental-car loyalty program; soon, the two are comparing mileage goals and flinging their respective stacks of bonus-rewards credit cards down next to their drinks. Eventually, Clooney seals the deal with a rare American Airlines ConciergeKey card, rendered in matte graphite among all the shiny plastic. Farmiga picks it up, complimenting its weightiness. “This is pretty fucking sexy,” she marvels. They retire to his hotel room.
During the 2000s,. After its plastic introduction in 1999, the Centurion Card—or the Black Card, in popular parlance—became a status symbol known far outside its rarefied clientele, largely thanks to countless namechecks in rap hits by artists including Lil Kim, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, and Kanye West. Within just a few years, the card’s legend had grown to such mythic proportions—aided by the fact that almost no one had ever seen one in person—that it was somehow widely believed to be made of metal already.
