I.O.U.S.A - Addison Wiggin [8]
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The Mission 7
2006, where she met Patrick Creadon and Christine O ’ Malley, who were also at Sundance with their fi lm Wordplay, a documentary about the New York Times crossword puzzle.
The O ’ Malley - Creadon team didn ’ t come to the project lightly. It took several, fi ve in fact, serious phone conversations and a few face - to - face meetings to help them see we were serious about taking a rather complex and dry economic subject and making it fun and entertaining enough for a wider audience.
Eventually, Patrick and Christine grew interested in the challenge. “ We didn ’ t think we could fi nd a more challenging subject for a fi lm than crosswords, ” Patrick would later tell an audience of Wordplay fans in Los Angeles, “ until we decided to make this fi lm about the national debt. ”
With the team assembled, and a fair amount of the budget already on the line, we went to work. Among the fi rst tasks involved in making the documentary was to assemble a hit list of the folks we ’ d like to interview for the project. Naturally, David Walker ’ s comments regarding the fi nances of this country resembling Rome before the fall of the Empire put him at the top of our list. Having been engaged in the Fiscal Wake -
Up Tour, he accepted a meeting with us.
To our surprise, during our fi rst meeting David revealed he ’ d read Empire of Debt and enjoyed it — even if he didn ’ t agree with everything in the book. We learned we shared an interest in economic and political history.
From the director ’ s perspective, Patrick ’ s talent is clear. He convinced us that if were we to be successful in telling a complicated story to a general audience, we ’ d need a “ real ” human story to help carry the viewers ’ interest. After a few tense, but fruitful, days in a classroom at the American Film Institute, Patrick ’ s alma mater, we grew increasingly interested in David Walker and Bob Bixby as the lead protagonists of the fi lm.
They, in turn, grew more interested in working with us.
Readers of this book will likely expect a screen - by - screen
“ making of ” of Empire of Debt. But because of the challenge cintro.indd 7
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8 The
Mission
we faced turning that story into a fi lm, what we have now is something quite different. Indeed, the I.O.U.S.A. project took on a life of its own. And thus, as you ’ ll no doubt read in the credits, the documentary was “ inspired ” by the book. After our fi rst meeting with David, we seized on the “ four defi cits ” he had outlined in his Fiscal Wake - Up Tour as a solid structure for telling what may be most important story of our generation.
The fi lm and this book are largely an exercise in literary economics and consequently different from most of the writing we do in our daily letters, or in our other books, for that matter. As we ’ ve seen from our discussions, interviews, and chance encounters across the country, the average citizen doesn ’ t have a clue about economics or the challenges we face as a nation. On average, most think Social Security and Medicare, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, managing the
“ money supply, ” or keeping the government afl oat, are somebody else ’ s job — an “ expert ” in Washington or in New York.
In order for people to feel empowered to institute change, we decided to travel the globe and go visit them. Of course, the fi lm took us to New York and Washington, D.C. But it also took us all over North America — Los Angeles; Vancouver; Omaha; Concord, New Hampshire; Ames, Iowa. It took us overseas to Shanghai, Beijing, London, and Paris.
We interviewed two former Fed chairmen, two former Treasury secretaries, one former commerce secretary, and two former presidential candidates. We talked to the two ranking senators on the Senate Budget Committee and the fi rst director of the Congressional Budget Offi ce.
We aimlessly wandered through the marbled halls on Capitol Hill, each of us