Director Patrick Creadon and producer Christine O’Malley present their sobering expos? on the U.S. national debt, “I.O.U.S.A.” in an unprecedented HD satellite broadcast to 350-plus theatres nationwide Aug. 21, including 21 Chicago-area screens, followed by a broadcast of a post-screening discussion.
“To my knowledge this event is the first time this sort of thing was tried with a traditional documentary film,” Creadon said.
Creadon and O’Malley are former Chicagoans whose debut crossword doc, “Wordplay,” was picked up by IFO for $10 in the first sale of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
A discussion at a theatre in Omaha will be broadcast to participating theatres, featuring Pete Peterson of sponsoring org, the Peterson Foundation, the film’s subject Dave Walker, as well as Warren Buffet, the heads of the AARP and the libertarian Cato Institute. Panelists will answer questions submitted in advance to the film’s website.
“I.O.U.S.A.” follows former U.S. comptroller general Walker and Robert Bixby, executive director of the advocacy group the Concord Coalition, on their Fiscal Wake-Up Tour to raise awareness of the $9.5 trillion debt and its potentially disastrous impact on the shaky national economy.
The documentary, like Walker and the Concord Coalition, insists that the national debt must be reigned in through some combination of tax increases and spending reductions, but takes no position on how much of each or where those savings can best be found. “I.O.U.S.A.” is rigorously nonpartisan, with a perfectly even mix of Democrat and Republican treasury secretaries, senators, and billionaire tycoons.
