I interviewed David Walker, star of I.O.U.S.A., the new docu-drama on America's debt crisis, along with director Patrick Creadon and executive producer Addison Wiggin, at the premier party last week. Walker is the U.S. comptroller general who went on a tirade over this country's impending commitments and its inability to meet them on their current course. He led the "Fiscal Wake Up Tour" from state to state to try to draw attention to the issue, and the I.O.U.S.A. film crew followed along for the film's core narrative.

The film debuted at Sundance earlier this year and got screened multiple times last weekend at the Maryland Film Festival at the Charles. Here is my column on the movie and Andrew Yarrow's new book on the same theme, Forgive Us Our Debts.

Walker recently became CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation in New York, where he intends to continue his work. Part of the Peterson agenda is Phase II of the Fiscal Wake Up Tour. For the next few months the Tour will focus on what Walker calls "Purple States" -- swing states, neither Red nor Blue, in the upcoming election. That's where the most political traction can be had.

The Peterson Foundation is "trying to engage young people in particular," Walker said, because they're the ones with the most at stake. They'll have to pay the bill with higher taxes and other, subtler costs for the nation's trillions in debt and future liabilities. "We're looking to try to get [I.O.U.S.A.] into high schools and colleges and, eventually, on YouTube. The key is, How can we maximize the visibility of this film?"

They're thinking about producing another film -- "what would things look like in 2040?" if the debt bomb isn't defused. The foundation wants to focus on financial literacy, making grants etc. to organizations that promote it. But mainly the group wants to push support for fiscal sanity at a grassroots level and turn it into change in Washington.

Movie trivia: The crew wanted to use Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild," as soundtrack for the Wake Up Tour, but it was too expensive. So they used a lesser-known version.
They've tweaked the film since it appeared at Sundance and seem to be still doing so. Walker, an accountant by training, is especially keen on presenting viewers with certain statistics, which the Hollywood folks may have mixed emotions about. "We've got to include that graphic of the debt to GDP ratio since the 1700s," Walker told Creadon. "It's in there! It's in there!" the director said.