David Smick was trying to decide a title for his new documentary on the division which takes place in America. “I had a number of intelligent and abstract titles for the film,” he notes. He says that it was the executive producer Barry Levinson who said to him: “Dave, have you ever heard of the film” Dangerous Marine Animals on the Cape Cod “? No, because they call it” Jaws “. So, I went with” America’s Burning “, because I thought: you can imagine this.
Smick created “America’s Burning” a year ago at the Tribeca Film Festival. Narré and Executive produced by Michael Douglas, the film presents interviews with characters such as James Carville and Leon Panetta while he details discord between people from the opposite sides of the political spectrum. He also preaches optimism by urging people and politicians to target unity. At the time of his first, notes Douglas, “he could have been perceived as being exaggerated. Now, he almost underestimates what has happened since.” But again, he says, “the message is more important and stronger than ever.”
Smick, the president and chief executive officer of the macroeconomic consulting firm Johnson Smick International as well as a successful author and filmmaker, is trying to maintain this positive perspective. “I am optimistic by nature, but there are a lot of challenges that we did not have a year ago,” he notes. “We discover that we are a recession far from a major social upheaval if we are not paying attention.” Smock underlines “so much underlying economic anger” concerning the distribution of wealth in the country despite the fact that our economic system is “the envy of the world”.
Smick adds: “We are great, except that we have this underlying potential cancer that could spread, and everything we need is a rigid recession, then we will see anger out of the woodwork, and people will be shocked, I think.”
Despite how much the world has changed since the first in the film, Smick says that he has not seen the need to add an epilogue or a Coda for its streaming. “I didn’t think it had to be updated,” he notes. Although it is open to the exploration of the subject, perhaps in a longer form. “You are going to these projections, and I look at the public. I would like to have two hours because there are so many problems in which you could get started, but you are limited. I think that if we had never developed it, it would be because someone came and wanted to do a series.”
Bringing the man who entered the famous line “Greed is good” in his Oscar -winning performance at “Wall Street” was a stroke of genius, but Smock also obtained a welcome collaborator with Douglas. The actor came on board when the director sent him an early cup of the film, in which Smick had provided his own narration. “There was his excellent voiceover. They didn’t need me, ”he notes. Born agree, smock, “I have a very soft, not very distinctive voice. I told my producer, Ian Michaels,” we should see if there is a celebrity that can dominate this. “” He hired a casting director with whom to work with. “I said,” I would like to have someone who is in the center, but left in the center, who is disturbed by the fact that the country is so divided. I think there is a part of the country with which we could never agree, but someone who [people] could take behind a film which can be represented around 70% of the country or 80% of the country. And the first was on the list was Michael. »»
Douglas was instantly taken. “It resonated with me, with all the concerns I had, which was the loss of our middle class, the huge sum of money that the Supreme Court authorized in our elections and our lack of bipartite. I thought it was a good message, if I could help support him. ”
And Smick wants everyone to know that Douglas EP Credit has been won – he did not just read a script and promotes. “His contributions have been enormous,” said Smick, adding that Douglas had suggestions on moving the chapters and the rearrangement of certain things. “I would say, minimum, its changes injected 55% more energy into the film.”
Douglas says he was happy to lend his name to the film to attract attention. “But the interesting and frustrating point was how difficult it was to obtain a distribution,” he reveals. “There were a lot of companies that, when we initially shown this, I think I was a little afraid. Even if the attempt was really bipartite, without taking a party or the other. ” He adds: “So bravo to Amazon, and I am happy that they came. And congratulations to David, in terms of [how] He planned what was going to happen. »»
Although he has portrayed one of the greatest presidents of cinema in Rob Reiner’s film in 1995 “The American President”, Douglas says that he has no interest in sucking in the White House in real life. “No, no, I’m 80 years old,” he unmold. “It is the age of magic deactivation.”
Smock, for his part, says that people are constantly coming to Douglas to repeat the lines of the film. “It must happen like 10 times a month,” he says.
Douglas replies: “In the” American president “, I knew how the script ended. This is the big difference ”.
