David Smick’s documentary America’s Burning, executive produced and narrated by Michael Douglas, explores the causes and consequences of America’s income inequality. Those consequences include anger and division, but Smick and Douglas are hopeful that the country will come together to resolve its differences, and the film reflects that hope.
“I predict 70% of the country, maybe 80%, hasn’t lost its mind,” Smick said. “The others I’m not going after, but I’m just not mentioning them. I just said I’m going to go and do something for that 70% or that 80% and speak to them. [Cable news] can go back and forth with the other 20% to 30% because I do think most people know that we have a history of pulling together, and we have to go back to that.”
America’s Burning opened in August. After the re-election of Donald Trump in November, Douglas predicts not catastrophe but rather a period of thoughtful reconnection.
“Everybody’s going to kind of think things over again and realize all of the issues that we can agree upon rather than those few that separate us,” he said at Deadline’s Contenders Documentary event. “Hopefully, I like to think that things are going to calm down and become more civil again. I think it’s crucial for our country.”
In the film, Smick highlights the stock market growth that paid off well for corporations and investors. However, the disparity between those payoffs and conditions for people collecting paychecks proved stark.
Smick said over 40 years, the stock market enjoyed a “5,000% increase and yet at the same time, wages went up during that same period, adjusting for inflation, 15%. So I sat around and said. ‘We’re wondering why everyone hates each other, why there’s such division, why people just have no belief in the future, and it’s that.’”
Smick’s previous film, Stars and Strife, premiered on Starz during the pandemic. That film is about the growing anger and hate in U.S. politics and society, but Smick regretted he did not focus more on economic factors.
“It had mentioned some, but it didn’t address this,” Smick said. “It’s so tied to status and loss of status that has really destroyed the hope in the American dream.”
The subject appealed to Douglas, who starred in Oliver Stone’s two Wall Street movies. He also felt that Smick presented a balanced, objective perspective as a registered Independent.
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“Many people were sort of disenchanted at what was going on out there in the world,” Douglas said. “I saw for the first time kind of an answer, a clarity as to what the hell this is all about and what has happened. That goes back down to economic issues, the huge disparity that exists in this country.”
Through that objectivity, Douglas said Smick succeeded in “not picking one side but talking to both of us on both sides and try to embrace and come back from the edge.
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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