Maxed Out movie
Last night I went to a special screening of Maxed Out hosted by Minnesota ACORN and Americans For Fairness in Lending, a new consumer advocacy organization. Maxed Out is a documentary about the credit industry, including debt collection, check cashing, payday lending, bankruptcy, and more. The creator attended and answered questions from the audience, which seemed generally made up of consumer activists from the area.
Besides getting me fired up to go to work this morning, Maxed Out is a great movie about the credit industry. It does point fingers at lenders, but primarily for their unwillingness to be up front about their motives and practices. The movie features Chris and Rob, owners of Minnesota-based People First Recoveries, who analogize everything to sports, including debt collection. It follows the stories of three people who committed suicide to escape debt. And it leaves the viewer with an accurate picture of the immensity of the credit problem–and addiction–in America.
The film hits theaters in March, and AFFIL may sponsor smaller screenings, as well, a la An Inconvenient Truth to get the word out.
Your blog is informative and well organized. I notice that you mention two documentaries that I consulted on regarding the credit card industry but did not refer to the third documentary which is most accurrate. The theatrical release of IN DEBT WE TRUST, directed by Danny Schechter, officially begins at the end of the month. The website is http://www.indebtwetrust.com which will list the theaters that the movie will be shown. An abbreviated version of the movie can be viewed at http://saunders.rit.edu/idwt Also, we are organizing a “Fair and Responsible Lending” campaign with the “Stop the Squeeze” website. You can read more from my Jan 2007 US Senate testimony at my website, http://www.creditcardnation.com
We hope that Americans will be enraged by these provocative documentaries and demand that Congress reign in the out-of-control financial services industry. For those interested, I am also developing a lawyer supervised, partial payment alternative to Ch 7 bankruptcy.
Robert D. Manning
Research Professor and Director
Center for Consumer Financial Services
Rochester Institute of Technology
[...] new documentary, Maxed Out, got some well-deserved hype on Nightline tonight. It was a great movie, gripping, and well worth [...]
[...] helped organize screenings and house parties of the film around the country for the past year. Sam blogged about the special Minneapolis screening back in Feb. of ’07, which I got to attend as the AFFIL [...]