This Week Online

Newsweek, April, 2006

NEWSWEEK: Why make a movie about credit-card debt?

James Scurlock, director, "Maxed Out": Debt is an issue that affects all of us--rich or poor, black or white, gay or straight, liberal or conservative. I wanted to ask why so many of us can't get out of debt and what it is about debt that's so addictive. I started out looking for stories that would be funny, that would illustrate consumer irresponsibility, because that's the conventional wisdom about people with a lot of debt. But in the second or third interview we did, suicide came up and the woman started crying ... From then on every interview was so emotional; suicide came up over and over. I was shocked. But everybody we talked to who was a victim of predatory lending said they had considered killing themselves....