A feature documentary that explores the causes and effects of America’s financial crisis: after losing his job as a big-firm lawyer, Titus withholds his mortgage payment from a major bailout bank for several months. Seeing his friend rack up tens of thousands of dollars, comic John Fox wheedles Titus into taking a Winnebago excursion to the Las Vegas Tropicana where Fox has a stand-up gig. Three unemployed friends join them for a frenetic party of gambling and vice at ground zero of the foreclosure storm caused by the financial crisis.

Along the way, they see first-hand how politically powerful banks are systemically eliminating America’s middle class through off-shored job losses and fraudulent home foreclosures. An enigma wrapped in Doc-hybrid form, Bailout is a social documentary that explores American anger with the Wall Street elites who survive and thrive on their cancerous system of bailouts, fraud, and political corruption that actively work in concert to destroy Main Street.

From entry-level workers in northeast Indiana RV factories to Congressional leaders to rock stars, Bailout will tell the story of recent American economic events through the mouths of people who labored through thick and thin—what it was and how it has affected us all.

directed by: Sean Patrick Fahey
produced by: Kevin Shroeder and Sean Patrick Fahey
written by: John Titus, Sean Patrick Fahey, and John Fox
narrated by: John Fox

“[T]his crisis really isn't about too much leverage, it really isn’t about greed or speculation, or any of that nonsense. It’s really simply about fraud. And the ordinary Americans, Main Street, have been defrauded by Wall Street six ways from Sunday, and it’s no more complicated than that. This notion that everything is complex and too hard to understand is a bunch of rubbish. It’s a very simple story. And that’s what people should leave with.”  —John Titus

Potluck Dinner, Screening, & Panel Discussion with director Sean Patrick Fahey and writer/executive producer John Titus via Skype
Wednesday, June 20
6:00-10:00pm
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
S. Claiborne at Jefferson Avenues

How many times since the bailouts began in 2008 have you said, "Where's my bailout?" Well, John Titus and his pals decided to treat themselves to a bailout of sourts, and director Sean Fahey went along for the ride and filmed their sojourn from Chicago to Las Vegas.

Crescent City occupy is currently working with other social/economic justice organizations of New Orleans and Baton Rouge on a special sneak preview of the new film Bailout: The Dukes of Moral Hazard, "a muck-raking documentary about the financial crisis." The evening of Wednesday, June 20, will start off withpotluck dinner begins at 6:00. Before the screening, social/economic justice activists from various groups will describe their current work. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion via Skype with writer/director Sean Patrick Fahey, and writer/producer John Titus. Fahey tells us he might be joining us from Tahrir Square, where he'll be filming for his current project.

Watch the trailer:

John Titus was a recent guest on the 'Keiser Report.' Max Keiser brought asked him about his thoughts on the Occupy movement and if he thinks Occupy people should go to Athens, "the front of the global insurrection against the banker occupation":

Max Keiser: The Occupy Wall Street movement of course is directed toward Wall Street, but Wall Street’s crimes around the world are not necessarily most egregious in New York area and the Wall Street area. They are most apparent in countries like Greece. Why—this is my question, John--why wouldn’t a few thousand of the Occupy folks simply go over to Athens and set up camp in Athens, because that’s the front of the global insurrection against the banker occupation is in Athens right now. Why don’t we see New Yorkers and Occupy people from around America setting up shop in Athens right now to fight the banking terrorists. Why hasn’t that happened in your view, John?

John Titus: For the simple reason that I think Occupy is still trying to find its footing. I mean, they’re still in the process of debating and discussing what’s gone on and trying to figure out what the Occupy movement really means. During the fall of 2011, it was directed at Wall Street, and then winter came, and there was a lot silence, a lot of discussion, and now it’s come back and the movement seems to be, if you can call it a movement really yet, directed in a lot of different areas. So, I think until the Occupy people sort of center in on one or two or three platforms or issues that you’re really, it’s really a little bit premature to conceive of people from the U.S., Occupy people from the U.S., going abroad to say, “see how it’s done,” as you might put it.

MK: Finally, John Titus, your film Bailout:What do you want the audience to leave with, what message do they walk out of the theater having been exposed to, and what should they be thinking about?

JT: Simply that this crisis really isn’t about too much leverage, it really isn’t about greed or speculation, or any of that nonsense. It’s really simply about fraud. And the ordinary Americans, Main Street, have been defrauded by Wall Street six ways from Sunday, and it’s no more complicated than that. This notion that everything is complex and too hard to understand is a bunch of rubbish. It’s a very simple story. And that’s what people should leave with.