A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
David M. Smick, Sr., began his career as a global macroeconomic strategist, magazine publisher, and best-selling author, and is now a documentary filmmaker. He founded Johnson Smick International, a global strategic advisory firm in Washington, D.C., where he was in partnership with former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Manuel H. Johnson. The firm has provided strategic advice to some of the world's most successful investors. David Smick has written op-ed pieces for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today. He has appeared as a commentator on a variety of news outlets including CNN, CNBC, The Charlie Rose Show, Bloomberg News, Fox Business, and Morning Joe. In 2020 (with help from Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson who served as executive producer), Smick wrote and directed Stars and Strife, a full-length documentary that predicted a coming tidal wave of political, social, and economic division in America and throughout the industrialized world. Tom Friedman of the New York Times described the film as “an incredible work.” Stars and Strife was acquired by Lionsgate and premiered on Starz on September 21, 2020. Smick's 2024 documentary America’s Burning had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival and was shown nationwide by Regal Cinemas. The film describes the economic reasons for America’s division including the weakening of the middle class and decline of the American Dream. The film is executive produced by Academy Award-winners Michael Douglas and Barry Levinson, and narrated by Michael Douglas. David Ignatius of the Washington Post called the film “incredibly powerful.” Whoopi Goldberg on The View (talk show) labeled the film “imperative.” In 2025, Smick executive-produced the documentary Bucks County, USA, directed by Levinson. The film premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. In 2008, Smick wrote the award-winning bestseller, The World Is Curved. It has been published in 32 languages and was described by David Brooks of the New York Times as “astonishingly prescient.” The book discussed the financial perils of globalization. Bill Clinton called it “one of the three best books on the financial crisis.”
Director:
2020 Stars and Strife
2024 America's Burning
Executive Producer:
2020 Stars and Strife
2024 America's Burning
Writer:
2020 Stars and Strife
2024 America's Burning
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.