"We put this story together in a way that helps educate people, for one," says Wiggin, "and hopefully motivate them to understand what fiscal challenges face the country, and how that impacts their lives.
"It seems to me," he adds, "that, with a message like this, it's much easier to hand somebody a DVD and say, `You've got to watch this,' than to hand them a tome of 350 pages."
So far, the film's message seems to be getting across just fine. During its premiere, at January's Sundance Film Festival, it played to near-capacity audiences and widespread praise. Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan lauded it as one of the best documentaries playing, saying it "might be the most unexpectedly frightening movie in the festival."
The film plays well to the public-service side of Agora, says Bonner, the company's founder. While profit is certainly his company's priority, he says, there's a side of him that longs to get important issues out before the public.
"This is something we felt we should do, even though there's probably no money in it," he writes via e-mail from Europe, where he recently was traveling between his home in the south of France and Italy. "We're old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy, Eisenhower-era Republicans. We thought it was our duty."
Bonner, an Annapolis native whose educational resume stretches from Anne Arundel County's Southern High School to Georgetown Law School, founded Agora in 1979. From a single eight-page newsletter (International Living) advising readers on travel and retirement, Agora has grown considerably; it now operates as a holding company for some 30 companies worldwide, publishing more than 300 books and 40 newsletters. Subscriptions to the various newsletters range from free (including The Daily Reckoning, the flagship of Wiggin's Agora Financial) to $1,500 or more.
"I am hardcore unemployable," Bonner writes. "Agora evolved because I never could imagine seriously working for anyone else."
Agora first set up shop at 824 E. Baltimore St., in a home purchased as part of the city's revitalization effort. In 1994, it moved into historic Mount Vernon. It set up shop at 14 W. Mount Vernon Place, a mansion dating from 1847 that featured one of the city's first hydraulic elevators (it still operates). It is one of six buildings owned and renovated by Agora, which has won numerous preservation awards for its work.
