Tag Archives: Waffle Street

The award winning Waffle Street the movie

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It is, of course, already a must-see movie, but if there is an imperative form of must see, it definitely applies here. Waffle Street the movie is getting closer to general release and will no doubt be shown some time in Australia. In the meantime:

The 2015 Hollywood Film Festival announced the winners of six categories Sunday night at the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood.

Sharing the title for best narrative film is Forward. Side. Close!, an Austrian film that follows the story of a castle-dwelling, obsessive compulsive man, and Waffle Street, the true story of the vice president of a $30 billion hedge fund, who loses his job and ends up working as a waiter at a waffle shop.

And then there’s this from the Woodstock Film Festival which has just initiated its Carpe Diem [Jay] Andretta Award:

Jay’s wife, Lauri Andretta, and son, Jim Andretta, will present the inaugural Carpe Diem Andretta Award to Waffle Street on October 3 during the annual Maverick Awards Gala at BSP Kingston, NY. Woodstock Film Festival alums Eshom and Ian Nelms (Lost On Purpose, 2013) return to Woodstock with Waffle Street, their third feature, based on the memoir of James Adams, former VP of a $30 billion hedge fund, who loses his job and unexpectedly winds up in the world of the unemployed. In this genuine riches-to-rags story, Jimmy, played by a charming James Lafferty (One Tree Hill, Oculus), finally finds work waiting tables at a chicken & waffles chain, where the hectic pace and general mayhem become both comedic and endearing. Under the tutelage of master grill man Edward (Danny Glover in a stunningly earnest performance), Jimmy learns some hard lessons about life, finance and making grits. But the foremost thing he discovers is carpe diem, as he begins to enjoy the pleasures of the moment and realize that the measure of a man is far more than luxury homes and expensive cars. Fundamentally, Waffle Street is an authentic account of what it means to rediscover yourself.

The story is amazing. If they film is only half as good as the book, it will be as good a night at the movies as you are likely to have. For myself, I can see there is sense in a carpe diem approach to life, but I have to say that having watched this grow from book to movie one step at a time, it’s not the kind of thing that ever gets something like this done.

Waffle Street the movie is coming

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Waffle Street the book is a true life adventure in which the author learns about the meaning of Say’s Law by going from an investment house to working the night shift at a Waffle House. Waffle Street the movie is now about to be released which, as it says, is based on a true story along the lines, no doubt, of what is found in the book. I have been following both book and movie from the start, and while I cannot take even an ounce of credit for any of it, I have to admit there is a very great pleasure in being able to tell you that my Say’s Law and the Keynesian Revolution is sitting on Jimmy’s desk in the final scene, right beneath a copy of Jean-Baptiste Say’s Treatise on Political Economy. To understand why you will probably have to read the book, which along with a great story will explain to you the meaning and significance of Say’s Law. But for a movie in the true Hollywood style, you should see the film as well when it comes out. How extraordinary it must also be for Jimmy Adams to find that being fired from his job in finance led to his ending up writing a book that was turned into a movie with Jimmy himself played by James Lafferty!

UPDATE: I’ve just had a look at the interview with Jimmy linked at the start. A good question from the interviewer, which led to this reply drenched in the logic of Say’s Law:

Too often, white-collar financial service workers forget that any given good or service can only be obtained by 1) producing it yourself or 2) by creating something of value which can be exchanged for it. Instead, we’re prone to think the major impediments to our individual and collective prosperity can be readily removed by tweaking interest rates, the tax code, or deficit spending.

My restaurant co-workers, in contrast, were under no such delusions. With the exception of the manager, I was the only person working third shift who hadn’t spent considerable time in a state or federal correctional facility. Most of them were extremely grateful for the opportunity to perform honest work at a market wage, and took a very proactive, customer-service-oriented approach to their financial lives after parole. Generally speaking, they were great examples to me. In the book, I use a number of my interactions with them as commonsense illustrations of economic principles. I really intended the narrative to be wholly humorous self-deprecation, but I had so many financial epiphanies on the job that I couldn’t help but share them with my readers.

A Say’s Law moment

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There are three events coming to a head at the moment that relate to my work on Say’s Law.

There is, firstly, the publication of the 2nd ed. of Free Market Economics which will be co-published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. On my involvement with the IEA in the publication of this book, I have written:

Let me also add how delighted I am that this second edition is being published in association with the Institute of Economic Affairs. There has been no organisation more influential on my way of thinking about economic issues than the IEA which almost alone stood up for free markets and free enterprise in those dark days of the 1970s and early 1980s. It was the IEA which brought to wider public attention authors such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and James Buchanan. The points they made have to be continually re-iterated as ideas with a less impressive academic provenance, not to mention frequently disastrous economic results, continually take hold in public policy debates

Then, second, if it can be arranged, I will be off to the First Congress on Jean-Baptiste Say and the Entrepreneur in Auchy on the north coast of France. This is the letter of invitation I received last night.

Dear Colleague,

I am honored to invite you to participate in the 1st International Congress Jean-Baptiste Say- RNI Summer School 2014, organized by the Research Network on Innovation and the International Society Jean-Baptiste Say (SAYS) from the 27th to 30th August 2014 at Universite du Littoral Cote d’Opale, Boulogne-sur-Mer and at Auchy-les-Hesdin (Nord-Pas­ de-Calais, France):

The conference is composed of various conferences, workshops and cultural activities (Cf. the program of the conference http://says.univ-littoral.fr/?page id= 102). Your contribution to the academic debates and your participation in different activities during will be highly appreciated.

I am looking forward to meeting you this summer.

I wish I were ten years younger. I didn’t think it would come to this, but travel has a lot of wear and tear. But for this one I am definitely ready to make the effort. Say is returning, and even though they focus on his work on the entrepreneur, they only leave out Say’s Law because it is too contentious.

And last but definitely not least, there is the movie being made that has, at its very centre, a series of principles of economic management based on Say’s Law. If you would like to read the book from which the movie is being made from, it’s called Waffle Street. It is premised on an understanding of Say’s Law so you’d hardly think it’s movie material but the world is stranger than you can sometimes believe. But if you get the book, you will see nine principles at the end, the first one being, “production is the source of all consumption”, that is, demand is constituted by supply. I am told there is a cameo of my Say’s Law and the Keynesian Revolution that has been filmed. But whether or not it makes it past the cutting room floor, this is strangely the first movie ever made based on an economic principle. It also has an incredible story line that has the potential to make it the movie of the year. If you don’t believe me, read the book, and if you do, make sure you get to the list of nine “Articles of Economic Faith” at the end.

Waffle Street on IMDb

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It really is going to be a movie and how I know is because it is now up on the IMDb website. The movie is, of course, Waffle Street and this is the plot line as described:

Waffle Street’s riches-to-rags tale is an adaptation of James Adams’ 2010 memoir of the same name (published by Sourced Media Books), which chronicles the financier’s foray into the food industry. After being laid off at the hedge fund where he worked, and further jaded by his culpability in the crisis, Adams chose to work at a popular 24-hour diner where he claims “most of his financial knowledge has been gleaned.” Offering a fresh take on the fallout of corporate greed, Adams’ is a tale of the redemption and unlikely friendship found under the tutelage of Glover’s character Edward, the best short-order cook in town.

My own way of thinking about it, however, is how a bond trader at the top of the income tree is felled by the GFC and finds himself a few weeks later as the night manager of a Waffle House. He therefore enters a world that until then had only been seen at a distance but is now his daily presence. Part of what he learns is the up-close reality behind the kinds of things that are taught in economics and finance courses – things such as Say’s Law – discovering their deeper meaning by seeing them as an inseparable part of the way in which the world works. But the most astonishing lesson is embodied in the person of Edward Collins, an ex-convict who has found his own productive meaning in life by becoming not just a Waffle House cook but a moral philosopher. It is Jean Valjean again except rather than Collins being a character from a novel, he is someone from real life.

The story is exceptional, but a movie is not a book. They have the makings for the film of the year but we shall see. Release date is 2015 so it’s not long to go. I’ll let you know how well it’s been done right after the premier.