Starring: Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel

Introduced by Payton McCarty-Simas, author of the new book One Step Short of Crazy: National Treasure and the Landscape of American Conspiracy Culture

To clear his family name, Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) is on a lifelong quest to find the fabled Templar Treasure, which his family claims was hidden by the Freemason Founding Fathers. Armed only with his encyclopedic knowledge of American history, Gates, his conspiracy theorist/hacker sidekick, Riley (Justin Bartha), must solve riddles and find clues with the FBI hot on their trail. They quickly realize that the only way to find the treasure… is to steal the Declaration of Independence.

One Step Short of Crazy will be available for purchase at the screening.
In this book, film critic Payton McCarty-Simas explores the surprisingly tangled relationship between the thriving ecosystem of American conspiracy theory and the National Treasure franchise. Beginning with a critical analysis of the films’ own dense narrative relationships to several famous conspiracy theories, the author then turns to the way the films have themselves become a part of the framework for a range of conspiracies online, on the History channel, and in our culture more broadly.