"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
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AN INTERVIEW WITH:
Morgan Spurlock
by Peter Sobczynski

May 12, 2004

By now, everyone has heard of Morgan Spurlock, the guy who decided to demonstrate the unhealthiness of fast food by spending an entire month eating every single meal at McDonald’s and chronicling the results on film. When the resulting film, "Super Size Me", premiered last winter at the Sundance Film Festival, audiences were both shocked and amused by the ordeal that his body underwent (25 extra pounds, a skyrocketing cholesterol rate and the onset of serious liver disease) and it became one of the most talked-about pictures at the festival. In the subsequent months leading up to its release, "Super Size Me" has remained in the news thanks to the perhaps coincidental announcement that McDonald’s would be phasing out the very super-size portions that Spurlock takes to task throughout. As a result, the film has an advance public awareness unheard of for a documentary; when the kitchen staff at Chicago’s Four Seasons hotel learned he would be doing promotional interviews there, they whipped up a special box of "French fries" made entirely out of marzipan as a welcome treat.

After cracking out the fries, Spurlock, less than a week before the release of his film, sat down to discuss his "diet" and the reaction from McDonald’s, the war between personal and corporate responsibility and the backlash that his project has already begun to inspire from others
.

In "Super Size Me", you not only criticize McDonald’s for the unhealthiness of their food but you film in their restaurants and use footage of such copyrighted materials as logos and advertisements. Assuming that McDonald’s wasn’t exactly eager for this film to be seen, how were you able to include such elements without incurring a lawsuit? Does the stuff that you use fall under the "fair use" legal heading or is there still a danger of legal action?

We show other places-we just don’t show me eating at other places. >From their standpoint, they would rather let their actions speak for them. Since the movie premiered at Sundance, what has happened? There is no more super-sizing-by the end of this year, supersizing is being eliminated. They are rolling out healthier menu options-

Their C.E.O. died of a heart attack...

That was a terrible, terrible thing. I think the film is having a positive impact-it is starting a dialogue and starting a chain reaction much quicker. Were they already thinking about these things? Yes, they are a huge corporation and they probably were. They had already launched the Premium Salads by the time we were finishing the film as well as the fruit and yogurt parfaits. Were they wanting to make steps with these things? I’m sure they were. Did the film help a little? You gotta think about it?

It’s a slippery slope we are on right now. For a company like McDonald’s, the money is not in the salads. I don’t go to a burger joint for a salad-I go there for a Big Mac and fries and a Coke and all these things that we love because they taste good and make us feel good. The key will be to see how they market these things. As we say in the movie, the most heavily advertised foods are the ones we eat the most. Are they going to roll out a massive advertising campaign that will totally get behind this? At the same point, they don’t want to negate the bread-and-butter of their business, which are these other things that have put them on the map. In my opinion, this is the balancing act that they are trying to figure out; how do they not turn away the poor customer who is there for these things while trying to turn people on to healthier menu options? That I don’t know.

The movie is about two things-personal responsibility and corporate responsibility and where you draw that line. People do have a responsibility for what they eat and what choices they make. At the same point, a company that feeds 46 million people every day themselves have an obligation to educate their consumers and advise them on how to eat. Now that we have no health education in schools and we can’t rely solely on parents to instill this, we can’t just keep pointing fingers because we are living in a world where one in three kids will develop diabetes because of something we can stop. We have to turn this around.

How far along were you into the film when McDonald’s first became aware of it?

We contacted them about midway through the diet and asked for an interview. We said that we were working on a film about fast food and obesity in American and we wanted an interview. I’m sure that the moment they heard the words "fast food" and "obesity", they moved my name over to the "Never Talk to This Guy!" pile. As far as shooting in the restaurants, we just walked right in We didn’t ask for permission because we knew we would never get it and it was something very necessary for us to have-to show the food and the people that were there. In New York, it was by far the worst for shooting because New York is a very media-savvy city-more so than the rest of America. Once we left New York, people just didn’t care. We’d walk in and if they asked, we’d say we were making a film about eating at McDonald’s and they’d say "Oh, that’s cool." Put yourself in their shoes. You’re 17 and making $5.25 an hour-what do they care? Most places, the people were really nice

I love that Lisa Howard {the McDonald’s P.R. woman whom Spurlock plays a one-sided game of phone tag with during the film) has gone out and told reporters, "I talked to him!" To be fair to her, she said exactly what you see in the film. What you see in the film is exactly the same bullshit that I was fed the whole time. They made a decision early on not to talk to me about the film. I sent them an e-mail that I would like to talk to them about what was going on now with the changes to the menu and their commitment to making healthier options available. Why would they not want to talk about that? I think that from their standpoint, they felt that they were above this. They were thinking "We are McDonald’s-who is this guy?" I’m just some guy who worked for MTV and did music videos and that I wasn’t worth taking seriously. They had their moment.

Now they are coming out and saying that the film is unrealistic and a complete fabrication. My favorite is this brand-new international nutritionist spokeswoman who just said, and I paraphrase, "This could have been such a great forum to being a dialogue for change and it has been completely wasted." There is no better dialogue happening about this whole thing than right now. This has never been more in the forefront of the media and on the tips of peoples tongues and it has been like this since Sundance in January. The awareness of this film has ignited so much and I completely disagree with her because this is the best dialogue that could have emerged. Right now, this is the first time where the doors are swinging wide enough for genuine change to actually happen.

What about the whole low-carb frenzy that is sweeping the nation?

I think low-carb is a joke. The whole thing is that we all just need to make smart choices. The thing with America is that we overeat, under-exercise and we all want the magic bullet-the pill that takes care of everything. We want to go to bed ugly and wake up beautiful. We all want instant gratification in the way we eat and the way we live. Low-carb is just another fad diet and it will disappear. A year from now, fat will be the bad thing and no one will eat that until people realize that they need to reevaluate lifestyles and make healthier choices.

When you were undergoing your all-McDonald’s diet, was there ever a point where you began feeling as though you were losing control of yourself?

I felt like I was getting dumber through the course of this-I would forget things over the course of eating this food. I am so upset that I didn’t take a cognitive test at the beginning of the film and then do it again at the middle and at the end because I felt like I couldn’t focus and couldn’t put things together. The thing that is so revolting to me in the film is the stuff about the school-lunch programs. They are terrible and these are things that we do have control over in regards to fixing. Kids are going in and eating this food and we are saying that it is okay to live your life like this. You can’t preach personal responsibility and then show kids from kindergarten through high school that this is an okay way to eat and live while cutting out physical education. If we are going to be educating kids in the classroom, we have to also educate them in the cafeteria. If we give them a foundation for their minds, we need to give them one for their bodies and that is what isn’t happening.

Regarding the side issues of the film-such as the school-lunch discussions and the interviews with people such as the Subway Diet guy and the Baskin-Robbins heir who has become a health-food advocate, how many of those elements were planned in advance and how many emerged as filming went on?

Most of the things occurred organically as we went along. Scheduling certain things, like the Surgeon General, and nailing down people for interviews was next to impossible. That was a hard thing but a lot of it, the stuff involving what was happening with me, was all happening in real time. I wanted the honesty of what was happening to me to feel just as honest for you.

With all the publicity that your film has attracted since premiering at Sundance, have you begun to receive any backlash?

Well, we’ve already begun to get attacked by food-lobby groups and there are no less than three or four people who are trying to disprove the movie by doing their McDonald’s diets to show that they can lose weight. That is just laughable because they are doing the two things that no American does-they are eating less and exercising more. So they are losing weight-big surprise! In a perfect world, that would be great if everybody did that but that’s not how we live our lives. We live in a state of constant consumption and perpetual snacking and the thought of what becomes of what we are eating now doesn’t exist. We are so in the moment that we never think of the repercussions, and that is what has to change.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
All rights reserved.
Used with permission
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