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Big Mac Attack
Morgan Spurlock shows us how to change the world through eating.
BY DYLAN BEHAN.
With media coverage to rival the Golden Arches, Morgan Spurlock has been all over the Aussie press and TV the past week triumphing his anti-fast food film Supersize Me. If you haven't heard of him, then it's time to get out from behind your Big Mac and watch more TV. Denton, Rove, Channel V, the daily papers, even community radio has been, ahem, saturated, with clips from his gonzo doco in which he eats nothing but McDonalds for thirty days straight. And like Maccas, people can't seem to get enough. It's made major dinner party and pub conversation - with everyone from businessmen to parents to activist vegetarians fascinated by this masochistic human guinea pig and his penchant for endless happy meals.
It's been even more disturbing to McDonalds. With no preview tapes given to media, this $65,000 doco has Ronald on the run. Newly made press releases, TV spots and newspaper ads champion their 'healthy choices' and shoot down Spurlock as an extremist attention seeker.
"It's a PR war that I think we're winning" admits Spurlock, a non-descript 32 year old New Yorker, originally from West Virginia. "Everything bad they say about it just makes more people want to see the film, which is a good thing... If anyone has any issues with the film, I say go see it. It stands up for itself."
Even though Spurlock once hosted an MTV show called I Bet You Will in which he dared passers by to eat unbelievable concoctions of chillies and mustard for large sums of money, this movie is far from a being a Jackass-style stunt. Inspiried by a pair of obese teenage girls who tried to sue McDonalds for serving them fattening food, Supersize Me is an examination of America's obsession with convenience, also attacking the evil marketeers who lure in kids for 'brand imprinting' and the sharemarket economy which makes serving consumers a litre of coke and a quarter kilo of fries with their burgers seem economically justifiable.
"My target in the film wasn't McDonalds," Spurlock repeated in our interview, en route to Melbourne to give more interviews. "I chose McDonalds because it's an icon. McDonalds is iconic of the problem, McDonalds is iconic of the lifestyle. Also it's the leader."Aside from setting market trends like playgrounds, kids meals and supersizing, McDonalds is also the biggest purveyor of fast food in America, making up 43% of all fast food purchases.
Like Bowling For Columbine, Spurlock criss-crossed America talking to as many people involved in the issue as possible. He goes to school cafeterias to discover why kids are eating fried chips for lunch everyday while physical education classes are non-existent. He meets America's biggest Big Mac fan, an obsessive compulsive southerner who proposed to his wife in a Maccas carpark. He talks to the head of the GMA (the Grocery Manufacturers of America), a highly powerful Washington lobby group representing hundreds of food brands on capital hill. He meets a diabetic man getting a gastric bypass operation to quench his soft drink addiction. Like a Quarter Pounder, it's easily digestible, using comedy to get serious points across while being full of animations, moving graphs, and some surreal post modern paintings by anti-corporate artist Ron English.
Unlike Bowling For Columbine though, it's largely non-confrontational. There is no 'Charlton Heston' moment. Although recently hiring a new face for nutrition and launching an anti-Spurlock campaign, McDonalds refused to be interviewed on camera for the film. So why didn't Morgan reach for the jugular? Why didn't he also attack their employment and environmental record? Why didn't he jump to Moore-ish conclusions, make accusations and turn up at their headquarters with a diabetic kid?
"Because then it wouldn't be my film,"he says. "It's not my style. I'm out to examine the issues and let people make up their own mind."
On that note, I offer an idea. To get more kids to see the film, he, like Maccas, should include a free toy with the DVD release. "You know what, that's a great idea. I'll have to credit you with that one."
With that, Spurlock disappears into the night, continuing to try save the world's waistlines - one interview at a time.
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Directors David Cronenberg Miranda July Walter Salles Guillermo Del Toro American Splendor Morgan Spurlock Tarnation's Jonathon Caouette What The Bleep...
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When I ask if he hopes the film will change the world, he laughs. "Wouldn't that be great."With the Supersize option being cut out six weeks after the film's Sundance Premier (in which Spurlock won the best directing award), from here his main hope is for better nutritional information becoming available (it's not on burger wrappers stateside). "Ideally people who see the film will start making better decisions regarding what they eat and start taking more responsibility for their diet and the amount of exercise they get. Hopefully parents will start playing more of a part in what their kids eat."