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'Super Size Me' Filmmaker Still Weighing In On Fast Food Issues

DVD Drops As Spurlock Brings Message To High Schools, Colleges

Posted: 4:58 pm EDT September 28, 2004

The documentary filmmaker who ate and drank all things McDonald's for 30 straight days is super sizing his movie experience for the masses to digest.

Tim Lammers
Morgan Spurlock -- the filmmaker who directed, produced and made himself a human experiment in the critically-acclaimed documentary "Super Size Me" -- is now in the midst of touring high schools and colleges across the country to share his experiences of making the film and to impart his brutally honest observations about the fast-food industry and how it relates to the escalating problem of obesity in the United States.

"Anytime you make a movie or do anything to get people thinking or instigate change, you do have an obligation to see it through," Spurlock told me in an @ The Movies interview Tuesday. "For me, that's why it's so important to take the film out to high schools and colleges because the film has had a profound impact on a lot of people.

Image: Hart Sharp Video

Morgan Spurlock

"There are parents who stop me and say, 'Ever since I saw your movie I've started cooking more at home,' 'I'm trying to be a better role model for my kids' and 'I've went down to my kid's school on Monday morning to see what they were feeding them and I was appalled, so now me and other parents have gotten together to change that,'" he continued. So to hear things like that, I think to myself, 'There's a lot more that this movie can accomplish.'"

The film, which made more than $11.5 million at the North American box office (an impressive amount for a documentary, especially for one made for less than $75,000), debuts on DVD Tuesday (Hart Sharp Video).

At the heart of it is Spurlock's month-long journey through his McDonald's-only diet, which was monitored by doctors, a nutritionist and his vegan girlfriend. It resulted in, among other things, a weight gain of nearly 25 pounds, a 65-point rise in cholesterol, a spiraling libido, headaches, depression and most serious of all, a fattened liver in danger of toxic shock.

The film also follows Spurlock on a 20-city, 25,000-mile odyssey to examine the legal, financial and physical costs of issues relating to America's appetite for fast food, and includes interviews with everyone from doctors, lawmakers and surgeon generals, to educators, kids and cooks.

Spurlock believes that part of the reason "Super Size Me" hit a nerve with people during its theatrical run and has been resonating on college campuses and high schools, is because it isn't preachy.

Video

"Whenever we show the film to kids and talk to kids, it goes very well," said Spurlock, who won Best Director honors for the film at this year's Sundance Film Festival. "The movie strikes a chord with them because it's entertaining and fun -- and I'm not telling you what to do. At the end of the day, it's your choice -- it's your decision as to what you're going to eat -- and what I'm trying to do is make you think about it a little bit more, because that is what has to happen."

With a title that references McDonald's extra-large portions of food (the program was actually done away with by the company before the film's release), it would be easy to assume that Spurlock's documentary is squarely an indictment of the fast-food giant. But Spurlock can't stress enough that "Super Size Me" also calls other fast-food chains on the carpet -- and much more.

"I picked McDonald's for the sole reason that they are the company that I believe has had the most influence on this industry," Spurlock said. "In that token, they're also the one company that can easily influence the fast-food industry to change completely. It goes beyond McDonald's, it's about this all-American way of eating and living that has infiltrated schools."

And he has the footage to prove it: Among the places Spurlock visits in "Super Size Me" are school lunchrooms.

"You see kids from a young age who are being fed burgers, French fries, candy, soda and chips for lunch every day," he said. "From a young age, we are teaching our kids to be unhealthy and be obese. There are companies who help push that junk food into schools. I find that to be completely insidious."

Spurlock's said he's still waiting to see what area of the dietary world he'll examine next: But one thing he does know for certain is that the possibilities are endless.

"Low carb, Atkins, they're all terrible," Spurlock said, laughing. "All these crazes are cyclical. There's low carb and before that there was no sugar, the sugar-busters and it will be fat again at some point."

Specifically addressing the low carb-Atkins craze, Spurlock said the whole idea "is absolutely mind-boggling" to him.

"Everybody wants the quick fix and everybody wants this simple solution, yet none of us want to work for it," Spurlock observed. "People say, 'I want to look good now, I want to feel good now, I want to be pretty now. What can I do to wake up tomorrow and be 100 pounds lighter?'"

More Info: Official 'Super Size Me' Web site

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