American film-maker Morgan Spurlock, best known for ‘Super Size Me’ didn’t want to be remembered as just the guy who ate burgers for a month. He had other plans, as Keith Lyons discovered…
It was almost 20 years ago I first met the film-maker Morgan Spurlock. As part of a global tour promoting his newly released participatory documentary Super Size Me he was in New Zealand’s capital Wellington. While he told me about how he hatched the ‘really great, bad idea’ of the movie, I too came up with the crazy plan to get him into a nearby McDonald’s for a suitable photo for the magazine I was writing for.
Morgan’s film idea came after a Thanksgiving dinner at his parent’s place. While lying on a couch having eaten his fill, he was watching TV when there was a story about two people who had sued McDonald’s, claiming that the fast-food chain had misled them about the nutritional value of its burgers, fries and sodas, causing them health problems as well as a to gain significant weight. As part of the story, a spokesman for McDonald’s came on, saying there was no link between their obesity and the food at McDonald’s which was healthy and nutritious. Morgan figured that if he ate McDonald’s every day, there shouldn’t be a problem.
For 30 days, he ate nothing but McDonald’s food and drink, trying everything on the menu at least once, and accepting any super-size portions when offered. He gained weight and got sick. At the end of the month, he appeared puffy faced. His liver function was impaired, and he was depressed. The doctors monitoring his state advised him not to continue damaging his health (later, he confided to me that it took him more than a year to get back to his original weight — with help from his girlfriend Alexandra Jamison — also known as Healthy Chef Alex).
The film about the promotion of fast foods and American eating habits went on to win the best directing prize at Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar. It capitulated the docu-prankster into being a household name.
A few years after the movie came out, he had married Alexandra (his second of three marriages which ended in divorce), who came up with the book, The Great American Detox Diet. Morgan told me about his other projects he’d been working on. After Super Size Me, he developed an unscripted documentary-style series. His 30 Days was based on putting a person in a different environment from their upbringing, beliefs, religion or profession for a month to see how exposure to opposite worldviews altered prejudice. “Yeah, I spent 25 days in a jail in Virginia,” he once emailed me casually, when he had become the person embedded in a community very different from his own. “Just so I could experience life as an inmate.” He wanted the reality TV series to explore how people might challenge their now stereotypes, so had a devout Christian living with a Muslim family, and a homophobe staying with a homosexual.
Morgan, who had been likened to a budding Michael Moore ‘for a Jackass generation’[1], went on to direct and produce more movies, including about terrorism and the fight against it in Where in the World is Osama bin Laden (2008), What Would Jesus Buy (2007), and even One Direction: This is Us (2013), and The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice! His interests were eclectic, making a documentary about comic book convention fans as well as one on men’s grooming, and another on product placement. His long-awaited Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!, where he looked at how the fast food industry had changed, came out in 2019, but by then his career had waned, following an admission of sexual misconduct which included being unfaithful to every wife and girlfriend he ever had, and also a long term problem with alcohol.
I lost contact with Morgan a few years ago, but still have memories of the time we walked up the stairs into McDonald’s in central Wellington. No security guards came to stop us from taking photos. No manager yelled at us. He stood smiling with that broad goofy smile of his and his trademark handlebar moustache as I snapped away taking pictures of him with the backdrop of the McDonald’s counter and menu board. He had been worried that we wouldn’t be allowed inside McDonald’s, or to take any photos. In the US, he told me, security alerts meant he couldn’t step into any Golden Arches without being challenged.
I was saddened to hear that Morgan recently died, of complications from cancer, aged 53. Many newspapers headline the news: ‘Documentarian who ate McDonald’s for 30 days and changed fast food industry’. His brother Craig said Morgan “gave so much through his art, ideas and generosity. The world has lost a true creative and a special man”.
In the late-2000s, after the success of Super Size Me, Morgan told me of his ambitions, and reminded me that he didn’t want to be typecast for just Super Size Me. “I hope I am remembered for more than just as the guy who ate hamburgers for a month.”
[1] Gen X from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackass_Forever
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Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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