It’s April 19 and it’s my birthday. It’s a day of many historical battles, the anniversary of Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the eve of the Columbine massacre. As I woke up that morning, I learned that McDonalds’ CEO Jim Cantalupo had just died of a heart attack at age 60. Ironically, this would be the very same day I was to interview director Morgan Spurlock of “Super Size Me” fame. Those unfamiliar with Spurlock should know he’s the brilliant maniac who nearly killed himself by entirely ingesting an all-McDonalds diet for a month, and spryly documenting it on film. The doctors, who only thought he would gain some weight and see his cholesterol levels go up, were shocked to find that only three weeks into the diet, Spurlock’s liver was about to go into failure.
As I sauntered into the interview, which was being held in the swanky lounge at the W Hotel in Seattle, I made sure I held tightly to the McDonalds bag I had recently and deceitfully acquired. This held my tape recorder, camera and notepad. My colleague, Gillian Gaar, who joined me for the interview, giggled at my prank, predicting this wasn’t the first time some smart-ass journalist had pulled this stunt on him. As we all snuggled into the booth, we realized this would be Morgan’s last interview of the day, so what better way to celebrate than to have a glass of wine. A few sips later, and just minutes into our conversation, I was instantly smitten by his wiry energy, sharp wit, mind-blowing charisma and devoted intelligence.
We got the first and most obvious question out of the way, as probably every journalist thus far had asked the same about the passing of the McDonalds CEO. “It’s sad, right? It’s really sad,” Spurlock somberly explains. “It will be very interesting to see what happens next because he was really the vision of what was happening with the company.” He tells us that it was indeed Cantalupo who was trying to create a healthier menu items. “Like the McGriddle,” Spurlock can’t help but joke.
It was also only six weeks after “Super Size Me” played at Sundance, when the McDonalds Corporation made the decision to completely phase out the super-sizing phenomenon. “They said it had nothing to do with the film at all,” Spurlock says skeptically. I suggest they were probably losing too much money by giving away a half-pound of fries a pop. “That’s exactly it,” he exclaims. “They said it wasn’t cost effective. And I say cost effective to whom? They said they were wasting all that food. They weren’t wasting anything. The people were throwing it away but they were still getting paid.”
Spurlock admits prior to making the film he usually consumed fast food once a month. This was probably one of the hardest lessons to learn and now says if he’s going to have a burger, it’s going to be a real one. But the consequences of his little experiment continue to haunt him. “If I smell a Big Mac my mouth will water immediately. I’m like Pavlov’s dog. I will want it but I can’t eat it because the minute I eat it, it tastes like non-food. The french fries taste like smoked plastic. If I drink a fountain soda then in the back of my throat and nostrils, I will breathe in and out chemicals for the next few hours. If I take a bite of a burger—you know that nice ‘McFilm’ you get in your mouth? Well, I can’t eat it. I get disgusted by it.” Spurlock’s girlfriend, a vegan chef who also appears in the film, is probably pleased by this extreme reprogramming, though she was obviously horrified by the process. She also created a very specific “detox” diet for him, but Spurlock reports having a fast food hangover that lasted for three days after he quit. “I had the worst headache that lasted for 24 hours and I’ve never felt so depressed,” he admits. It should be noted that it took him fourteen months to lose the 24 pounds he gained during the film (five months for the first twenty and nine for the last four).
One of the more powerful sequences in the film is when Morgan holds up famous pictures of historical and contemporary people to a group of kids. They couldn’t identify people like George W. Bush, but were instantly able to identify Ronald McDonald. The scary part is it’s a type of media imprinting that the McDonald’s corporation has mastered over the years. “The brilliance of their marketing is that it conditions kids from such an early age with the toys, the playground and the clowns, which then installs happy feelings and happy thoughts,” Spurlock points out. “One thing you also have to realize is that if you watch the commercials, the clown never eats the food. Why is that? He leads you in, but he won’t eat the food.” Spurlock believes that the only way to stop the madness is to put a ban on marketing to kids, just as many places in the Netherlands have done.
But perhaps the scariest part of the film is when he delves into the public school lunch program. “That is by far the most disturbing thing out of everything we shot, everything that happened, or anything that even happened to me,” he confides. “ I find the school lunch program appalling. Parents don’t know and that is frightening. They give their kids three dollars and think they are being taken care of there. And it’s like they have the keys to the 7-11 store. They have the ice-cream, pizza, burgers, candy bars and sweetened drinks.” Spurlock continues to shock us by disclosing that one of the schools in Illinois actually has an ICEE machine in their lunchroom.
He also reminds us the federal lunch program isn’t much better, with their processed food and where absolutely no actual cooking goes on at all. He firmly believes we as a country have to get our priorities straight. “We have to realize that the schools have our kids from the time they are 5-18—a third of their lives. For some kids this is the only warm meal they will get in a day. Why not make it good? Why not make it healthy?” Spurlock questions. “Instead we are pumping kids full of chemicals and sugar, and then they wonder why little Johnny has ADD. And then they think they should put him on Ritalin. We are hopping our kids up on all this garbage and then we are feeding them full of drugs. It’s a vicious cycle.”
With that, the publicist announces that our half-hour is up. But we are having way too much fun and we want to keep talking. “He likes us,” Gillian says with glee. I smile at everyone and say, “We like him too.” So we continue our heated discussion along with another glass of wine. It turns out this birthday wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, it will be one that will stay lodged in my memory, just like the toxic experience of McDonalds’ non-food will consume Spurlock’s psyche for the rest of his life. |
