Morgan Spurlock started his career as a writer before co-founding his own studio in 2004 named Warrior Poets. One of his first major projects was for MTV, where he created a web show called “I Bet You Will,” which is exactly what it sounds like: How much does it cost to get people to do extraordinary things? A web show in 2002 was undeniably ahead of the curve, a precursor to the millions of similar videos two decades later that often center on extreme challenges.
The breakthrough came two years later when Spurlock reportedly saw a news story about two girls who were suing McDonald’s for their obesity. As nutrition became a larger focus in American culture, Spurlock noticed that McDonald’s was still asking consumers to eat more and more through their super sizing promotion—encouraging more calories for a small cost. He would eat nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days and would have to take the super-sized option whenever offered. To add to the experiment, Spurlock attempted to mimic the lackadaisical American exercise routine. Over the 30 days, Spurlock gained 25 pounds, and, perhaps most disturbingly, his liver started to show signs of disease.
A film that was always shrouded with charges of questionable journalistic practices—Spurlock notoriously refused to release a log of exactly what he ate over those 30 days—grew even more controversial in 2017 when Spurlock’s statement regarding his awful behavior included the phrase that he hadn’t been “sober for more than a week” in decades, leading some to question if the signs of decay in his liver might be attributable to that instead of Big Macs.
Say what you will about the experiment in “Super Size Me,” there are still insights in this film that I think about regularly, particularly the ones about indoctrination of children in small communities where the most exciting play place happens to be at a fast-food restaurant. The stats about the number of people who eat at McDonald’s on a weekly and even daily basis are also startling. The truth is that “Super Size Me” has more interesting ingredients around the dietary experiment than in its notorious gimmick.
Before his reputation fell apart, Spurlock used the fame from “Super Size Me,” which included an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary, to create some other notable projects. Spurlock spun off the concept of the 30-day experiment of “Super Size Me” to create his most interesting project, the FX show “30 Days.” Each episode featured a different month-long experiment, often centered on lifestyle clashes like a Christian living with a Muslim family. It was a truly interesting show that ran for 18 episodes over three seasons, the best project of his career because episodic television worked better for the Spurlock approach than feature-length documentaries.