“We’re at an amazing moment in history from a consumer standpoint where consumers are starting to have more and more power,” he told The Associated Press in 2019. “It’s not about return for the shareholders. It’s about return for the consumers.”
Spurlock was a gonzo-like filmmaker who leaned into the bizarre and ridiculous. His stylistic touches included zippy graphics and amusing music, blending a Michael Moore-ish camera-in-your-face style with his own sense of humour and pathos.
“I wanted to be able to lean into the serious moments. I wanted to be able to breathe in the moments of levity. We want to give you permission to laugh in the places where it’s really hard to laugh,” he told AP.
After he exposed the fast-food and chicken industries, there was an explosion in restaurants stressing freshness, artisanal methods, farm-to-table goodness and ethically sourced ingredients. But nutritionally, not much had changed.
“There has been this massive shift and people say to me, ‘So has the food gotten healthier?’ And I say, ‘Well, the marketing sure has,’” he said.
Morgan Spurlock gained 11 kilograms making Super Size Me, a documentary about eating only McDonald’s food for a month.Credit: Andrew De La Rue
Not all his work dealt with food. Spurlock made documentaries about the boy band, One Direction, and the geeks and fanboys at Comic-Con. One of his films looked at life behind bars at the Henrico County Jail in Virginia.
With the 2008 production, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, Spurlock went on a global search to find the al-Qaeda leader, who was killed in 2011. In POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Spurlock tackled questions of product placement, marketing and advertising.
“Being aware is half the battle, I think. Literally knowing all the time when you’re being marketed to is a great thing,” Spurlock told AP at the time. “A lot of people don’t realise it. They can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! was to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, but it was shelved at the height of the #MeToo movement when Spurlock came forward to detail his own history of sexual misconduct.
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He confessed that he had been accused of rape while in college and had settled a sexual harassment case with a female assistant. He also admitted to cheating on numerous partners. “I am part of the problem,” he wrote.
“For me, there was a moment of kind of realisation – as somebody who is a truth-teller and somebody who has made it a point of trying to do what’s right – of recognising that I could do better in my own life. We should be able to admit we were wrong,” he told AP.
Spurlock grew up in Beckley, West Virginia. His mother was an English teacher who he remembered would correct his work with a red pen. He graduated with a BFA in film from New York University in 1993.
He is survived by two sons, Laken and Kallen, his mother, Phyllis Spurlock, father Ben, brothers Craig and Barry, and former spouses Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein, the mothers of his children.
AP
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