Vassar gets supersized: Vassar Greens and Dems welcome Morgan Spurlock

Fabian Arzuaga Staff Writer

Award-winning writer and director of Super Size Me Morgan Spurlock will be speaking at the Vassar Chapel Saturday April 9. He will be giving the Keynote Address at 1:30 p.m. for the Vassar Greens’ annual Earth Week that runs from Saturday April 9 to Saturday April 16. Tickets will be available at the InfoDesk on Friday, April 8. His talk is co-sponsored by the Vassar Democrats.

Most famous for his debut as director, producer and star in Super Size Me, Spurlock has, since the film’s premiere in January 2004, concerned himself with the films ultimate goal—the current “obesity epidemic,” especially among children in the United States. Taking on a large high school and college speaking tour, often visiting for little or no money, Spurlock has spread his message to students throughout the United States.

His film has grossed about $2.9 million in ticket sales and has won dozens of awards including Best Director at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. It was also nominated for “Best Documentary” at the 77th annual Academy Awards in February 2005.

Spurlock has already succeded at changing the face of fast-food in America. In March 2004, the McDonald’s Corporation announced it would start phasing out the “Super Size” option because they were aiming to simplify their menu and offer customers choices that would support a healthy lifestyle. McDonald’s spokespeople claimed Spurlock’s film had nothing to do with the change, yet Super Size Me has at least helped change the way we look at fast food.

Spurlock is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and has been involved with over 60 projects in the last 12 years. including commercials, music videos, and television shows. He is also the founder of The Con, a New York based production company and more recently another company called Warrior Poets.

I was able to spend a few minutes interviewing Morgan Spurlock via telephone about his tour, movie, and work.

Fabian Arzuaga: I heard you were doing a speaking tour about your movie free of charge, because you are obviously so concerned with the health of today’s youth. How many colleges have you visited so far? Any high schools or elementary schools? And how do you think its going?

Morgan Spurlock: I think it’s important to get the message of the film out to teachers, to parents, to kids. What I’ve been doing is using a lot of the money that comes from the college tours to pay to go to high schools, to junior highs—to get the voice of the movie out to them. The key is to really let kids know that they have choices and that they not only have the power to make choices they have the power to make change. A lot of us live in this world and we really believe that we’re powerless; that we don’t have the ability to change the things around us. School lunch programs are one of the things they do have a voice in. It’s your money that funds the food program at Vassar. It’s the tax dollars from the community that put the school lunch into the public schools.

FA: From your website I read that you are sometimes protested by the Young Republicans. What do you think this tells you about American society?

MS: We’re a nation that’s very divided right now. There is a tremendous line drawn between Democrats and Republicans, people thinking that people are out to take freedoms away from them or their rights as Americans. I think freedom of speech is one of the greatest rights we have as Americans—the ability to go out and say what you believe is a positive thing, on both sides. To be able to go out and say my piece about what I think is wrong with corporate America and the way they’ve really hijacked the food system in schools is an important thing, and the ability for someone else to come out and say, “listen, I don’t agree with this guy.” This is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they put together the First Amendment. I think what’s happened right now is we really do live in a nation divided, and you can hope that over time that that changes.

FA: How many McDonald’s did you end up visiting on your cross-country filming tour? Did any stand out as especially dirty, clean, or irregular? Did you do anything else while working on this film?

MS: They’re all so identical. They all smell just as bad and the food is bad for you. We shot this movie in 15 different states all over the country so I couldn’t tell you exactly how many McDonalds that was. It was a lot.

FA: I am sure you heard about the Wendy’s patron who found a human finger in her chili. What kind of effect, if any, do you think this incident will have on the industry?

MS: I think it made people think twice about driving into Wendy’s. I saw a Vice President of Marketing on TV the next day talking about how much attention and care to detail Wendy’s pays when it comes to their food. So, they were worried; they were concerned.

FA: Aside from the human hair you found in your sundae/shake, did you see anything else that was disturbing in the McDonald’s you visited?

MS: I bit into a burger one time and there was something crunchy in there. Whether it was a piece of gristle or a piece of bone, I don’t know, but it was pretty repulsive.

FA: What was your detox diet like after the McDonald’s diet?

MS: Alix [my vegan girlfriend] put me on a very intensive diet, you know, where it took out all the fat, all the sugar, all the caffeine. Not unnatural fats—I was still eating fats that would be in peanuts or avocados, things like that, but no unhealthy fats. It was really really tough. When you go from a diet loaded with sugar, fat, and caffeine to one that isn’t, your body will definitely be affected. I went through massive withdrawal symptoms for about three days—my body was craving fat, sugar, and caffeine. It was really intense.

FA: Does Alix ever try to get you to convert?

MS: She and I eat dinner together. If I’m in New York and we’re home, we’ll eat dinner together every day and usually she cooks dinner. So, every night we’re having vegetarian or vegan dinner anyway, but its not like she has to force me to eat her food. She’s a great cook and I love what she cooks. So, I usually have one vegetarian meal a day with her.

FA: Will you ever touch fast food again?

MS: You know, I’ll never say never. We interviewed 100 nutritionists in the film who said that you should eat fast food about once a month if you’re going to eat any type of [fast] food. That’s not saying I’m going to eat McDonald’s once a month. I’m going to eat KFC once a month, I’m going to eat Taco Bell once a month, that’s all of it, once a month. So, based on their suggestions, I ate enough fast food while making this film to last eight years. Maybe in another eight years, I'll have a hankering for a Big Mac. I’m pretty good right now.

FA: Can you tell me about your production company, The Con? I have read your mission is to “level the field in the world of production.” What are your biggest qualms with the industry and how are you going about changing that?

MS: The Con came out at a time when Internet production was coming—we started out as an Internet production company. So the mission of The Con was to put music, film, and media projects online and then sell them off to film and television production companies. We believed, and I still believe, that you don’t need a lot of money to make a great TV show. All of the great ones start out with just a good idea. We live in a time when production expenses are becoming exorbitant, when people are putting out identical ideas time and time and time again. Our goal is to get out there and level the playing field to give people a chance who didn’t have the opportunity to go sit down with CBS or meet with Paramount Pictures or meet with Universal Films to come in and talk to us. I believe that everyone has at least one good idea. You know, anyone. Our goal is to help people who have good ideas and get their ideas made.

FA: What are your current projects?

MS: I’ve got a book that comes out next month called, Don’t Eat This Book. It picks up where the movie left off and expands on a lot of the things we talked about in the film—from government intervention, what our government should be doing, what schools should be doing…and one of the things I love is that it tells parents and teachers and educators what they can do to really change what’s happening in their communities. In June, I have a TV show coming out on FX called “30 Days,” where each week in this show we examine a different social issue in America.

FA: Are you setting your cameras on any other big American business?

MS: We’ll have to wait and see. I’ve got a laundry list that’s really long with different things in our country and the world.

FA: I heard you were rejected five times by the University of Southern California (USC) Film School. Do you have any advice for Vassar students interested in film?

MS: For me, I ended up graduating from the Tisch School of the Arts…in ’89-’91. When I was at USC [for broadcast journalism and applying for USC Film School], it was a time before video production got to what it is, this was before Final Cut Pro. Now the great thing about production in America and the world today, all you need is a camera, and a computer and a great idea, and then you can make a movie. So any film student, anyone who’s putting themselves in a bubble, who is locking themselves behind the wall that’s saying, “you can’t make a movie because of X, Y or Z,” no, you can make a movie, you can go out and do this. You just have to find the time and the sweat equity to invest in your project. It doesn’t take a lot of money or a lot of resources to make a film that’s seen around the world. Super Size Me we made for $65,000 and has gone on to be screened in over 70 countries around the world. The overall gross for the film was somewhere around $35 million. I mean, it’s crazy. It stems from a passion and it stems from an idea.