Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, an Oscar nominee whose most well-known works skewered America’s meals business and who notably ate solely at McDonald’s for a month as an example the risks of a fast-food weight-reduction plan, has died. He was 53.
Spurlock died Thursday in New York from issues of most cancers, in accordance with an announcement issued Friday by his household.
“It was a tragic day, as we mentioned goodbye to my brother Morgan,” Craig Spurlock, who labored with him on a number of tasks, mentioned within the assertion. “Morgan gave a lot by means of his artwork, concepts, and generosity. The world has misplaced a real artistic genius and a particular man. I’m so proud to have labored along with him.”
Spurlock made a splash in 2004 together with his groundbreaking movie “Tremendous Measurement Me,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. The movie chronicled the detrimental bodily and psychological results of Spurlock consuming solely McDonald’s meals for 30 days. He gained about 25 kilos, noticed a spike in his ldl cholesterol and misplaced his intercourse drive.
“All the things’s larger in America,” he mentioned within the movie. “We’ve obtained the largest vehicles, the largest homes, the largest firms, the largest meals, and eventually: the largest folks.”
In a single scene, Spurlock confirmed children a photograph of George Washington and none acknowledged the Founding Father. However all of them immediately knew the mascots for Wendy’s and McDonald’s.
The movie grossed greater than $22 million on a $65,000 finances and preceded the discharge of Eric Schlosser’s influential “Quick Meals Nation,” which accused the business of being dangerous for the surroundings and rife with labor points.
Spurlock returned in 2017 with “Tremendous Measurement Me 2: Holy Rooster!” — a sober take a look at an business that processes 9 billion animals a yr in America. He centered on two points: rooster farmers caught in a peculiar monetary system and the try by fast-food chains to deceive clients into pondering they’re consuming more healthy.
“We’re at an incredible second in historical past from a client standpoint the place customers are beginning to have increasingly energy,” he instructed The Related Press in 2019. “It’s not about return for the shareholders. It’s about return for the customers.”
Spurlock was a gonzo-like filmmaker who leaned into the weird and ridiculous. His stylistic touches included zippy graphics and amusing music, mixing a Michael Moore-ish camera-in-your-face model together with his personal humorousness and pathos.
“I wished to have the ability to lean into the intense moments. I wished to have the ability to breathe within the moments of levity. We wish to provide you with permission to chuckle within the locations the place it’s actually exhausting to chuckle,” he instructed the AP.
After he uncovered the fast-food and rooster industries, there was an explosion in eating places stressing freshness, artisanal strategies, farm-to-table goodness and ethically sourced substances. However nutritionally not a lot had modified.
“There was this huge shift and folks say to me, ‘So has the meals gotten more healthy?’ And I say, ‘Properly, the advertising certain has,’” he mentioned.
Not all his work handled meals. Spurlock made documentaries about the boy band One Route and the geeks and fanboys at Comedian-Con. One among his movies checked out life behind bars on the Henrico County Jail in Virginia.
With 2008’s “The place within the World is Osama bin Laden?” Spurlock went on a world search to seek out the al-Qaida chief, who was killed in 2011. In “POM Great Presents: The Biggest Film Ever Bought,” Spurlock tackled questions of product placement, advertising and promoting.
“Being conscious is half the battle, I believe. Actually figuring out on a regular basis whenever you’re being marketed to is a superb factor,” Spurlock instructed AP on the time. “Lots of people don’t notice it. They will’t see the forest for the timber.”
“Tremendous Measurement Me 2: Holy Rooster!” was to premiere on the Sundance Movie Competition in 2017 however it was shelved on the top of the #MeToo motion when Spurlock got here ahead to element his personal historical past of sexual misconduct.
He confessed that he had been accused of rape whereas in school and had settled a sexual harassment case with a feminine assistant. He additionally admitted to dishonest on quite a few companions. “I’m a part of the issue,” he wrote.
“For me, there was a second of type of realization — as anyone who’s a truth-teller and anyone who has made it some extent of making an attempt to do what’s proper — of recognizing that I may do higher in my very own life. We must always have the ability to admit we had been improper,” he instructed the AP.
Spurlock grew up in Beckley, West Virginia. His mom was an English trainer who he remembered would appropriate his work with a crimson pen. He graduated with a BFA in movie from New York College in 1993.
He’s survived by two sons — Laken and Kallen; his mom Phyllis Spurlock; father Ben; brothers Craig and Barry; and former spouses Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein, the moms of his youngsters.
