Morgan Spurlock, Who Exposed McDonald’s Super Size Menu By Eating It, Dies
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, whose first feature film was the Oscar-nominated Super Size Me that shifted public perceptions of junk food, especially the McDonald’s chain, died Thursday in upstate New York from complications of cancer. He was 53.
“It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” his brother Craig Spurlock said in a family statement. “Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas and generosity. Today the world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him.”
A native of West Virginian, Spurlock was raised Methodist and graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1993. Over the following decade, he was both a playwright — with his show The Phoenix taking awards at the New York International Fringe Festival and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition — and an MTV host. The latter came when his web series, I Bet You Would, was picked up by MTV. The show had everyday competitors performing stunts or doing experimental tasks for cash (like eating a “worm burrito” for $265).
Spurlock became comfortable in front of a camera and in 2004, turned up to the the Sundance Film Festival with Super Size Me, a docudrama sensation that won him the Grand Jury Prize for directing, as well as a subsequent Academy Award nomination. The film altered how Americans perceived fast food and brought about changes as to how the food was served at McDonald’s restaurants nationwide. A personal essay-style documentary, the film shows Spurlock eating nothing but McDonald’s thrice daily for 30 days. He cuts his waking down to the U.S. average of 1.5 miles per day, and throughout the experiment, he only “super-sized” his meals when suggested by a McDonald’s staff member.
Watching Spurlock gain 24.5 pounds — a 13 percent body mass increase that shot up his cholesterol to 230 mg/dL and deal with new depression, mood swings and sexual dysfunction —opened millions of people to the potential impact of a fast food-heavy diet. Six weeks after the documentary was released, McDonald’s killed its Super Size menu. Although it has denied any connection to the film, healthier options quickly appeared on its menus nationwide.
The multi-hyphenate then followed with several documentaries, most of which he inserted himself into to ask questions or explor topics that were both pressing as well as lightweight fun, including: Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden? (the then-ongoing search for the most wanted man behind the 9/11 attacks); Comic-Con IV: A Quest For Hope (the pop culture event phenomenon); The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (product placement and marketing in the movie); and One Direction: This Is Us (about the boy band); as well as the FX series 30 Days (guests spend a month in a lifestyle wildly different from their own); and CNN show Inside Man. His final film was the 13-years-later sequel Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!, which ruffled the feathers of the powerful chicken industry.
He is survived by two sons, Laken and Kallen, his mother Phyllis Spurlock, father Ben and Iris, brothers Craig and wife Carolyn and Barry and wife Buffy, multiple nieces and nephews, and former spouses Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein, the mothers of his children.
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