Home > Morgan Spurlock

Overall Rating: 5.00/5 (1 vote cast)

Morgan Spurlock Most Popular Posts

Morgan Spurlock Video Clips

Powered By Video Search

Morgan Spurlock Popular Searches

There are currently no links. Add Result

Anchor Link

Morgan Spurlock Wiki

Type: Person

Genres/Tags:

Biography and Filmography

30_Days

Morgan Spurlock (born November 7, 1970) is an American independent documentary film director, TV producer, and screenwriter, known for the documentary film Super Size Me, in which he demonstrated the health effects of McDonald's food by eating nothing but McDonalds three times a day, every day, for 30 days. Spurlock is also the executive producer and star of the reality television series 30 Days. Spurlock graduated with a BFA in film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1993. Before making the 2004 Academy Award nominated Super Size Me, Spurlock was a playwright, winning awards for his play The Phoenix at both the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999 and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition in 2000. He also created I Bet You Will for MTV. I Bet You Will began as a popular Internet webcast of five-minute episodes featuring ordinary people doing disgusting, unusual, or embarrassing stunts in exchange for money. Examples include eating a full jar of mayonnaise ($235USD), eating a "worm burrito" ($265USD), and taking shots of corn oil, Pepto-Bismol, lemon juice, hot sauce, cold chicken broth, and cod liver oil ($450USD for all nine shots). The webcast was a success, with over a million hits in the first five days. The show was later bought and aired by MTV.

Super Size Me

Super_Size_Me

Spurlock's documentary Super Size Me was released in the U.S. on May 7, 2004, and later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary feature. He conceived the idea for the film when he was at his parents' house for Thanksgiving, and while watching TV saw a news story about a lawsuit brought against McDonalds by two teenage girls who blamed the fast food chain for their obesity. The film depicts an experiment he conducted in 2003, in which he ate three McDonald's meals a day every day (and nothing else) for 30 days, mandatory that he take the "super-size" option whenever it was offered, the end result being a diet with twice the calories recommended by the USDA. Further, Spurlock attempted to curtail his physical activity to better match the exercise habits of the average American (he previously walked about 3 miles a day whereas the average American walks 1.5 miles). He was of above-average health and fitness when he started the project; he gained 25 pounds (11 kg), suffered liver dysfunction and depression. Spurlock's supervising physicians noted the effects caused by his high-fat, high-carb diet - even comparing it to a case of severe binge alcoholism.

After the completion of the project, it took Spurlock fourteen months to return to his normal weight of 185 pounds (84 kg). His then-girlfriend (now wife), Alexandra Jamieson, took charge of his recovery with her "detox diet," which became the basis for her book The Great American Detox Diet.

Spurlock's critics contend that his movie was a dishonest depiction of how fast food fits in with a regular diet. Spurlock deliberately ate 6,000 calories per day, more than twice what is recommended for a healthy diet. Biology professor Les Sayer has shown it is possible to eat a steady diet of McDonalds and not gain weight, though Sayer states clearly he is not trying to recreate the Spurlock experiment and that his exercise level of "an hour a day, 6 times a week is not representative of the average North American". However, towards the end of the film Spurlock elaborates that some people eat fast food every day.

Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?

Spurlock second feature documentary, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008. The film is dedicated to Spurlock's infant son.

Books

Don't Eat This Book

Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America By Morgan Spurlock Published by Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, 2006 ISBN 0425210235, 9780425210239 308 pages; also available in Audio Version

Buy it on Amazon.com

Just when you figured it was safe to scarf fries again comes the factpacked and funny new alarm bell from the man whose month-long McDonald's diet became the subject of an Oscar-nominated, box-office-bonanza documentary. Here Morgan Spurlock examines everything from school lunch programs and the marketing of fast food to the decline of physical education. He looks at why fast food is so tasty, cheap, and ultimately seductive-and interviews everyone from surgeons general and kids to marketing gurus and lawmakers, who share their research and opinions on what we can do to offset a health crisis of supersized proportions.

Though he wasn't much of an activist before his monthlong, McDonald's-eating experiment (documented in his film Super Size Me), Spurlock has since become a crusader for healthy eating. His passion is obvious in his reading of this audiobook, which delves more deeply into the issues his film raised, focusing in particular on food industry lobbyists and youth-oriented advertising. His undisguised indignation at their manipulative tactics and his contempt for the often slothful modern American lifestyle rise inexorably as he reels off statistics about calorie content, chemical additives, lack of exercise and so on. Frequently, his enthusiasm leads him to read too quickly and, without visuals showing portion sizes or unhealthy trends, the audio loses some of its impact. Spurlock also announces "sidebar" every time he begins reading what in the book are separate boxes, which is unnecessary and somewhat irritating since the information always relates to what he has been discussing. But the sincerity of Spurlock's quest and his mockery of the people behind what he sees as a national threat, he humorously mimics the voices of advertising executives and food industry honchos when reading their claims, makes this audio easy to consume.

If you've read FAST FOOD NATION or FATLAND, or if you've seen Morgan Spurlock's documentary, SUPERSIZE ME--in which Spurlock spent one month living on McDonald's food--you may wonder what can be added to the vilification of the U.S. fast-food industry. Surprisingly, DON'T EAT THIS DOOK is packed with plenty of fresh health and nutrition facts. (Do American grandparents REALLY exercise more than their grandkids?) Unlike Spurlock's popular documentary--a merger of muckraking and performance art--his audiobook focuses on a more specific point: Corporate forces have compromised our desires, our freedom of choice, and our ability to make objective decisions. With his hint of a Kentucky accent, Spurlock is a homespun and invigorating reader.

Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden> By Morgan Spurlock Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (April 15, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 1400066522 ISBN-13: 978-1400066520

Buy it on Amazon.com

Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and director Morgan Spurlock, who volunteered his body as a guinea pig for the fast food industry in the hit documentary Super Size Me, now sets his sights even higher in Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

Spurlock is a jittery father-to-be with a simple question: If OBL is behind 9/11 and all the ensuing worldwide chaos, then why can;t we just catch him? And furthermore, why is his message so compelling to so many people? So the intrepid Spurlock kisses his anxious wife goodbye and armed with a complete lack of knowledge, experience, or expertise sets out to make the world safe for infantkind and find the most wanted man on earth.

After boning up on his basic knowledge of OBL, Islam, and the Global War on Terror and learning how to treat sucking chest wounds in a "Surviving Hostile Regions" training course, he hits the Osama trail. He zigzags the globe, drawing ever closer to the heart of darkness near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where OBL is rumored to be hiding. Along the way he interviews imams and princes, refugees and soldiers, academics and terrorists. He visits European ghettos where youth aspire to global jihad, breaks the Ramadan fast with Muslims in Cairo, rides in the bomb squad van in Tel Aviv, and writes his blood type on his Kevlar vest at a U.S. base outside of Kandahar. And then the fun really starts.

Companion to the acclaimed documentary, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? delves even deeper. What readers come away with is possibly the first-ever funny book about terrorism, as well as a greater understanding of a conflict that has cast a shadow across America and the world.

[www.whereisobl.com] Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden - Offical Website