{"id":45846,"date":"2024-05-24T21:13:59","date_gmt":"2024-05-25T01:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=45846"},"modified":"2024-05-24T21:14:04","modified_gmt":"2024-05-25T01:14:04","slug":"morgan-spurlock-the-documentary-filmmaker-behind-super-size-me-dies-at-53","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/05\/24\/morgan-spurlock-the-documentary-filmmaker-behind-super-size-me-dies-at-53\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgan Spurlock, the documentary filmmaker behind &#8216;Super Size Me,&#8217; dies at 53"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Morgan Spurlock, the muckraking documentary filmmaker who chronicled 30 days when he ate only McDonald&#8217;s food in the Oscar-nominated &#8220;Super Size Me,&#8221; a project that helped raise awareness about the dangers of poor nutrition, died Thursday in New York from complications of cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n        \n        <div class=\"embedpress-gutenberg-wrapper source-provider-Youtube aligncenter ep-clear   ep-content-protection-disabled inline\" id=\"bfb976bb-da27-42e4-8118-7e65a3309ce0\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube \">\n            <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper \">\n                <div id=\"ep-gutenberg-content-40c6a6cc1f47054370e285e27eb9002d\" class=\"ep-gutenberg-content\">\n                    <div >\n                        <div class=\"ep-embed-content-wraper preset-default insta-grid ep-google-photos-carousel\"\n                            style=\"max-width:600px;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"                                                                                                                >\n\n                            <div class=\"ose-youtube ose-uid-bb2c5ed820484b17e2fd656ac5a8ae0d ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:600px; height:340px; max-height:340px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" title=\"Super Size Me | Full Movie | WATCH FOR FREE\" width=\"600\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mlWzDV_0hnU?feature=oembed&#038;color=red&#038;rel=1&#038;controls=2&#038;start=true&#038;end=true&#038;fs=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;modestbranding=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen title=\"Morgan Spurlock, the documentary filmmaker behind &#8216;Super Size Me,&#8217; dies at 53\"><\/iframe><\/div>                        <\/div>\n\n                                            <\/div>\n                <\/div>\n            <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n    \n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was 53.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,&#8221; Spurlock&#8217;s brother Craig said in a statement. &#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a professional directing career that spanned more than a decade, Spurlock bit into a wide range of sociopolitical issues, including the Bush-era War on Terror (&#8220;Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?&#8221;), corporate power (&#8220;The Greatest Movie Ever Sold&#8221;) and masculine identity (&#8220;Mansome&#8221;). He also directed the 3-D concert film &#8220;One Direction: This Is Us,&#8221; released in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was a regular presence on television, too. He created and hosted &#8220;30 Days,&#8221; a three-season FX reality show that followed people as they experimented with crash-course lifestyles like working for minimum wage or living off the power grid. He made nonfiction shows for Hulu and CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" height=\"373\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/240524-Morgan-Spurlock-2-ew-1016a-1ca4cc.webp?resize=560%2C373&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-45848\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the 2004 documentary film &#8220;Super Size Me&#8221; was by far his best-known creative venture and claim to fame. In the movie, he recorded the month of his life when he ate nothing but burgers, fries and other quick-fix staples from McDonald&#8217;s \u2014 an experiment that he claimed took a toll on his mental and physical health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The documentary helped boost public consciousness about the nutritional content of fast food and America&#8217;s obesity epidemic, inspiring a backlash against McDonald&#8217;s and other big-name restaurant chains. &#8220;Super Size Me&#8221; was nominated for best documentary feature at the 77th Academy Awards in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Super Size Me&#8221; provoked a national debate and grossed more than $22 million on a modest $65,000 budget. But it came under the microscope over the accuracy of some of its claims about health and science. Spurlock&#8217;s disclosure in 2017 that he was drinking heavily through much of his life put his purported symptoms&nbsp;in a new light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In recent years, Spurlock&#8217;s public image was severely damaged after he published&nbsp;a December 2017 blog post&nbsp;titled &#8220;I am Part of the Problem.&#8221; In the first-person essay, he admitted to what he characterized as a pattern of sexual misconduct and infidelities going back years. He said he was accused of sexual assault in college and settled a sexual harassment case with a female assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the blog post, published in the early months of the #MeToo movement, Spurlock also revealed that he had been the victim of sexual abuse as a boy and teenager, and that he had &#8220;consistently been drinking since the age of 13.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spurlock was born on Nov. 7, 1970, in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He received a bachelor of fine arts degree from New York University&#8217;s Tisch School of the Arts in the early 1990s, and he spent the next decade working in the trenches of the entertainment business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In making the leap to documentaries, Spurlock took a page from Michael Moore, a filmmaker known for his brash, confrontational style. Moore&#8217;s seminal documentary &#8220;Roger &amp; Me&#8221; taught him that &#8220;a documentary could have a sense of humor and be more than a fly-on-the-wall movie,&#8221;&nbsp;Spurlock told The Wall Street Journal in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In addition to his directing and hosting work, Spurlock founded the production company Warrior Poets. He stepped down from the New York-based company after publishing his 2017 blog post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;He deeply valued the creative contributions of the talented people who worked on his projects, developing a cadre of freelance production professionals who came back time and again,&#8221; Spurlock&#8217;s representatives said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spurlock is survived by his sons Laken and Kallen; his mother Phyllis; his father Ben; brothers Craig and Barry; and his former wives Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein, according to the statement. The statement said that memorial service arrangements will be announced in the near future<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Morgan Spurlock, the muckraking documentary filmmaker who chronicled 30 days when he ate only McDonald&#8217;s food in the Oscar-nominated &#8220;Super Size Me,&#8221; a project that helped raise awareness about the&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"17","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[8613,8612,8611],"class_list":["post-45846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news","tag-dies-at-53","tag-morgan-spurlock","tag-the-documentary-filmmaker-behind-super-size-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}