Morgan Spurlock

Morgan Valentine Spurlock (November 7, 1970 – May 23, 2024) was an American documentary filmmaker and television producer. Spurlock received acclaim for directing the documentary Super Size Me (2004), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film.

Spurlock also directed Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? (2008), POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011), Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope (2011), and One Direction: This Is Us (2013). He was the executive producer and star of the reality television series 30 Days (2005–2008). In June 2013, Spurlock became the producer and host of the CNN show Morgan Spurlock Inside Man (2013–2016). He was also the co-founder of the short-film content marketing company Cinelan, which produced the Focus Forward campaign for GE.

He released the documentary Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! in 2017, but then wrote a blog post acknowledging that he had a history of sexual misconduct, which led to the film being dropped from distribution. He resigned from his production company, and the documentary was re-released in 2019.

Morgan Valentine Spurlock was born on November 7, 1970, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and was raised in Beckley, West Virginia. His parents, Ben and Phyllis Spurlock, raised him as a Methodist. He said he was of Scots-Irish and English descent.

Spurlock graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley, West Virginia, then attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a BFA in film in 1993. He was a member of the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta.

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 stunts in exchange for money. Examples of rhe scenarios which transpired include eating a full jar of mayonnaise (US$235), eating a "worm burrito" (US$265), and taking shots of corn oil, Pepto-Bismol, lemon juice, hot sauce, cold chicken broth, and cod liver oil (US$450.00 for all nine shots). The webcast was a success, with over a million hits in the first five days. MTV later bought and aired the show, which Spurlock hosted. The list of documentary films that inspired Spurlock includes Brother's Keeper, Hoop Dreams, The Thin Blue Line, Roger and Me, Harlan County USA, and The Last Waltz. He considered Brother's Keeper the greatest documentary of all time. In 2008, he signed a deal with Fox Television Studios.

While attending a screening of the movie Catfish, Spurlock approached the film's producers afterwards and called Catfish "the best fake documentary" he had ever seen.

Super Size Me

Spurlock's docudrama Super Size Me was released in the U.S. on May 7, 2004. This production was later nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and Spurlock won the first Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay. 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 McDonald's 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 says he ate three McDonald's meals a day every day (and nothing else) for 30 days. The film's title derives from one of the rules of Spurlock's experiment: he would not refuse the "super-size" option whenever it was offered to him but would never ask for it himself. The result, according to Spurlock, was 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 (4.8 km) a day, whereas the average American walks 1.5 miles (2.4 km).

Over the course of filming he gained 25 pounds (11 kg), became quite puffy, and suffered liver dysfunction and depression by the end. Spurlock's supervising physicians noted the effects caused by his high-calorie diet—once even comparing it to a case of severe binge alcoholism. Following Spurlock's December 2017 assertion that he hadn't been "sober for more than a week" in three decades, the claims of his liver dysfunction being caused by eating McDonald's food solely for 30 days have been called into question. Spurlock also did not release a diet log documenting his diet during filming of the documentary to the public.

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

In his reply documentary Fat Head, Tom Naughton "suggests that Spurlock's calorie and fat counts don't add up" and noted Spurlock's refusal to publish the Super Size Me food log. The Houston Chronicle reports: "Unlike Spurlock, Naughton has a page on his Web site that lists every item (including nutritional information) he ate during his fast-food month."

Subsequent films

Spurlock's second feature documentary, Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008. In the film, and in interviews, Spurlock explored the fight against terrorism and views the argument from both sides, in which he tries to find Osama bin Laden.

Spurlock directed The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice!.

Freakonomics is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, which premiered in April 2010. Spurlock was at the helm of this project alongside five directors (Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady, Alex Gibney, Seth Gordon and Eugene Jarecki).

The one-hour documentary Committed: The Toronto International Film Festival premiered on AMC on 12 October 2010.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is a 2011 documentary film about product placement, marketing and advertising which was reportedly itself financed through product placement. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011. It was released in the US in April 2011. It screened in the New Zealand Film Festival in August 2011 together with an appearance by Spurlock to talk about the movie.

In mid-2010, Spurlock worked with Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, Ain't It Cool News founder Harry Knowles, and comic book creator Stan Lee to create the documentary Comic-Con Episode Four: A Fan's Hope, to cover the stories of convention fans. Whedon, Lee, and Knowles served as executive producers. Legendary Pictures' Thomas Tull, who independently financed the documentary, told Variety, "We look forward to capturing the spirit, energy and people that Comic-Con has infused into legions of fans, bringing these audiences and projects out of the halls and onto a world stage." On April 6, 2012, Spurlock released the film to selected theaters in the United States, as well as video on demand outlets.

Spurlock hosted and produced the CNN series Morgan Spurlock Inside Man, which aired from June 2013 to August 2016.

Spurlock helped distribute A Brony Tale, a documentary directed by Brent Hodge on the brony phenomenon and on the musician and voice acting career of Ashleigh Ball. The film was selected for theatrical distribution under the label Morgan Spurlock Presents. The film had a July 8, 2014 theater release.

Spurlock teamed up with Hodgee Films again on the 2015 series Consider the Source, in association with Disney's Maker Studios.

30 Days

In each episode, a person (sometimes Spurlock himself) or a group of people spend 30 days immersing themselves in a mode of life markedly different from their norm (being in prison, a devout Christian living in a Muslim family, a homophobe staying with a homosexual person, etc.), while Spurlock discusses the relevant social issues involved. FX began airing the show on June 15, 2005. In the premiere episode of the first season, "Minimum Wage", Spurlock and his fiancée lived for 30 days in the Bottoms neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, earning minimum wage, with no access to outside funds.

In the second-season finale, Spurlock spent 25 days locked in a Henrico County, Virginia (a county outside of Richmond), jail to experience life as an inmate. He did not complete the entire thirty days in jail because most inmates in Virginia serve 85% of their sentence, so Spurlock was released when he reached that benchmark.

The third season of 30 Days premiered on June 3, 2008. The first episode of the third season, titled "Working in a Coal Mine", was filmed in Bolt, West Virginia, which is located roughly 18 miles (29 km) from the city of Beckley, West Virginia, where Spurlock was raised before leaving for New York.

In late 2008, FX announced it would not renew 30 Days, making the third season the last.

Other work

• Spurlock optioned the rights for Chris Mooney's book The Republican War on Science in order to create another documentary film, but released the option in 2008.
• Spurlock has a role in the film Drive Thru, a horror film about a fictional fast food restaurant that has its mascot come to life and start killing people. It was released on DVD on May 29, 2007.
• Spurlock presented 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die on Current TV. The show premiered on August 1, 2011.
• On May 28, 2011, Spurlock was the graduation commencement speaker for the MBA Business program at Sonoma State University.
• Spurlock's half-hour documentary series A Day in the Life was to debut on Hulu in mid-August 2011. It follows "incredibly focused" people such as Richard Branson and will.i.am for a full day. The series is exclusive to Hulu.
• Spurlock directed an additional episode of ESPN's 30 for 30 sports documentary series, entitled "The Dotted Line". This documentary takes a look at the competitive world of sports agents. "The Dotted Line" premiered on ESPN October 11, 2011, one day following the premiere of a two-hour documentary, I, Caveman, created and directed by Spurlock for the Science Channel series Curiosity. In it, a group of men and women including Spurlock try to survive in the wild using only Stone Age technology.
• In 2011, Spurlock presented a TED talk called "The greatest Ted talk ever sold".
• Spurlock was the presenter of a show in the UK on Sky Atlantic entitled Morgan Spurlock's New Britannia. This was a comedy based around the differences between the UK and the US.
• Spurlock contributed a brief foreword to Martin Lindstrom's 2011 book Brandwashed.
• Spurlock's documentary Mansome was announced on March 8, 2012, as a Spotlight selection for the Tribeca Film Festival. The film takes a comedic look at male identity as defined through men's grooming habits featuring celebrity and expert commentary.
• Spurlock directed the 3D concert film One Direction: This Is Us, starring the English-Irish boy band One Direction, and released August 30, 2013 by TriStar Pictures.
• Spurlock wrote a book in 2005 as a follow-up to Super Size Me entitled Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America.

Resignation

In December 2017, Spurlock wrote a blog post admitting to what he called a history of sexual misconduct and saying that he was "part of the problem". In the post he says that he committed sexual misconduct in his past, including cheating on his past wives and girlfriends as well as settling a sexual harassment allegation. In the post he also said that he was accused of sexual assault while in college. After publishing his blog post, he stepped down from his position with Warrior Poets, a company he had founded in 2004. The move subsequently ended his career as a documentary film-maker.

Spurlock released a sequel film, Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!, in 2017, to be distributed by YouTube Red, but was dropped since Spurlock's admission of sexual misconduct. Samuel Goldwyn Films distributed the film, instead, in September 2019. In October 2022, The Washington Post reported that Spurlock had "suffered career death" as a result of his misconduct.

Although Spurlock was raised Methodist, he stated in an interview with TV Guide in 2014 that he was agnostic. Spurlock married three times and had two sons. The older, Laken James Spurlock, was born on December 9, 2006. His birth is depicted in Spurlock's documentary Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?, which Spurlock dedicated to Laken. The younger, Kallen Marcus Spurlock, was born on May 22, 2016.

On May 23, 2024, Spurlock died in upstate New York at age 53 due to complications from cancer.

• Spurlock, Morgan (2005). Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0-399-15260-1.
• Spurlock, Morgan (2008). Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?. New York, NY: Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6652-0.
• Spurlock, Morgan (2011). Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope. DK. p. 192. ISBN 978-0756683429.

Films

Television