Morgan Spurlock

Morgan Valentine Spurlock was born on November 7, 1970, in Parkersburg, West Virginia,[4] and was raised in Beckley, West Virginia. His parents, Ben and Phyllis Spurlock,[5] raised him as a Methodist. He has said he is of Scots-Irish and English descent.[6]

Spurlock was educated at Woodrow Wilson High School, a public high school in the city of Beckley, West Virginia. He graduated with a BFA in film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1993. He is a member of the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta.[7]

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.[8]

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 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 considers Brother's Keeper the greatest documentary of all time.[9][10] In 2008, he signed a deal with Fox Television Studios.[11]

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.[12][13]

In 2017, Spurlock stepped down from his production company after admitting to having committed sexual misconduct in his past, including cheating on his past wives and girlfriends as well as settling a sexual harassment allegation.[14]

Spurlock at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival

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.[15] 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 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 match the exercise habits better of the average American (he previously walked about 5 kilometers\3 miles a day, whereas the average American walks 2 kilometers\1.5 miles).

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."[16]

He was of above average health and fitness when he started the project; 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.[17]

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.[18]

Spurlock released a sequel film, Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!, in 2017,[19] 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.[20]

External video
Morgan Spurlock: The greatest TED Talk ever sold, TED Talks[21]

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 explores 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!.[22][23]

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.[24]

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is a 2011 documentary film about product placement, marketing and advertising which was reportedly itself financed through product placement.[21][25] The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011.[26] 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.[27][28] 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."[29] 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.[30]

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.[31]

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

In December 2017, Spurlock wrote a blog post admitting to a history of sexual misconduct.[46][47][48] After publishing his blog post, he stepped down from his position with Warrior Poets, a company he had founded in 2004.[49]

In October 2022, The Washington Post reported that Spurlock had "suffered career death" as a result of his misconduct.[50]