Morgan Spurlock, ‘Super Size Me’ filmmaker, dead at 53

Morgan Spurlock, the documentary filmmaker best known for “Super Size Me,” has died. He was 53. 

According to the Selection, he died Thursday evening from troubles of cancer. 

Born in 1970 in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Spurlock graduated from NYU’s Tisch Faculty of the Arts in 1993. 

He got his commence in the enjoyment business as a playwright, winning awards for his 1999 participate in “The Phoenix” at the New York Fringe Pageant. 

Ahead of increasing to fame, he also developed and hosted the gonzo world-wide-web sequence “Bet You Will,” that compensated contestants to do outrageous duties for revenue, this kind of as eating a full jar of mayonnaise. The display aired on both equally MTV and the now-defunct Spike. 

His breakout job was his 2004 documentary “Super Sizing Me,” which chronicled the adjustments to his health when he spent 30 times consuming only McDonald’s meals. 

“It’s a good way to consider the edge off a really preachy topic,” he instructed The Guardian in 2004. 

Spurlock was nominated for an Oscar that year, for Finest Documentary Characteristic, and he received the award for finest director at the Sundance Movie Pageant. 

Adhering to that expertise, Spurlock told Civil Eats in 2010, “There are fantastic movies that are out there that offer with foodstuff, [and] I assume if there’s a way I can aid winner some of those other filmmakers, I’d relatively do that than go into earning one more food items movie.”

“For me, films have to be a little something that if you don’t [make them], then you are heading to go mad. If you really do not tell this story, if you really don’t put it on a web page, if you do not place it on film, then it is virtually likely to outcome your mind from this minute ahead,” he went on. “There could be some thing that will come along that kind of strikes me in that way, and if it does, I’ll have to convey to it.”

His adhere to up film was 2008’s “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” in which Spurlock searched for the terrorist and visited nations impacted by his actions. 

Spurlock’s other notable will work include things like 2010’s “Freakonomics” film, based mostly on the reserve of the identical name.

On Television set, he experienced the CNN series “Morgan Spurlock: Inside Man,” which aired from 2013 to 2016, and the Fx collection “30 Days,” which aired from 2005 to 2008 and followed men and women immersing on their own in unfamiliar life for a thirty day period. Throughout that present, Spurlock himself tried to endure on minimum amount wage for 30 days. 

He adopted up with a 2017 sequel, “Super Sizing Me 2: Holy Rooster!,” which protected the way that quick food items has tried to rebrand by itself as healthier. 

In 2017, amid the MeToo movement, Spurlock posted an essay on social media that study, “As I sit about seeing hero immediately after hero, male soon after person, slide at the realization of their earlier indiscretions, I do not sit by and ponder ‘who will be up coming?’ I surprise, ‘when will they arrive for me?’” He then specific cheating on his previous companions and cases of sexual misconduct. 

Talking to Uproxx in 2019, he reported about his motivations, “I think that we reside in a time exactly where if you seem at every thing that is occurred close to that movement, the mission for anyone is these men arrive forward. And I believe it was really important for me to in essence say, ‘I’m a man or woman who’s made issues in my past. I’m somebody who has created it a issue to convey to the real truth in my work. And I understand that I can do far better.’ And I imagine that we reside in a world correct now where we stimulate people today to lie constantly and aggressively, only for self-preservation. And I consider that that is a pretty completely wrong concept to be sending.”

Spurlock told Deadline in 2019, “Part of the cause I wrote that essay in the initially position, was to be on the proper facet of it. I’m hopeful that in time, with the perform that I do and the improvements that I keep on to go by means of, that I can be there on the suitable facet.”

He also stated he went to rehab for alcoholism. 

His career imploded immediately after that. “I’m grateful for what we were capable to do, and I’m grateful for what I have realized. Does it hurt often? Of study course, it does, but all I can do is carry on to be as fantastic a supporter of other folks, of women, of men, of young filmmakers, of the people today that I was really seeking to winner for a long time,” he explained to the outlet.

“I love what I do. I’m hopeful that I can go from this and start off carrying out what I enjoy to do, which is the most important issue for me. All I’ve at any time desired to do was be a storyteller. I hope I get to do it yet again.”

Spurlock was married to Alexandra Jamieson from 2006 to 2011, with whom he has son Laken, and he married Sara Bernstein in 2016, with whom he had son Kallen.