Morgan Spurlock on Freakonomics, Super Size Me's Long Tail, and the Problem With Jamie Oliver

Super Size Me is back in the news -- not just the DVD, but its legacy, in a way. I mean, some wingnuts are advocating against obesity taxes or reducing sugary foods and drink in schools, like this is a Constitutional issue. This just won't go away.

It pops up all the time. Even that pastor [scandal-plagued Eddie Long] showed the kids in his congregation. The whole congregation, really, had to watch Super Size Me. It pops up in places for good and for ill. It's remarkable. It was just written about in Entertainment Weekly last week. People cut it out and mailed it to me -- family members of mine, maybe people gave it to them. Just this morning, I was doing CNN and the guy who was putting the mic on me was saying how he showed the film to his son who he just took to college up in Rochester. But he said he showed him the movie when he was 13, and that was the last time he ever wanted to eat fast food.

I'm sorry, I still love McDonald's. What can I say? I crave it.

To this day when I smell a Big Mac, my mouth will water like Pavlov's Dog. I don't eat it, but...

You're still done with McDonald's, I guess.

I'm so done. There are so many better places to get a burger. I won't even do it.

Like where? What's your burger?

My office is right on Broome and Lafayette, so we order burgers from [Soho Park] a lot -- the little gas station turned burger joint. They make a really good burger. I like Blue 9 over in the East Village. Corner Bistro is all right. They're maybe touted a little too much, but they've got a got a good burger.

Considering their longevity, are these issues you'd ever revisit? Or are you done with the subject as a whole?

Food issues? Obesity? It's getting bigger every day! No pun intended. Yeah, maybe at some point we'll go back and do something else about obesity. It's not going away. It's a huge problem. Jamie Oliver, now, with his Food Revolution show, is starting to tackle it a little bit. I actually just had a meeting with the people at Ryan Seacrest Productions, and they asked, "What would you do in season two?" They're working on it right now. And I said, "The biggest thing that has to happen in the second season is you have to get people involved." There needs to be more community involvement. What I would do is go back into schools and build farms. I would take this Alice Waters model of what she did in San Francisco, put it in the show, and make it where you can replicate this across the country. What needs to happen in the second season of Food Revolution is that you have to get people engaged.

I think Jamie's a great voice. But I think the hard part about Food Revolution is that -- and I love Jamie -- is that Americans don't want to hear someone with a foreign accent tell them what to do.

That's a fair point.

It's no surprise that anytime a foreign show comes to America, it's remade. The problem is, one, we continue to remake them. If we would just show foreign productions, they'd do well. But they've created this world where we're so xenophobic that we don't want anybody from the outside represented. The original Office was genius, but it never showed outside of BBC America. And now they're showing it on IFC and a couple of others after the success of the remake. I don't think the folks at Seacrest Productions liked it when they asked, "What do you think?", and I said, "I think it would have done better had it not been a Brit." You know?

At least you're honest.

The show rated well; at the end I think it had a couple million viewers. But you wanted it to really be a revolution. And so I think in the next season they're going to try to bring in some other people. That would be good.

[Top photo: Matt Carr/Getty Images]

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