Spurlock's contribution to Freakonomics -- the adaptation of Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's bestselling book about the "hidden side of everything" (it opens Friday, read Movieline's review here) -- deals with the long-term effect of a person's name on his or her life. In particular, it focuses on data tracking the social and professional progress of those customarily black names (and some not-so-customary ones, including the doomed Temptress and the jaw-dropping siblings Winner and Loser) against those with customarily white names. From strippers to Shaniquas, nobody is spared scrutiny.
It's sensitive stuff handled in quintessential Spurlock fashion -- with humor, visual panache and not just a little volatility. He spoke about his segment of the film (Alex Gibney, Eugene Jarecki, Seth Gordon and Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady directed the other portions) with Movieline, bringing up a few intriguing points about the impact his initial, reputation-making work as well.
So I have to ask: How has the name "Morgan Spurlock" influenced your upbringing and your career?
I'll tell you what was interesting: As a kid, and this probably was an influence on me, there were no other Morgans in my school. There were no other Morgans in my town -- Beckley, West Virginia, where I grew up. I never met another Morgan until I was 16, 17 years old, and I met a little girl on a beach when I heard her mom or dad yelling for her. I was intrigued that there was this little 3- or 4-year-old girl. For me, it was one of those things. Having a name that wasn't like anybody else's did make me feel different, you know? Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way.
Did you get to choose the segment you wanted?
I did. I chose this one because about a year and a half before this I had a little boy, who's now 3-1/2. His mom and I... The whole name thing was a real conversation. Anyone who has kids will tell you, "Oh, we went through all these names, we were trying to figure out what to name him..." We had a boy name; thank God we had a boy. It was my great-uncle's name: Laken. It was a great family name -- a great, strong name. And then we tried to figure out: If we had a girl, what would her name be? We literally could not come up with a girl name that we liked. "That's too soft, that's too girly, that name's too butchy..." You want a tough-girl name, but not too tough-sounding. We couldn't find anything. So luck had it that we had a little boy.
And that was your inspiration to choose this segment?
Yeah.
I was struck by the visual style -- tracking shots, set-ups and set pieces, etc. Not very "doc-like." How did you settle on this approach?
When we first started talking about this -- my producer and my writing partner Jeremy Chilnick -- I really wanted it to look and feel like a movie. When we went into the section about the characters in the book, I made a conscious decision early on not to chase after Temptress or Winner and Loser. We did them as re-creations. I wanted to shoot them as a film. There was a lot of Steadicam and a lot of real camera moves that made it feel very cinematic. As far as everything else that was marrying through there, I wanted to have a real pop feel to it -- how your name carries you through society.
There was some sort of a bank or investment commercial where people were carrying their nest egg around under their arm. Not that actual egg, but their worth -- the foam numbers? That commercial was running through my head the whole time we were writing the script. I thought, "What if those people who were carrying their numbers were carrying their name? And your name is this thing that's always with you?" So we used that as the model for the named we married to everybody, from the strippers Brandi and Candi to people who were just on the street walking around.
Speaking of whom, those people on the street are integral to the film. How did you want to utilize them, and what kind of resistance did you encounter?
Whenever we do man-on-the-street, people are always surprisingly eager to talk about just about anything. Which is amazing. Seriously. We approached people here downtown, out in Bayside and Forest Hills [Queens], up in the Bronx... We wanted to create a very eclectic blend of neighborhoods and people and ethnicities and have people who would be very honest about what they felt or what they believed. One of the things that I think really comes across in the piece that we made is that you really do see there is a very strong racial divide that very much exists -- and judgments that are based on that racial divide, simply by their names and they represent.
But on the other hand, you avoided the repercussions Asian names or Indian names or... I don't know, French names have on individuals. I was also curious about that.
I think in America it's definitely more about the black-white divide than the Asian-white divide, or the French-white divide. People in America will talk sh*t about French people, but that's not where the initial conflict in the United States exists. I think there is a much stronger black-white divide in the States. The more we shot, the more it came out. There were Asian names we talked about, but that's one of the things we cut out. It felt superfluous.
Why?
Well, there was this section where we talk about Asian names as a piece of it. We're using Roland Fryer's study, which centers much more around black and white names. As does Sendhil Mullainathan's resume study. Sendhil Mullainathan has a fantastic Indian name and is from Harvard; Roland Fryer has a fantastic African-American name and is also from Harvard. But both of their studies focus more on the black-white divide. What I love abut Dr. Mullainathan's study was that no matter how qualified you make Tyrone Washington on his resume, he still wasn't going to more callbacks than Joe Smith, simply because of that moniker.
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]