“It’s a sad day, when we said goodbye to my brother. The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am proud to have had the opportunity to work with him,” said Morgan Spurlock’s brother.
Born in West Virginia in 1970, the director, screenwriter and actor began his career in cinema in 1994 as a production assistant on the film Léon, directed by Luc Besson with Jean Reno, Gary Oldman and Natalie Portman in the roles. main.
His career really took off with the production of his documentary Super Size Me, in which he depicted himself exclusively consuming, for 30 days, the largest menu offered by Mac Donald’s, the super size, morning, noon and evening, the while limiting himself to 5,000 steps per day, the average for a New York resident, and measured the effects on his body.
At the end of his experiment, Morgan Spurlock, then aged 32, had gained more than ten kilos, seen his cholesterol soar, his liver deteriorate due to excess fat and was subject to sexual problems. .
The film, nominated for an Oscar in the “best documentary” category, fueled debate on the harmful effects of the fast-food industry on public health, particularly at a time when the United States was facing an increase in cases of obesity.
In 2007, however, a Swedish university carried out a similar experiment, with a group of students having to eat only fast food, not exclusively from McDonald’s, for a month.
While the students gained between 5% and 15% extra weight and felt “tired and bloated,” none had developed the symptoms described by Morgan Spurlock at the end of his documentary.
Part of the film’s conclusions were also called into question in 2017, after Morgan Spurlock admitted to “drinking regularly since the age of 13”. “I have never been sober for more than a week in 30 years,” he said then.
He made a total of around fifteen documentaries, almost systematically putting himself on stage, including Where is Osama bin Laden?, in 2008, in which he traveled the world in search of the former leader of al-Qaeda. His last film, Super Size Me 2, made in 2017, focused on the commercial strategies of junk food giants in order to present their products in a better light, in terms of health.