A month at McDonald'sWhat happens when a fit filmmaker eats nothing but

Remember the two 14-year-old girls from the Bronx who sued McDonald's, blaming Mickey D's food for their obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and off-the-chart cholesterol readings?

Morgan Spurlock does.

"It was Thanksgiving, 2002, and I had gone home to Beckley, West Virginia," recalls the New York-based filmmaker. "I was stuffed with turkey and was sitting there watching the news when the story about the lawsuit came on."

And that's when the proverbial lightbulb clicked o'er Spurlock's head: Why not go on an all-McDonald's diet for a month, see what happens, and film the whole thing? "I immediately called my friend, my director of photography, Scott Ambrozy, and told him the idea. He laughed and said, 'That's a really great bad idea.' By the time I got back to New York, we were in preproduction."

The result of Spurlock's Thanksgiving brainstorm, Super Size Me, opens tomorrow at the Ritz East and Ritz Sixteen/NJ. It is at once a frightening and funny tale of a fit, smart-alecky guy who scarfed down Big Macs and McGriddles from New York to Texas to L.A. Along the way, he gained 25 pounds and saw his cholesterol jump 65 points and his liver turn, in his doctor's words, "very abnormal."

The self-appointed guinea pig graduate of New York University's film school, now 33, had but three simple rules as he embarked on his mission:

1. No options: He could only eat what was available over the counter.

2. No super-sizing unless offered.

3. No excuses: He had to eat every item on the McDonald's menu at least once.

Super Size Me debuted in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where it became the subject of a classic indie bidding war ("It's one of those things that you read about . . . and then suddenly it's happening to you!") and won Spurlock the best director award. Since then, it has been making news in the health and nutrition worlds, too.

In March, McDonald's Corp. announced the phaseout, by year's end, of its super-size options - and added that its move had "no connection whatsoever" to Spurlock's documentary. Other fast-food franchises have followed suit, offering simpler menu options and more health-minded fare.

In Spurlock's mind, the connection is obvious.

"After the movie got all this attention at Sundance, they made their statement: 'This is just a gimmick, it's a super-size distortion, it's one filmmaker's attempt to get attention. . . . '

"But then six weeks later they announced they were doing away with super-size options. . . . I think they're letting their actions speak for them, which, for a long time, have been less than honorable. And now they're rolling out multi-menu options at a much more expedited pace. . . . We've had a company now say, 'We are part of the problem, we do have a responsibility to our consumers' - which is a great thing."

He adds: "The movie, for me, isn't an attack on McDonald's. It's an attack on fast-food culture, it's an attack on the food culture that we live in. . . .

"The whole reason that I picked McDonald's is that they're the biggest. They are the ones, in my opinion, that could most easily institute change. If they make a change, everyone else follows."

For the record, McDonald's doesn't agree. "Super Size Me had nothing to do with it," McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker told the Los Angeles Times. "The super-size issue was vetted in 2003. Documents went out at the end of 2003 to our owners about the phaseout."

And Super Size Me has inspired a sort of filmic "Not so fast, buddy" response from one angry McDonald's devotee. Soso Whaley set off on her own 30-day Mickey D diet, in an attempt to show that Americans can eat fast food and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Results: She lost 10 pounds and lowered her cholesterol 40 points.

"I knew I could do it," declared Whaley, an adjunct fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a press release issued by the D.C.-based nonprofit, nonpartisan public-policy group. "I can't believe all the attention over Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me film. All he did was eat like a pig to make his point."

Whaley plans to release her documentary this summer.

Spurlock is happy that he's inspired folks to take Quarter Pounders and digital cameras in hand.

"I'm so glad to see other people take this on themselves, that it has somehow motivated them to want to do something," he says. "And she's doing the diet and showing that you can eat sensibly and exercise . . . . But the reality is people don't eat that way when they go to a fast-food restaurant, and they don't usually exercise, either. People overeat. They eat bigger portions than they need. They eat things that they shouldn't."

Although Super Size Me is Spurlock's first feature, the director and star - in town last month for the Philadelphia Film Festival - has been working in TV, theater, stand-up comedy and movies since he graduated from NYU in 1993 (in a class that included M. Night Shyamalan, and Todd Phillips of Road Trip and Old School).

In '99, his play, The Phoenix, won the Audience Award at the New York International Fringe Festival. About the same time, he formed The Con, a production company for music videos and corporate promos. His "Do You Dream in Sony?" won a top prize at the Chicago Film Festival for Corporate Production in 2000.

The Con created the Internet-based series I Bet You Will ("We'd go out on the streets and we'd bet people to do silly things for money") in 2000. In 2002, it jumped to MTV. It ran for 53 episodes. Super Size Me was mostly bankrolled on I Bet You Will's profits.

In the wake of Super Size Me's early success, Spurlock has landed another TV deal, this time with F/X. Called 30 Days, it's designed as a kind of socio-cultural total immersion course.

"It's a spin-off series that will continue to examine social issues, that could be a vehicle for social change," says a hopeful, and hypeful, Spurlock. "It will basically explore social issues like religion in America, sexuality in America, poverty in America. We'll take somebody out of the environment that they live in and completely immerse them in something else for 30 days straight. And along the way we'll talk to experts . . . .

"It's a show that, in my mind, is what reality television could be: true documentary television . . . . It's not going to be a contest, it's not going to be a game show."

Spurlock is divorced (in the Super Size Me credits, he thanks his ex for the health coverage that paid for his team of chart-reading doctors) and lives with his vegan cook girlfriend, Alex Jamieson. In the film, Alex shakes her head ruefully as her partner's complexion turns blotchy and his girth turns girthy. She also makes some cutting comments about Spurlock's diminishing performance in the bedroom.

"That scene originally wasn't in the cut," Spurlock recalls. "And I said to the editor, 'You have to find that line, when we're talking about our sex life.' So they dove back into the footage - we shot 250 hours - and found it. It's just another tangent, another level of what could go wrong, what could happen. . . .

"There's all this news about erectile dysfunction now, and all of these drugs . . . . We want a pill that will fix anything. Is that the way we should be addressing these problems? Just pop a pill?"

Uh-oh. Morgan Spurlock - 30 Days on Viagra?

He laughs.

"A friend of mine who saw the movie said that Super Size Me is the Scared Straight of fast food. And he said, 'I think people are going to see this movie and really turn their lives around . . . just like the kids who saw Scared Straight.'

"I'm so proud."

Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.

Movie

Super Size Me

Opens tomorrow at the Ritz East and Ritz Sixteen/NJ.