Obituary: ‘Super-Size Me’ documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock dies of cancer at age 53

Spurlock died on Thursday in New York from complications of cancer, his family announced on Friday.

“It was a sad day as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” Craig Spurlock, who worked with him on several projects, said within the statement. “Morgan gave so much through his art, his ideas and his generosity. The world has lost a true creative genius and a special human being. I am so proud to have worked with him.”

Spurlock made a splash in 2004 along with his groundbreaking film, “Super Size Me,” which was nominated for an Oscar. The film documented the damaging physical and psychological effects Spurlock suffered when he ate nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days. He gained about 25 kilos, his cholesterol skyrocketed, and he lost his libido.

“In America, everything is bigger,” he said within the film. “We have the biggest cars, the biggest houses, the biggest companies, the biggest food and, finally, the biggest people.”

In one scene, Spurlock showed the kids a photograph of George Washington and none of them recognized the founding father. But all of them recognized the Wendy’s and McDonald’s mascots immediately.

The film grossed greater than $22 million on a budget of $65,000 and got here before the discharge of Eric Schlosser’s influential film “Fast Food Nation,” which accused the industry of being bad for the environment and rife with labor problems.

Spur lock returned in 2017 with “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!” – a sober take a look at an industry that processes 9 billion animals in America yearly. It focused on two issues: chicken farmers caught in a wierd economic system and the attempt by fast-food chains to deceive customers by making them imagine they’re eating healthier.

“From a consumer perspective, we are at an amazing point in history where consumers are gaining more and more power,” he told the Associated Press in 2019. “It’s not about returns to shareholders. It’s about returns to consumers.”

Spurlock was a gonzo filmmaker who indulged within the bizarre and ridiculous. His stylistic traits included snappy graphics and amusing music, mixing a Michael Moore-esque camera-in-your-face style along with his own humorousness and pathos.

“I wanted to be able to let loose in the serious moments. I wanted to be able to breathe in the moments of lightness. We want to give you permission to laugh in the places where it’s really hard to laugh,” he told AP.

After he exposed the fast food and chicken industries, there was an explosion of restaurants emphasizing freshness, artisanal methods, farm-to-table quality and ethically sourced ingredients. But nutritionally, not much had modified.

“There has been a huge shift and people ask me, ‘So has food gotten healthier?’ And I say, ‘Well, the marketing certainly has,'” he said.

Not all of his work was about food. Spurlock made documentaries about the boy band One Direction and the geeks and fanboys at Comic-Con. One of his movies handled life behind bars on the Henrico County Jail in Virginia.

In 2008’s “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” Spurlock launched into a worldwide seek for the al-Qaeda leader who was killed in 2011. In “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” Spurlock handled problems with product placement, marketing and promoting.

“I think being aware of it is half the battle. It’s a great thing to literally always know when you’re being marketed to,” Spurlock told AP on the time. “A lot of people aren’t aware of it. They can’t see the forest for the trees.”

Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! was scheduled to premiere on the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, but was shelved at the peak of the #MeToo movement when Spurlock publicly discussed his own past of sexual misconduct.

He confessed that he had been accused of rape while in college and that he had settled a sexual harassment case with an assistant. He also admitted to cheating on several partners. “I am part of the problem,” he wrote.

“For me, it was a moment of realization — as someone who tells the truth and is committed to doing the right thing — that I could do better in my own life. We should be able to admit we were wrong,” he told AP.

Spurlock grew up in Beckley, West Virginia. His mother was an English teacher, and he remembered her correcting his papers with a red pen. He graduated from New York University in 1993 with a BFA in film.

He is survived by two sons – Laken and Kallen; his mother, Phyllis Spurlock; his father, Ben; his brothers, Craig and Barry; and his former wives, Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein, the moms of his children.