"The film... earned him an Academy Award nomination for best documentary and helped spur a sweeping backlash against the fast-food industry..."

"... though only temporarily; today, McDonald’s has 42,000 locations worldwide, its stock is near an all-time high, and 36 percent of Americans eat fast food on any given day.... By making himself a part of the story, Mr. Spurlock could be considered a forerunner of TikTok influencers and citizen-journalist YouTubers. And even after the backlash against fast food subsided, 'Super Size Me' remained a staple in high school health classes.... Some people pointed out that Mr. Spurlock refused to release the daily logs tracking his food intake.... And in 2017, he admitted that he had not been sober for more than a week at a time in 30 years — meaning that, in addition to his 'McDonald’s only' diet, he was drinking, a fact that he concealed from his doctors and the audience, and that most likely skewed his results. The admission came in a statement in which he also revealed multiple incidents of sexual misconduct, including an encounter... that he described as rape.... His decision to discuss his sexual past, which came at the height of the #Metoo movement, was met with a mix of praise and criticism.... 'Career death,' The Washington Post declared it in 2022, noting that the once-ubiquitous Mr. Spurlock had largely disappeared."

From "Morgan Spurlock, Documentarian Known for ‘Super Size Me,’ Dies at 53/His 2004 film followed Mr. Spurlock as he ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month. It was nominated for an Oscar, but it later came in for criticism" (NYT).

Career death, and now real death. He had cancer.  From drink? From McDonald's? We don't know. McDonald's goes on, undying. 

Morgan Spurlock goes proactive in The Reckoning and declares "I am Part of the Problem."

"As I sit around watching hero after hero, man after man, fall at the realization of their past indiscretions, I don’t sit by and wonder 'who will be next?' I wonder, 'when will they come for me?'..."

Over my life, there have been many instances that parallel what we see everyday in the news. When I was in college, a girl who I hooked up with on a one night stand accused me of rape. Not outright. There were no charges or investigations, but she wrote about the instance in a short story writing class....

Then there was the time I settled a sexual harassment allegation at my office. This was around 8 years ago, and it wasn’t a gropy feely harassment. It was verbal, and it was just as bad. I would call my female assistant “hot pants” or “sex pants” when I was yelling to her from the other side of the office. Something I thought was funny at the time....

And then there’s the infidelity. I have been unfaithful to every wife and girlfriend I have ever had....

I am part of the problem. We all are. But I am also part of the solution....

"They're just too damned smart. It's getting harder and harder to kill 'em."

"A lot of the film is definitely delivered with an air of indulgent shock value..."

... the dissection scenes, in which we are forced to witness a series of disgusting parasites and larva extracted from the rats’ bodies, are entirely cringeworthy and repugnant, and you may be left wondering why we had to witness this up close when we’ve already been informed of how resilient these rodents are.

If you enter this film with the optimism that perhaps it’s going to change your perspective on rats, like many other animal-based documentaries have, you will unfortunately be very, very disappointed....

Good. There's too much sentimentality about animals. Might as well skew some things the other way. I think it accords more dignity to the animal to present them as heartless survivors. As long as you don't anthropomorphize and cause us to hate people.

Was the Kel-from-Good-Burger correction the greatest NYT correction of all time?

Or was it something else?

(I'm partial to: "An article last Sunday about the documentary maker Morgan Spurlock, who has a new film out on the boy band One Direction, misstated the subject of his 2012 movie 'Mansome.' It is about male grooming, not Charles Manson. The article also misspelled the name of the production company of Simon Cowell, on whose 'X Factor' talent competition show One Direction was created. The company is Syco, not Psycho.")

Aw, look, it's Jeremy Neren of Madtown Munchies, who challenged himself with "28 Days on Munchies" and lost 10 pounds.

He seems to be the anti-Spurlock.

(Madtown Munchies.)

"Supersize Me."

Everybody seems to like "Supersize Me," that new comic documentary about a guy who eats (and overeats) every meal at McDonald's for a month and gains weight. Boring quip I heard on TV: "Everybody but McDonald's." Oh yeah? I bet McDonald's loves the movie. I'll bet plenty of people leave the movie and go straight to McDonald's. They are hungry and they could practically smell the french fries while they were sitting there watching the thing. They aren't planning to overeat and they aren't going to go more than once a day, so whatever comical, horrendous results are depicted in the film obviously don't apply to them. I say McDonald's is perfectly happy about this film.