After a brief apprenticeship as a producer and host in the television industry, Morgan Spurlock made a big splash in 2004 with the documentary Super Size Me. The film, which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in, followed his quest to dine exclusively at McDonald’s—a quest terminated because of the detrimental effects his diet was having on his health. The low-budget, self-financed film went on to gross over $11 million in its U.S. theatrical release alone. Overnight, Spurlock had become a media celebrity, and something of a filmmaking Robin Hood—taking power away from the corporations and giving it back, in a way, to the people.

Oddly, Spurlock has yet to follow up that success with a film of his own, returning more to his TV roots as a producer. In connection with the November 16 release of What Would Jesus Buy?, his most recent producing effort, Past the Popcorn Managing Editor Greg Wright had the opportunity to talk with Spurlock over the phone, courtesy of one of the film’s national promoters.

You’re flying a little bit under the radar with your Morgan Spurlock Presents label. I saw a press release about this in association with the release of Chalk a couple of months ago, but it’s really hard to track down any information online about what Morgan Spurlock Presents is—so I imagine that the vast majority of our readership has no clue what it is you’re trying to do with your productions. What are your major goals?

Morgan Spurlock: The biggest thing for me is to help filmmakers. After Super Size Me came out and I was traveling around the film festival circuit, I was seeing all of these movies that were basically just getting lost. They would have this great showing, and I would see them play at three or four festivals, and then nobody would pick them up; they wouldn’t get distribution. And these were movies that were great—movies that I thought were important or were funny, that had a great message. And I thought it was a shame to have these movies kind of vanish into the ether. And when we started Morgan Spurlock Presents— It was myself and Joe Amodei from Arts Alliance America, because he felt the same way. He was the guy who distributed Super Size Me on DVD, and we just started talking about the films that we loved over the last year. And I said, “We should help some of these guys find distribution. We should help some of these filmmakers, these movies, that you and I have fallen in love with—help them get out there for people to see.” And that was the initial goal for me. And hopefully people will like them. I think that Chalk— That was our first release; we didn’t just release that on DVD—we released that theatrically, and it did very well, played all over the country and now it’s out on DVD. I think it’s going to be on television some time next year. This is a movie that would have just vanished had we not picked it up. So I’m pretty proud of that.

So you’re not providing financing for these pictures or greenlighting these projects; you’re picking these up for distribution off of the festival circuit.

MS: Well, we had a movie brought to us called What Would Jesus Buy? that we financed, that we put the money up for—raised the money for. That movie is coming out into theatres next week, on November 16^th. That was a film that— Producer Peter Hutchison, a guy I knew in New York City, said, “I’ve been following this guy, Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping, for about a year, and I’ve got a lot of footage. I’d love for you to look at it; let me know what you think.” So he brought that to my production company, Warrior Poets, here in New York, and I said, “This is great. I love this guy.” I knew of Reverend Billy from before that, and what he did around the city—preaching about consumerism and the commercialization of Christmas. For me, I just thought it was a great thing for us to be associated with.

It’s a great time for this kind of film to be marketed. There’s been an explosion, thanks to Michael Moore’s films and your film, of these smaller-budget independent documentaries and guerilla-style productions. But one of the things that does is increase the competition, because there are a lot more titles out there.

MS: Absolutely. And that’s one of the things— I just read an article, I think it was in the New York Times last week, where the head of Sony Pictures Classics talks about how there’s so many films in the market place that it’s hard to get things [booked] for longer than a week. And in television that’s the same way. Television now has a one-and-done mentality. If it doesn’t get good ratings in the first week, they’ll cancel it after the first show. There’s no chance for it to find an audience; and theater owners are doing the same thing. If a movie doesn’t catch fire opening weekend, they’ll dump it before the second week and book something else in there, just because there are so many movies available. They’ll bring something else in that will be profitable for the theater owner. It’s fierce right now. And that’s grown in the last couple of years with the growth of digital technology, because all you need is a camera and computer and a great idea. And with the rise of hedge funds, there’s been a rise in people who are just throwing money into film projects.

Some great little documentaries that have just gone completely off the radar recently would include—

MS: The King of Kong.

You know, in Seattle that one actually caught on and it played for something like eight weeks.

MS: See, that’s fantastic! And that movie is so good. But nobody that I talk to has seen it.

Right. I think the gross on that so far is like $675,000.

MS: And that’s a shame.

And still, that’s doing well, because something like Deep Water, which is also a fantastic documentary, has only grossed something like $240,000.

MS: Wow.

That’s pathetic. So you’re coming out with What Would Jesus Buy?, and IMDb reports the budget on that at $3 million.

MS: I think that’s very high. I think that’s way, way high. The production budget for the film was about $700,000.

More in the ballpark of Super Size Me?

MS: Well, [this time out] we had to pay for everything. On Super Size Me, everybody worked for free. The budget for Super Size Me was $65,000 in the can. That got it into Sundance. But had we had to pay everyone over that course of time, it probably would have been about $750,000. And so that was our goal for this movie, to produce something that was in that same kind of budget range, that had that same kind of tone. You know, What Would Jesus Buy? is a very fun movie; it deals with a very tough subject in a very entertaining way, I think. Reverend Billy is a great character, and he has a great sense of humor in trying to bring people over into this discussion.

Now, you’ve got another project in the works—the first one you’ve done since Super Size Me that you’ve actually written, produced, and directed—an untitled production on the search for Osama Bin Laden. Have you found him yet?

MS: You’ll have to wait and see! I’ll have to look in the fifth reel. Maybe he’s hiding there!

So what angle are you taking with the subject?

MS: You’ll have to wait and see. We’re still finishing the movie right now.

It is more an investigative journalism piece, or a documentary covering what the government is doing trying to find him?

MS: I think it’s more like my journey, and looking at what the state of the world is right now. It’s a very personal project for me, as are most of the films that I do. Super Size Me was very personal; the show that I have on FX, all the episodes that I do are very personal-based issues for me. And so I tried to make the film rooted in that. And that’s all I’m going to tell you!

Well, to talk about something else… Terror’s Advocate. Have you seen it?

MS: I have not.

Well, I just watched that the other day, and I tell you, that’s one scary flick.

MS: Really?

Yeah. [Director Barbet] Schroeder, he gets interviews with—

MS: Terror’s Advocate. I’ve got to write that down.

—with these guys who have been hanging out with Carlos the Jackal, Haddad, and some of these other guys. And that’s a scary world.

MS: Yeah.

Did you get into those kinds of circles in making your film about Bin Laden?

MS: You’ll have to tune in. You’ll have to check it out when it’s done!

Oh, I will. That’s one scary bunch of people to come into contact with, at any level.

MS: Yeah.

International intrigue is something else at that level, going way beyond, say, the Bourne movies.

MS: Yeah, and we get into a lot of very scary things. And I think people will like it. I think it has a good sense of humor.

So what’s the next project for the Morgan Spurlock Presents label, following up What Would Jesus Buy?

MS: We’re involved right now with a film called Chops, which has been playing the festival circuit and has been very well received. It’s about musical students who are in a jazz band who go to the national jazz competition, the Duke Ellington competition here in New York City, and it just follows these kids. It’s in line with Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom. You see these kids, and how art impacts their lives in such a beautiful way. It’s hard to believe that this is one of the things we’re starting to take away from the school system, that we’re starting to take away from the kids. It’s a pretty inspiring movie, and that will come out in the spring. And that’s going to be released theatrically.

Now, What Would Jesus Buy? is being released through Warrior Poets. What relation does Warrior Poets have to Morgan Spurlock Presents?

MS: Well, you know, we shopped that movie around to distributors, but people were very afraid of the movie. You know, it talks about Wal-Mart. And you can’t talk about the commercialization of Christmas without talking about retailing in the United States, and you can’t talk about that without talking about the retailer who does forty per cent of the DVD market in America. And film distributors were concerned about walking down that path. Especially following Robert Greenwald’s film [Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price]. I talked to distributors who had been told, in no uncertain terms, that if they picked up the Greenwald film, they could forget ever having another movie sold at Wal-Mart.

So Warrior Poets is a distribution company that was set up to—

MS: Yes. So we raised the P&A ourselves, and we’re [distributing] it independently.

It’s a great logo, by the way.

MS: Thanks.

I love the way it comes up on the screen, with the red on the index finger. That’s really neat.

MS: Oh, right on.

So there’s my geek moment for you.

MS: And that’s my geek moment, too. I like that as well!

Also see Jenn Wright’s review of What Would Jesus Buy?, as well as Mike Brunk’s review of Chalk and his interview with Chalk director Mike Akel.

The King of Kong, Deep Water, and Terror’s Advocate, all discussed in this interview, have also been reviewed at PTP.