Morgan Spurlock seemed to have it all, but then everything came crashing down. Behind the scenes,
he spent years battling personal demons before his tragic death.
When "Super Size Me" was released in 2004, it was a huge deal that
catapulted Spurlock to fame. But it also changed his life in some negative ways.
As part of the consequences of his all-McDonald's diet in "Super Size Me," Spurlock spoke not only
about the physical changes he saw happening, but the mental ones as well. He noted:
"I started to notice this pressure on my chest, and by day nine, I was getting incredibly
depressed. I would eat the food and feel fantastic for about an hour. Then I'd feel depressed again."
"I don't feel good today. Not that I feel sick,
but I just feel really depressed. And, you know, for no reason."
But Spurlock has also said that he struggled with depression outside of
the infamous 30-day McDonald's experiment. In a 2019 conversation with Deadline, he revealed that
during a conversation with his doctor about unspecified family issues, the conversation
turned to depression and the floodgates opened. He relayed the conversation, saying:
"I said, 'I'm depressed every day.' He says, 'What do you mean you're depressed
every day? When?' I said, 'Every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to bed.'"
It's impossible to know what's really going on behind the scenes of another person's life, even
if they're in the spotlight. In 2017, Spurlock wrote a post on TwitLonger that, although fairly
short, revealed a lot: Amidst other revelations, it mentioned his struggles with addiction.
When he turned the figurative camera lens on himself,
he asked himself why he had done some of the things he had, asking:
"Is it because I've consistently been drinking since the age of 13? I haven't been sober for
more than a week in 30 years, something our society doesn't shun or condemn but which
only served to fill the emotional hole inside me and the daily depression I coped with."
After releasing the post, Spurlock checked into rehab. He told Deadline:
"[Rehab] gave me clarity. […] I came back and saw the world in a very different way,
and saw my actions in a different way. I saw the way I wanted to live my life and treat people,
the husband I wanted to be, the father I wanted to be in a very different way."
There are no doubts that holding the fast food industry accountable for the choice of whether
or not to provide healthy options is a good thing, but "Super Size Me" had a fair share
of critics. In 2006, researchers from Sweden's University of Linkoping tried replicating the
results with a group of healthy student volunteers. The results were weight gain
and discomfort, but nothing as extreme as what Morgan Spurlock's doctors had reported.
"My advice to you as a physician is that you've
got to stop pickling your liver. You know, you're kicking it while it's down, now."
However, with the revelation that he'd been drinking for years, various media
outlets were quick to point out that the information threatened to put his whole
experiment at risk. One of the things that the Swedish experiments didn't see specifically was
the liver damage reported by Spurlock's doctors. When the doc was released, the idea that a diet
that contained so much fast food could cause so much damage to the liver was a huge deal.
"If somebody were doing this to their liver with alcohol, they could theoretically wipe
out their liver. You know, wipe out all their liver cells and they'd be in liver failure."
But when he wrote about not having been sober much for 30 years,
critics wondered if that had been the real source of the damage.
In the film, Spurlock specifically says that he was, at the time, not drinking any alcohol at all.
"Any alcohol use?"
"Now? None."
When the truth came out, it cast a long shadow over the
documentary and the claims made within it.
The #MeToo movement gained serious traction in 2017, and that's also the
year that Morgan Spurlock made a statement of his own. The main topic of his infamous
TwitLonger post was a voluntary admission of his history of sexual harassment. He wrote:
"When I was in college, a girl who I hooked up with on a one night stand accused me of rape."
He clarified that wasn't how he remembered it at all, and then,
he went on to talk about other incidents of sexual misconduct. In one, he paid to
settle a sexual harassment accusation in his workplace
"I would say things to someone that was my assistant that were sexually offensive."
In describing how he paid off that assistant, he wrote:
"I paid for her silence and cooperation. Most of all,
I paid so I could remain who I was. [I’m] part of the problem."
The backlash was swift and harsh. He found himself canceled by the media, fans, and colleagues alike,
even though he said that it had only been his intention to support change.
Two years later, he sat down for a painfully honest conversation with Deadline,
and said that although he had thought he was doing the right thing by adding his
voice to the cause and calling on everyone to do better, it had torn his life apart. He said:
"I regret a lot of things about it. I regret the impact it had on my family. I regret the
impact it had on my friendships. […] Within a week, everything was done."
Both his company and career were floundering, and a year and a half later, he was facing bankruptcy.
When Morgan Spurlock stepped away from his production company amid his confession of
sexual misconduct and his entry into rehab, it put an end to a project that had the potential
to do a lot of good. Spurlock had been planning to work on a series with Sarah Jessica Parker.
The TNT vehicle was going to spotlight women's issues, including body autonomy, family planning,
and workplace discrimination, and it was going to be called "Who Rules the World?"
However, Spurlock's revelations changed pretty much everything, and not only was the project
scrapped, but it led to a massive lawsuit. Turner Entertainment ended up taking Spurlock to court,
demanding complete repayment of all the money that had been spent on the project to that point,
and making it clear exactly why they were cutting ties with him.
By the time the lawsuit was settled, it left Spurlock with a hefty $1.17 million
he needed to pay back. At the time, he had little else to fall back on:
YouTube, Sundance, and Showtime had also severed their agreements with him.
Animal welfare and the cruelty found in many factory chicken farms has been
a hot button topic for years, and in 2017, Spurlock was poised to take on
Big Chicken in "Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!" Alongside the documentary,
Spurlock had plans to open his own restaurant as well. It, too, was called Holy Chicken!,
and although many outlets seemed to suggest it was just a promotional stunt for the documentary,
Spurlock told Today that there were plans to open permanent locations.
The idea was that the entire place was going to be designed to shine a spotlight on sneaky marketing:
Using green to make people think fresh, avoiding the word "fried," and the use of things like fake
grill marks, while at the same time providing a real alternative to fast food chicken.
"You're never gonna put big chicken out of business."
"And so the way I think we'll beat them is,
can you create a truly farm-to-table, local fast food restaurant."
Affordable, honest, fast food you can feel good about? All that sounds pretty amazing,
but Spurlock's restaurant never gained traction — and it's unclear whether
or not it ever opened much beyond the promo stage. The restaurant — like the
documentary itself — was another victim of the backlash over his sexual misconduct admission.
Clearly, after Morgan Spurlock posted his confessional to TwitLonger,
he faced a massive backlash. It started with his "Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!" getting pulled,
even as future projects were scrapped, and the writing was on the wall for his company,
Warrior Poets. The most tragic part of the story was that the ripples reached far and
wide, with those around him finding their lives suddenly changed in heartbreaking ways.
Spurlock posted on December 14, and later told Deadline,
"I regret the impact it had on 65 people, who were working in my office, and then,
within a week were suddenly out of a job. The week before Christmas. […] To
be in that position right before the holidays was the worst thing ever."
Also caught in the blast zone of Spurlock's career implosion were
poultry farmers who had been working with him on "Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!" He
explained that everything around the film had fallen apart after his confession,
and that included the livelihoods of some of the farmers who'd appeared in the film. He named two
in particular who had been blacklisted by the poultry industry for speaking out against abuses,
only to find that everything had fallen apart. As he described it to Deadline:
"I called Jonathan and his wife Connie, they’re in the film. [...] I was crying,
and they were crying. They said,
'We just hope you're okay,' and that was… oh, it just makes me cry all over again."
Spurlock's death was announced in May 2024: His brother, Craig, issued a statement saying:
"It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan. Morgan gave so much through
his art, ideas, and generosity. Today the world has lost a true creative genius and
a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him."
Immediate details were scarce, but it was revealed that his official cause
of death was complications from cancer. At the time of his death,
Spurlock had nearly 70 film and television credits to his name, including the docuseries "30 Days."
The series was produced by RJ Cutler,
who paid tribute to Spurlock's visionary talents via Variety, saying:
"So much […] was about seeing the world from the other's point of view. That was
Morgan's vision and it infused all of his filmmaking. He abhorred hypocrisy,
he loved to laugh, and he loved to inspire laughter in others. And as we all know,
he wasn't afraid to face criticism for his efforts to make the world a more honest place.
He left us way too early but left the world far richer for his having been here."