I am really sorry to hear about Morgan Spurlock passing away at age 53. According to his brother he died from cancer.
“Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas, and generosity,” his brother, Craig Spurlock, said in a statement. “The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man.”
I met Morgan in Sundance in 2004 when his film, “Super Size Me,” caused a sensation. Morgan’s first person account of eating McDonald’s food day and night, then tracing how was it made, where it came from, and how sick it made him.
Suddenly, Morgan was the rare thing: a star documentary filmmaker. He parlayed it into more films, like “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” all the way through “Super Size Me 2: Chicken.” According to the imdb he was planning on directing a movie about late great Hollywood talent age Sue Mengers, with Jennifer Lawrence.
But in 2017, when the #Metoo movement suddenly gripped the business, Spurlock revealed that he’d once been accused of rape during his college years, and had other accusations of sexual misconduct. He essentially torpedoed his own career, and not had been heard from since then. (Amazingly, he’d left it up on line all these years as some form of self-flagellation.)
What a shame. Spurlock was indeed a great creative mind, brimming with enthusiasm and good will. That he missed the last seven years was bad enough, but now we’ll never get to see what other clever things he might have come up with. Condolences to his family.
Super Size Me is on YouTube. Here it is:
