Morgan Spurlock, director of ‘Super Size Me’, dies at 53 | Culture

Morgan Spurlock, filmmaker of documentaries such as Super Size Me either Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, died this Friday of cancer at the age of 53. “He passed away peacefully surrounded by family and friends on May 23, 2024 in New York due to complications from cancer,” announced his family on his X account. “It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan. Morgan gave so much through her art, her ideas, and his generosity. The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am very proud to have worked with him,” said his brother, Craig Spurlock, who participated in several of the director’s films. The family indicates that the cause of death was “complications derived from cancer.”

Despite having other films under his belt, such as Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? (2009) and several other documentaries in film and television, was his great success Super Size Me (2004) which earned him worldwide fame and an Oscar nomination for best documentary. In this film, Spurlock accepted the challenge of spending 30 days (February 2003), during which he could only eat products from the McDonald’s fast food chain, in addition to having to accept the giant menu if the employees of the restaurant franchise offered it to them. This was Spurlock’s goal: not so much to denounce the poor quality of the franchise (in fact, the documentary featured very healthy people who only ate the brand’s hamburgers), but to point out that the disproportionate portions of the larger menus were totally unnecessary for a balanced diet. At the end of that month, visibly overweight, Spurlock’s poor analytics brought him global fame while causing a major reputational crisis for the fast food giant.

That personal seal, among journalism gonzo and the complaint became his modus operandi of his later works, in which he used himself as a test subject. These works covered various conflictive aspects, such as the work of the migrant population (30 days), the war in Afghanistan (Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden?), or the power of marketing in the capitalist system (The Greatest Movie Ever Sold). So, until his last great work, Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!, released in 2017 and in which he denounced the operation of poultry farms in the United States. It was the sequel to its great success, which sparked a debate around the world about junk food, and which still serves as an educational tool in schools and institutes throughout the United States today. That same year, Spurlock accepted accusations of sexual harassment at the university and called himself “part of the problem.”