‘Super Size Me’ Director Was 53
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, whose first feature film was the Oscar-nominated Super Size Me that shifted public perceptions of junk food, especially the McDonald’s chain, died Thursday in upstate New York from complications of cancer. He was 53.
“It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” his brother Craig Spurlock said in a family statement. “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.”
The family said Spurlock passed away peacefully surrounded by family and friends.
Spurlock, a native West Virginian, graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to pursue his dream of making movies. After working primarily in TV, he released Super Size Me in 2004, which featured Spurlock eating only McDonald’s for 30 days. Soon after he shot his film, the fast-food chain dropped its super-sized portion in an attempt to focus on healthier options.
The multi-hyphenate then followed with titles including Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, Comic-Con IV: A Quest For Hope, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold and One Direction: This Is Us, as well as CNN show Inside Man and the 13-years-later sequel Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!, which ruffled the feathers of the powerful chicken industry in 2019.
Through his production company Warrior Poets, Spurlock found additional success producing and directing nearly 70 documentary films and television series.
He is survived by two sons, Laken and Kallen, his mother Phyllis Spurlock, father Ben and Iris, brothers Craig and wife Carolyn and Barry and wife Buffy, multiple nieces and nephews, and former spouses Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein, the mothers of his children.
More to come.
