Source: Morgan Spurlock talking to the Herald’s Tenley Woodman about his new movie, April 4, 2008, in Boston(Photo by Ted Fitzgerald/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images).
Morgan Spurlock, the director of the 2004 documentary “Super Size Me,” died Thursday due to complications with cancer, his family announced Friday. He was 53.
“It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” Craig Spurlock said in a 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.”
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Spurlock was nominated for an Oscar thanks to “Super Size Me,” for which he ate only McDonald’s menu items for three meals a day. This was done to document the physical and psychological impact fast food can have on the body. He followed it up with a 2017 sequel, “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!,” which was his final documentary.
Before “Super Size Me,” Spurlock was an award-winning playwright. He created “I Bet You Will” for MTV, originally a successful webcast based on ordinary people doing stunts for money. In 2002 MTV bought and aired the show.
In 2008 he released his second feature documentary, “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?,” which looked into the fight against terrorism, while exploring views from both sides and attempting to find Bin Laden.
Source: Morgan Spurlock of the documentary ‘Super Size Me’, where he ate only McDonald’s for 30 days, shown with a Big Mac, 26 May, 2004 (Photo by Fairfax Media via Getty Images).
In 2013 Spurlock hosted and produced his own show on CNN; “Morgan Spurlock Inside Man”. The show ran from 2013 to 2016. That same year he directed “One Direction: This Is Us.”
In 2017, as the “Me Too” movement was gaining traction across the world, Spurlock wrote a confessional blog admitting his own past sexual misconduct. He later paid to settle a claim of sexual harassment, and stepped down from his production company, Warrior Poets.
Over the course of his career, Spurlock was invovled in over 30 films and documentaries and several TV shows.
