Morgan Spurlock hunts Osama in new movie
MOVIES | In 'bin Laden' doc, Spurlock unearths a hunger for peace
Morgan Spurlock is a curious guy who's dedicated his career to answering some pretty crazy questions via his documentary films and television show.
What would a month-long McDonald's diet do to the human body ("Super Size Me")? Can two people live for a month solely on minimum wage (season one of "30 Days")? What would it be like to spend time locked up as an inmate (season two of "30 Days")?
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To make his work stand out, Spurlock uses himself as a human guinea pig. He ate all that fast food, faced minimum wage and went to jail. In his latest film, "Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?," opening Friday, the filmmaker tries to do what the CIA, FBI and U.S. military have all failed to do: find the world's most wanted man.
Looking for some answers to this new question, Spurlock traveled to the Middle East -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Morocco, Jordan, Afghanistan and Pakistan -- hoping to interview the al Qaida leader. Instead, he found the poverty and repression that have fueled radical Islamic militancy. In the process, he uncovers the hearts and minds of misunderstood people who just want to live normal, peaceful lives.
"As we started meeting all these different people, they really became a big part of the story," says Spurlock, 37, while in town recently to promote the movie. "We started to see that there is so much out there besides bombs and lies. I really wanted to give a voice to the voiceless and try to open up a conversation."
Just after the 2004 presidential election, bin Laden released an incendiary videotape and the media went wild. One report ended with the question: "Where in the world is Osama bin Laden?" Spurlock couldn't get it out of his mind, and began toying with the idea of a movie based around the question.
About two months into pre-production, Spurlock's wife, Alex Jamieson, became pregnant with their first child and suddenly the whole precarious state of the world took on a new meaning for the director.
"For me, that really shifted my whole vision of the film in a lot of ways, because now it wasn't just where is Osama bin Laden and what kind of world creates a man like that," Spurlock says, "but also what kind of a world are we bringing a child into and how do we change that world for the better?"
Spurlock traveled to the aforementioned countries during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, against his wife's wishes.
The biggest concern was for the crew's safety. "When things start blowing up around you, that's scary," Spurlock says. "When we were embedded with the military that was probably the scariest because those guys are targets."
Plans were to interview religious leaders, activists, military personnel and everyday people. Producers were concerned about what questions Spurlock would be asking and how people would respond to him; Spurlock himself admits to having "a lot of trepidation."
"People are afraid to ask questions here," he says. "You don't know who you can trust and who you can't. But you just have to do your best and hope that the decisions you make aren't going to get you killed."
Spurlock didn't allow his friendly sense of humor to get sidelined during the making of the film. But he admits he expected more hostility and was surprised at how eager people were to open their homes to him and his crew and actually have a real conversation.
"For many of these people, I was the first American they had ever encountered face-to-face," Spurlock says. "Most of what they know about America is piped in through satellite dishes. There were preconceived notions on both sides, which I found really interesting. Mine were shattered. I hope theirs were as well."
During his onscreen travels, Spurlock has dinner with a family during Ramadan, enjoys tea with Bedouins in the desert and encounters an Afghan governor who wants to lure tourists to the place where bin Laden slipped away under fire in November of 2001. "We will build an amusement part in Tora Bora," the man says as Spurlock suggests adding rollercoasters and waterslides.
In another small Afghan village, an elderly man states his case: "We are neither your friends nor the Taliban's. We just want a simple life."
Spurlock, who grew up in West Virginia and now lives in New York City with his wife and their son, Laken, remembers seeing David Cronenberg's "Scanners" as a youngster and instantly knowing that movies were his future.
"When I learned you could actually go to film school and spend college making movies," he says with a laugh, "I thought, 'Sign me up.' "
In the third season of "30 Days," set to debut June 3 on cable's FX network, Spurlock will take part in two separate episodes -- working in a coal mine and living on a Navajo reservation. In other episodes, a gun control advocate lives with a pro-gun family and a hunter from North Carolina heads to Los Angeles and moves in with a family dedicated to animal rights issues.
"For me to do all six episodes would be impossible," Spurlock says. "I would have no marriage left."
Spurlock feels he owes a big debt to an older generation of documentary filmmakers -- Michael Moore, Errol Morris, Steve James, Barbara Kopple -- who are the brains behind getting documentaries into mainstream theaters.
"I'm grateful to them," Spurlock says. "They made docs commercial, and that's given me the ability to do what I do."
All of his work is driven by the hope that he's creating a primer to a larger conversation. "I think we live in a world where many of us just tune out, becoming apathetic and complacent about a lot of things," he says. "I hope my films can get people interested in a variety of controversial topics. If more people jump into the dialogue, that would be just great."
