Episode 52: Morgan Spurlock

An interview with Morgan Spurlock about how he gets ideas for his projects, how documentaries get made, how he learned to be a storyteller, what his life purpose is and his best career advice.

Welcome to the 52nd episode of 5 Questions with Dan Schawbel. As your host, my goal is to curate the best advice from the world’s smartest and most interesting people by asking them just 5 questions.

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This episodes guest:

My guest today is documentary filmmaker and producer, Morgan Spurlock. Born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Morgan graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1993. He started his career as a successful playwright before eventually producing Super Size Me, an Academy Award-nominated documentary that tracked his health as he ate three McDonalds meals each day for thirty days. I get sick to my stomach even thinking about it! This film completely changed my diet and led to my pursuit of a health lifestyle. Morgan has gone on to produce several other documentaries, including Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, Freakonomics and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. More recently, he released his big follow up documentary, Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken, which explores how the fast food industry has rebranded itself as healthier since the first film. The film isn’t what I expected at all. Morgan literally goes through the entire process of opening a fast food restaurant, called Holy Chicken, in order to expose the food industry. I had the opportunity to sit down with him the same week when he opened a pop-up restaurant in New York City.

Video interview from New York City:

The 5 questions questions I ask in this episode:

How do you get the ideas for your documentaries and what are the first steps for producing them?
What are some things that people don’t know about what it takes to create a documentary?
When did you decide to be a storyteller and when did you know you were effective at it?
All of your films make a huge impact and have changed the food industry. Do you feel like you have a sense of purpose? What mark do you want to leave on the world?
What is your best piece of career advice?

Follow Morgan’s journey: