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Features
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Linklater Super Sizes Cannes
First came Morgan Spurlock's award-winning Sundance documentary. Now, McDonald’s must face the challenges of vegetarian Richard Linklater’s drama Fast Food Nation.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
By J. Sperling Reich
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Fox Searchlight
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Directing Ethan Hawke sans Julie Delpy
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Otto Von Bismark, the Minister-President of Prussia from 1862 to 1890, once said “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” If Von Bismark were alive today, he might have changed the word “sausages” to “cheeseburgers.” At least that is what filmmaker Richard Linklater would have you believe with his latest film Fast Food Nation. And after seeing the film, this reporter is never eating at McDonald’s again!
Based on the best selling non-fiction book by Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation premiered for critics at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, May 18th and screened in competition a day later. Schlosser told reporters in Cannes that although he had been approached by many filmmakers interested in turning his book into a documentary, none of the concepts pitched to him felt right until Linklater came along with the idea of marrying the book’s message to a fictional story.
“It was not an obvious idea and I feel the film was made totally independent of the Hollywood system and therefore it could have some integrity,” Schlosser explained. “All of the documentary ideas felt somehow that they would be compromised. So the most unlikely way to approach the book ultimately seemed the truest way.”
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Harper Perennial
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An incendiary tome
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Linklater and Schlosser have put together a provocative ensemble piece that begins with Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear), the Vice President of Marketing for Mickey’s fast food restaurants, learning that his establishment is serving contaminated meat in its best-selling burger. Sent on an expedition to the processing plant that supplies the beef to find out where the e-coli is coming from, Henderson is brought face to face with the suspect and sleazy practices of a multi-billion dollar industry.
Much like the U.S. healthcare industry’s plans to combat Michael Moore’s upcoming documentary Sicko, Linklater confirmed that the leading purveyors of U.S. fast food have already started to make plans to combat any effects it might have on their industry when it is released in theaters this fall. “We are already getting a reaction from the fast food industry,” the filmmaker said. “They’ve hired agencies apparently that are going to be there when we come out as a movie.”
“It’s interesting; I’ve never made a movie that’s suddenly threatening someone’s corporate bottom line.”
For now, McDonalds is announcing record quarterly profits. But who’s to say what might happen after moviegoers view horrific slaughter house footage taken from what is known as the “kill floor.” It seems more than possible that some will be compelled to abandon their meat-eating, Atkins diet-directed ways.
“That’s real footage,” Linklater exclaimed. “We didn’t think we would get that kind of access, but they let us in under some very strict conditions about time and we couldn’t bring in equipment. It’s tough imagery, but that was the way the narrative unfolds.”
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Harper Perennial
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Author Eric Schlosser
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“It hints at it; you see it; the film talks about it; and at the very end, Eric and I thought it really had to deliver that final [punch],” he continued. “You [as the viewer] had to actually see it. That’s a reality everyone needs to know. I think it would have been a total sell-out for the movie never to have shown that.”
Co-starring with Kinnear are Patricia Arquette, Bobby Cannavale, Luis Guzman, Ethan Hawke Kris Kristofferson, Avril Lavigne, Esai Morales, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Wilmer Valderrama. And none of these talented actors would admit to eating a hamburger since working on the film. “You really get a sense of reality of where you can and cannot go for food,” said Valderamma. “It’s an interesting point of view. When it comes to going to a fast food place, it’s been tough to kind of go back to.”
Hawke however scoffs at the idea that the film should have shown some “hope” in the end. “Hope is a great pacifier,” he preached. “I know that it would be pleasing sometimes to see hope at the end of a movie, but it’s really a lie.”
“Righteous anger can fuel people and can provoke change, but it hope often generates apathy,” he added. “Many people sit around and hope, and that’s why there is such great apathy all over the world. Mahatma Gandhi didn’t hope that India would change.”
Linklater himself didn’t have to change his eating habits at all however, having been a vegetarian since early adulthood. “Once I really looked at the food industry I just made my own decisions,” said Linklater. :I didn’t want to support it with my dollars.”
Ironically, Schlosser himself is still a carnivore. “I still eat meat, but I’m just very conscious of where it came from, how it was raised and processed,” he confessed. “By refusing to go to the fast food chains and buying that industrial meat you are sending a message that animals shouldn’t be treated this way and workers should be treated that way.”
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