"After a period of collective indigestion induced by the 2004 documentary Super Size Me and the 2001 book Fast Food Nation and its subsequent film adaptation, much of the industry is returning to its traditional customers—men—and its traditional food—meat—served up in ever-greater quantities. Although CKE's signature behemoths—the Carl's Jr. Double Six Dollar Burger and Hardee's Monster Thickburger, both introduced in 2004—out-calorie all comers, Burger King narrowed the gap with its Triple Whopper With Cheese (2005); Wendy's unveiled the Baconator (2007)...and Taco Bell awakened the industry to new possibilities with its 2006 campaign, which urged customers to enjoy a "fourth meal" each day."
posted by Pater Aletheias on Jun 1, 2008 - 89 comments

This turns into one of those cases where researching a story gets weirder. The documentary Super Size Me centers on a documentary filmmaker's 30 day experience eating nothing but McDonalds. The film is doing amazingly well as a limited release documentary grossing more per screen than high-budget Troy. Here is the weird part, Reuters has picked up on a distributor press release claiming that MTV is refusing to air advertising for Super Size Me because the film is "disparaging to fast-food restaurants". The Reuters short seems to have quite a bit of legs. However a Hollywood Reporter article details MTVs side of the story placing the blame on the film's distributor. Is this really a case of a network getting cold feet? Or is it a case of distributor trying to pull the "too edgy for MTV" moneymaking ploy? And what is with the continually morphing Reuters clip that is just now being tossed onto doorsteps and stuffed into newsboxes across North America? (The film was previously discussed on metafilter back in January.
posted by KirkJobSluder on May 27, 2004 - 23 comments

His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald's and document the impact on his health. "It was really crazy - my body basically fell apart". Spurlock charted his journey from fit to flab in a tongue-in-cheek documentary which he has taken to the Sundance Film Festival.
posted by stbalbach on Jan 23, 2004 - 63 comments