POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS: THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD directed by Morgan Spurlock. A Mongrel Media release. 90 minutes. Opens Friday (May 6). See listing.
Every interview with Morgan Spurlock comes with a free bottle of pomegranate juice. It’s not optional he has units to move, under the conditions of his deal with POM Wonderful, the biggest sponsor of his new movie, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. (He was giving the stuff away at the movie’s Hot Docs screenings, too.)
Upon entering our interview room at the Hyatt Regency, he shucks the multi-branded jacket he’s been wearing to every public appearance. Keeping it on might be another of his contractual requirements.
“The minute you start working with a brand,” he says, “negotiating with a company that’s gonna command placement, sponsorship, anything, there’s not a 50 per cent chance or a 75 per cent chance that they’re gonna influence the content – it’s a 100 per cent chance. It’s 100 per cent that they’re gonna influence something in the movie.”
Much as Super Size Me warns against a fast-food diet, and Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden? confronts the illusions of Americans about the Arab world, Spurlock’s new film is his attempt to inform people about the dangers of product placement – by soliciting as many as possible and then subtly pushing back against the contractual requirements.
“The fact that Mini Cooper says we can’t disparage the entire country of Germany while I’m in or around a Mini Cooper is one of the best lines you’ll ever read,” he says. “And the fact that I can’t have an illegal firearm in a Hyatt. So I said, ‘Well, let’s get a gun company so I can have a legal firearm and I can take my legal firearm into the Hyatt and clean my gun in the Hyatt!’ But we couldn’t get a firearm company to say yes.”
It’s a great stunt in theory, I admit, but aren’t most people already aware of the symbiotic relationship between studios and advertisers that put that Dr. Pepper in Spider-Man’s hand, or had the cast of Bones lining up to see Avatar?
“We presume everyone gets it,” Spurlock says. “You and I live in an incredibly rich, media-deep world. But ultimately what I think is that people don’t get it. They don’t understand the lengths people went to to have somebody wear that shoe or put on that T-shirt or drive that car. I think the film does an incredible job of changing the way you look at film and television.
“Not only that, but it’ll change the way you look at the outside world. When you look at all the billboards and everything that’s out there, it will pull blinders away. There’s a level of awareness that comes out of seeing this movie that didn’t exist before.”
Interview Clips
Morgan Spurlock on the inescapability of marketing:
Spurlock on selling the project to advertisers:
Spurlock on negotiating the specific points of each deal:
Spurlock on why he didn’t include a mention of John Carpenter’s seminal truth-in-advertising satire They Live:
normw@nowtoronto.com
