Morgan Spurlock made his name by gorging himself. He tells James Mottram why he's now looking for al-Qa'ida's leader...With a title such as Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, you could be forgiven for expecting a hard-hitting documentary. With the premise that a man goes it alone in the Middle East to find the world's most wanted terrorist, it conjures images of a painstaking investigative report, the sort that Donal MacIntyre might take on. Until, that is, you see the poster. The moustachioed Morgan Spurlock, the man behind the McDonald's-baiting Super Size Me, is sitting atop a camel, holding on for dear life as the beast races towards us. If you didn't know better, you'd think it was a new Carry On film.
It doesn't stop there. The film's opening sequences see Spurlock, 37, get in shape for his trip. He does what every sensible traveller does – be it learning those all-important Arabic phrases or undergoing anti-terrorism training and learning kidnap-evasion tactics. After all, there's a $25m reward at stake. Meanwhile, smart computer graphics show Morgan and Osama battling like it was an al-Qa'ida version of Street Fighter. "I love video games," Spurlock later tells me. He has just bought God of War for his new PSP.
Holed up in the office of his New York-based production company Warrior Poets, Spurlock makes no apologies for this comic approach to what is ostensibly a gravely serious subject. "I think we could've made a real investigative journalistic film, which says, 'Where is he? Why haven't we found him? What are the pieces that have gone into the puzzle? What's happened on the ground in these countries? What are they doing to find him?' But, for me, especially coming off of Super Size Me, using humour is a better way to get an audience interested in topics, especially something that's really heavy."
Needless to say, Spurlock does not capture Bin Laden. Estimating that he came within 50 miles of him, in the finale he heads home rather than enter Peshawar, the region of Pakistan many believe currently houses the mastermind behind September 11. I was rather disappointed by this. This is, don't forget, the man who spent 30 days eating three McDonald's meals a day. In his subsequent spin-off television show, 30 Days, he went a month living in prison, and in the forthcoming new series he goes coal-mining in his native West Virginia. This is Spurlock all over: man of the people.
If his methods suggest showmanship, you can't doubt the results. The burger behemoth retired the "super size" fries and beverage options from their menus, replacing them with healthier foods – a move McDonald's denied was a reaction to the film. Nevertheless, Spurlock – who was nominated for an Oscar for his stomach-bloating efforts – evidently got under their sesame-seed baps. "In the UK, they took out full-page ads in The Independent the day the movie premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival," he recalls. "They spent more on newspaper ads trying to counter the movie the day it opened than I spent on the whole film."
For the latest film, says Spurlock, he really did start out to succeed where the US military and its allies had failed. "You know the deck is incredibly stacked against you, but anybody who buys a lottery ticket doesn't think, 'I'm not going to win'. Even though it's a billion to one, you think, 'maybe I'll be that one'. So we thought, 'Why not?' But, as we went around the world, we realised it was about so many other things. For me, that's what great about the movie – how things unfold over the course of this journey."
It's hard to take Spurlock seriously on this point. While this travelogue takes him from Egypt through Morocco, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and later the more dangerous areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, there's no doubt that setting out to find Bin Laden is as much of a gimmick as eating a bellyful of Big Macs. Is it not possible that many could think he's being glib about the subject? "I think that when you go in with good intentions, good things come out of it," he replies. "While some reviewers have said that, that's not been the overwhelming response from the audiences. And that's who ultimately I want to go see the film – the regular people."
He cites various attendees at recent US screenings, and tells me that they've thanked him for breaking down Middle Eastern politics into easily digestible chunks. "That's what it's about – trying to make things accessible to everyone," he says. "There's a big giant gorilla in the corner we don't understand when it comes to global politics. But what the film does in a real easy way is to break things down in very simple terms of what's happening in each of these countries. It paints a picture of what people face in their daily lives."
Certainly Spurlock's ability to communicate to the common man is beyond question. Yet the popularity of his work – not unlike that of Michael Moore – says as much about the intelligence of his fans than it does about his skills as a documentary film-maker. Spurlock argues that he's trying to combat the US media-fuelled negative stereotypes that all those in the Middle East are fanatics. "We get fed one dominant version of what exists overseas – somebody who is burning a flag, or burning an effigy of Tony Blair or George Bush, or they're screaming about how they want death to the West and America, and that's the sum of the whole. What the film does a great job of doing is putting a face on this overwhelming majority out there, which is not those people, and giving them a voice. I don't get to see these people that are in this movie on television here. I don't even read about them in newspapers most of the time."
If this point has some validity, what grates about Spurlock's film is its inherent sentimentality. Two months into pre-production, he discovered that his wife, the vegan chef Alexandra Jamieson, was going to give birth. Thus, in what could arguably be seen as another gimmick, it becomes a race against time for Spurlock to find Bin Laden before he must return to his Brooklyn home for the momentous day when his son, Laken – now 16 months old – comes into the world. Spurlock argues that his quest changed dramatically when he discovered that he was going to be a father. "That was the moment when the film really was born – no pun intended. It shifted away from being, 'where is Osama and why haven't we found him?' to, 'what kind of world am I about to bring a kid into?"
To be fair, there's no doubt that Spurlock's mission is laced with danger. As the film unfolds, and Spurlock moves closer to where Bin Laden might be, there is a very real sense that he's playing with his own life. "It was frightening," he admits. "As you start getting closer and closer, your heart starts beating further and further up in your neck!" Though he ultimately visits Tora Bora, the cave-riddled region where Bin Laden once lived, "the scariest moment" is the scene where he is embedded with US troops in Afghanistan. "These guys are targets every day," he says.
At one point, Spurlock is pulled away by his army guides as the nearby village falls under attack from the Taliban and a man is killed in the ensuing scuffle. "The Afghan national army ultimately killed that guy – a guy called Throatcutter," says Spurlock. "He got the name Throatcutter for slitting his brother's throat to gain advancement in the Taliban." While Spurlock's bravery is evident, his naivety – notably when he asks permission to shoot a rocket into the mountains, which he describes as "awesome" – is as apparent.
The best moments come when Spurlock is interacting with different cultures. One scene, set in a mall, sees him approaching women in burkas, asking them to speak to him. When he does manage to quiz two students in a school about their thoughts on America, their answers feel disturbingly stage-managed. Just as telling are the conditions this informal chat is held under. Closely monitored by the pupils' teachers, Spurlock sees the interview shut down when his questions get too contentious. The film becomes an exploration of the feelings held by everyday Middle Eastern people-on-the-street towards America. As one Egyptian says, "We've grown to expect a lot less from the United States."
"There was a time when the United States was really put up on a pedestal as this beacon of hope and democracy and that's gone now," says Spurlock. "The United States is now seen as an aggressor, a country that wants to dominate others, that wants to use all of the natural resources of other countries, to eradicate the religion of Islam. But that's really not the vision of the States that should be out in the world, in my opinion."
