Morgan Spurlock talks docs

The director of "Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?" was in Park City to promote his film. He chatted for a little bit about preparations for his movie and his video game love.

Q: This is your first feature released since “Super Size Me.” How difficult was it to decide on another idea?

A: Right after “Super Size Me,” we sold the TV show “30 Days” to FX, so the summer of ’04 we shot the pilot for that while I was still out promoting the movie. We shot the Muslim episode as the pilot, and then they ended up picking up the series January of ’05, then we had the Academy Awards and right after the Academy Awards I flew to Columbus, Ohio, and lived on minimum wage for the first episode of the series. The show’s a monster to produce, it takes about eight months to make six episodes. We were done with that show around July, August. We were into the next term of the president, and there was a tape or something released from Osama bin Laden and suddenly he came back into the news. Suddenly, everywhere you looked on TV people were saying “Why haven’t we found him? What’s going on? This guy has to be brought to justice. Where in the world is Osama bin Laden?” And I’m like, that’s a great question. That’s what lit the fuse for the idea.

Q: But prior to the spark of inspiration, were you casting about for an idea for a follow-up?

A: We’d talked about things, but nothing that really resonated. “Super Size Me" blew up in a way that nobody could have ever thought. That movie played in 75 countries. I’d meet people in the United States who were from China or Korea who had seen the film. It was amazing. So I knew that for my next film, I wanted to make sure it would be something on a global scale, that it wouldn’t be just an American-centric idea but something that really would get out of the U.S. a little. When we honed in on this, this is exactly what I wanted to do.

Q: When you were in Afghanistan in the film, you were going out in a dangerous area, writing your blood type on your clothing and you seemed quite scared. But you also put your body through so much punishment on “Super Size Me” and lived on minimum wage, so on some level you must be enjoying all this.

A: I enjoy the process. And it is exciting. But being in a situation like that where you’re going out in a region where there’s IEDs... When we were out embedded with the military, there was an IED planted in the road and they had to stop our convoy and took a different route back to the base. And there was a rocket attack on the base while we were there. No one was killed, but it still exploded inside the base. There are Taliban snipers and ambushes that were happening constantly, so there’s a part of it where I enjoy being there, but at that moment when you’re war targets, it’s incredibly scary.

Q: How much did you plan this movie? Did you head overseas with a passport and no idea who you were going to talk to?

A: We had some idea of who we wanted to talk to. In a lot of countries, we hired local producers, called fixers. These people have ins with a lot of people you wouldn’t as a Westerner. If I picked up the phone, they’d say, “Who are you?” Click. Not to mention the language barrier in a lot of places. We had a hot list of people we wanted to get access to or try to speak to and then we’d work with the producers to see who we could get to actually go on camera.

We had a general idea, but for me, documentary films are incredibly organic. You have to go with the flow and let things lead you where they go because that’s what life does. They say if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. One interview will lead to three more will lead to three more.

When I made “Super Size Me,” there was a filmmaker who I asked for advice on how to make a documentary. He said, “If the movie that you make at the end is the same movie you envisioned at the beginning, then you didn’t listen to anybody the whole time.” And I think that’s great advice. I try to always heed that.

Q: Do you start off with an outline?

A: I start off with an A. A is “I’m going to go look for Osama bin Laden” then let’s see what happens. I’m going to go get training, then I’m going to go find out about him and see what makes him tick and here are the places we want to go. So you have a general idea, but for me you have A and B and some ideas of where it’s going to go, but from here on out it’s whatever happens.

Q: The fixers in the foreign countries, did they arrange with the governments for all your military protection?

A: When we were in Afghanistan, our fixer contacted the governor of the Kandahar province and he provided the escorts that took us out to Tora Bora. Because that’s a road where just the week before, there was an IED that exploded under a car of Westerners that was going out there. There were some journalists who were kidnapped just a couple months before in that same area. He provided the military escort who took us all the way out to Tora Bora and all the way back. And they said, “No, it’s not dangerous at all.” And yet, here’s all these guys. And they say, “No, it’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Q: In dealing with these foreign governments, did they know who you are?

A: Not really. Especially in Afghanistan. There’s so few people who have access to outside information, like through televisions. Once you get out of Kabul, you’re in a Third World country. Some people have radios, but there’s next to no television.

Q: You’re an affable guy with a very American sense of humor. In your interviews with foreigners, you’re sometimes teasing. Did that always translate?

A: I think it always translated. So long as I have a smile and they know that I’m joking with them. Most of the fixers would relay, here’s what he said and he’s making a joke about it and he means for this to be funny. And they would understand. It wasn’t like they would say, “What are you talking about?”

Q: You put a lot of personal moments on screen, such as the birth of your son. Was the inclusion of that ever in debate?

A: For me, it’s such a cornerstone of the story. It’s such an important part of what I’m feeling emotionally and what I’m trying to find out. I’m trying to find out what kind of a world am I about to bring a kid into and what does that mean? Alex [his wife] was kind of against it in the beginning, but especially after I got home and she was like, “Absolutely. We have to have it.” We weren’t sure if it was going to be in the film, but we should shoot it and see.

Q: You put your house in the movie. You’ve got your son in the movie. You put so much of your life on screen that people must feel that they know you.

A: What you see on screen is me. It’s not like the camera goes off and I’m like “[Expletive] these people!” What you see is what you get. That’s me. People come up to me. They see how I am on television, which is how I am in real life. People are generally very nice. No one comes up and throws tomatoes at me.

Q: Has notoriety been an adjustment for you? Does seeing yourself on screen make you more self-conscious?

A: I say more stupid things when the camera’s not on, maybe that’s it. I’m not very self-conscious. A lot of filmmakers ask me, “I want to make a movie. What should I do?” It doesn’t matter what it is, if you’re writing it or you want to make a doc or go on a personal journey to find something out. Whatever it is, you gotta be true to you. You gotta be true to your voice. That’s what I try to do and I think that’s what comes off in everything that I’ve done so far.

Q: Do you swap ideas and tips with other documentary filmmakers?

A: Oh yeah. Completely. I just had dinner with Eugene Jarecki the other night. Alex Gibney had a party and I’m psyched for him that he got nominated again. There’s a lot of people that I have so much respect for, like Jarecki and Gibney are such smart filmmakers. These guys are geniuses. There’s people like Steve James, who I idolize. Errol Morris. Michael Moore. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t even have a career. I wouldn’t be able to put movies in theaters. That guy really did blow up the doors.

Q: What kind of tips do you give each other? Especially the other on-camera documentarians.

A: I haven’t talked to Michael about this, but with other filmmakers we’ll just talk about form and function. We’ll just talk about why things work or don’t work in movies. Most of the time I’ll ask somebody’s opinion what they think about an idea. But more often than not, we don’t like to talk about our own movies, we like to talk about everyone else’s movies.

Q: At what point in the planning process for “Where in the World” did your wife get pregnant?

A: About two or three months into pre-production.

Q: Was there some question of whether you would put the trip off?

A: Yes. There was a lot of talk about if we shouldn’t do this. This could potentially be a very bad idea. This could be a very dangerous idea. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that it was important for me to do it now, because I was so affected by the news of her being pregnant and this responsibility. There is a tremendous responsibility that comes along with that and I thought that this film and this journey was a great way to address that and a great way to address this whole myth of Osama.

Q: So when you came back, she was a couple months away from delivering?

A: When I came back, she was a couple weeks away from delivering.

Q: Lots of people have pointed out the video game structure of the film and the use of machinima. How did that idea get added?

A: The whole idea that we say in the beginning about why haven’t we found him? Maybe if he’s alive, he’s a 9-foot-tall bionic ninja with X-ray vision and the power of flight. And in the video game sequence, that’s what he becomes. I’m somebody who loves video games. I’m a child of the video game generation. I remember when the Atari 2600 first came out, and I had “Pong” when I was a little, little kid when my brother got it. That’s been a part of my life my whole life. And it’s been a part of my friends’ lives. From every platform that comes out, from Nintendos to Segas, to Collecovision I had back in high school, to Atari 2600s, to Atari 5200s to Xbox to Xbox 360 to Playstation 1, 2 and 3. This is something I love. I love video games. It’s a big part of our world and our popular culture and I really wanted that cultural element to be part of this movie, to help tell this story. To make it accessible. And I think it does. There were two girls who came up to me and told me how much they loved the movie and how much fun it was. I don’t want to make movies for certain people. I want to make movies that transcend generation gaps and that are for a lot of people.

Q: You’re very much a showman. This movie could have been a grim slog through the worst countries on Earth, but it seems like you must have been working overtime to make it accessible and fun.

A: You try a lot of things. Some of them work and some of them don’t. One of the things I want to do with the DVD for this is show stuff that didn’t work.

Q: How many cuts do you have of a movie?

A: Oh my gosh. Well, the first cut that we showed to Harvey Weinstein in July of last year. Then we would have internal cuts about every two weeks. And we would show him a cut about every six weeks. Dozens and dozens and dozens of cuts of this movie. And the whole time you’re working on it, it’s “Well this is too fun. We need to bring a little more serious information back into it.” Or “This isn’t fun enough. This is a little too dry. How can we fun it up?” That’s a dialogue that constantly happens between myself, Jeremy Chilnick, who was my co-writer and our editors. We would sit and talk for hours about scenes and elements and we’d bring in the graphic artists and animators and talk about how would we do this. What do you guys think? One of the things I try to do is surround myself with really smart, talented people and let them do their job. And let them come up with ideas. The one thing I’ve learned as director is that being a director also means letting other people bring something to the creative process. I don’t want to steer everything. Everybody on this movie generated some sort of an idea or element that made it infinitely better.
[source]