After seeing the movie, I felt the same need to talk to people about it as when I saw "Bowling for Columbine." What do you think about being compared to Michael Moore?
Well, first off, that a movie would make you want to talk -- that's what needs to happen right now. There needs to be more dialogue, because we've become completely complacent in our culture about how we eat. Eating has become mechanical. It's just, Oh I'm hungry, I'll go in here and eat this, and we don't think about it. We don't think about where our food comes from or what it's doing to our bodies.
And as far as being compared to Michael Moore -- that's incredible, what an honor to be compared to that guy. This is my first movie, and I just tried to make a good movie.
Are you surprised at the way the film has taken off?
It's been like wildfire what's happened. I think it's because people want change, and they're tired of what's going on. There have been so many news stories, and I think the movie opens it up a little more, in a way that makes it very accessible. We have, in the film, created something that really talks about this incredible epidemic in our country.
With the success of Michael Moore's films and others, it seems like there is a growing trend of left-leaning, progressive, anti-corporate documentaries. Why is that?
I think that documentary is your last bastion for any truth today. It's the one place where you have no media conglomerate telling you what to say, the one place where people aren't going to put a vice on opinion and on fact. You can put something out that takes a stand and says, Listen, you need to know this.
Whereas it's like watching "Entertainment Tonight" when you watch the 10 o'clock news. What happened to the news? Didn't we actually use to get news here?
Do you still eat fast food?
I had a burger yesterday. I don't eat much fast food, because there are so many better places to get burgers.
What's your favorite thing on the McDonald's menu?
Big Macs. Big Macs are so good. I will smell a Big Mac, and immediately my mouth will water and I will crave it. I'm like one of Pavlov's dogs. But I can't eat them now. I can't stomach their food -- it doesn't even taste like food to me. If I eat their french fries they taste like smoked plastic to me. They taste like the most artificial, manufactured, long, yellow thing. And their Cokes -- if I drink a fountain Coke from there, up and down my nasal passages for hours afterward I'll smell this chemical aroma.
I've become so hypersensitive to their food that my body just instantly picks up on everything artificial in it, which is a lot of it. It's probably been about a year now since I've eaten there. Though to this day I'll smell it and I'll want it.
What was the scariest thing about the whole "Super Size Me" experience for you?
You know, of all the crazy things that happened to me and as bad as I felt, the most frightening thing of all is the school lunch program. We feed our kids terribly in schools. It's atrocious. When it comes to the lunchroom, they might as well be eating in a 7-Eleven in a lot of these schools.
Yeah, I went to a high school that was one of the first to have a McDonald's in the cafeteria.
Oh my god. See, that's a disturbing thing. That's completely fucked up.