 MACDONALD'S, many will recall, was drawn into a media scrum several years ago when Morgan Spurlock hit the airwaves to spruik his gonzo documentary SUPERSIZE ME. This time around, the fast-food juggernaut is stepping up to the pitch to face its critics. The latest anti-MacDonalds push comes courtesy of Richard Linklater and Eric Schlosser, whose 2001 bestseller FAST FOOD NATION was a ground-breaking expose of the economy and ethics of America's fast-food businesses.
In May, a MacDonald's executive agreed to a live debate with Schlosser on the BBC's Newsnight programme, the first time that the company had answered its critics in such a forum, according to the show's presenter (the three segments titled, 'MacDonald's vs Schlosser', is worth looking at on www.yourtube.com here).
That scenario may be repeated when Schlosser arrives in Australia to help promote the film, which debuted at Cannes and opens at Manly Cinemas on October 26th.
The movie plot is as follows: Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear)—a marketing executive at Mickey's Fast Food Restaurant chain, home of 'The Big One'—has a problem. Contaminated meat is getting into the frozen patties of the company's best-selling burger. To find out why, he'll have to take a journey to the dark side of the All-American meal. Leaving the cushy confines of the company's Southern California boardroom for the immigrant-staffed slaughterhouses, teeming feedlots and cookie cutter strip malls of Middle America, what Don discovers is a FAST FOOD NATION of consumers who haven't realized it is they who are being consumed by an industry with a seemingly endless appetite for fresh meat.
Do you think it's a coincidence that MACDONALD'S is running it's Make Your Own Mind Up adverts a few weeks before the release of Fast Food Nation. We certainly dont!
Links:
Movie website Fast Food Nation
MacDonald's website Make Up Your Own Mind
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