SuperSized: The Good, The Bad, and The Mickey D

It was just another morning in the naked city: clinking spoons, crunching cereal, the galumphing sound of a teenager in enormous basketball shoes heading down the hall to the door.

The door slammed. Then it was just us. "We're going to a movie premiere," said the wife of the Green Man.

"Really?" was the tepid reply. What the Green Man thought, however, was this: Holy ****! Brad Pitt! Angelina Jolie! Cool!

The discussion—that is, the wife—picked up her bowl and moved into the kitchen. The Green Man followed her, because he knows that everything significant in modern life now takes place in the kitchen, except reproduction, and even there you see exceptions: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Fatal Attraction....

But those are movies. This is life. And the Green Man wasn't thinking about reproduction, but about going to a movie premiere. What am I going to wear?

"I'm really excited," said the wife. She was writing on the calendar now. That meant it was real. The Green Man adjusted his thinking accordingly, getting down to the nuts and bolts of what one wore to a movie premiere. Pants. Belt. Shirt. Shoes...

Because this was the naked city, the Green Man did not have to bother with picking color matches. There is only one color: black. The un-color. Cool, sleek, sexy, and if you can avoid light-colored hors d'oeuvres, and the batter-fried calamari with fra diavolo sauce, the getup doesn't need cleaning for weeks, months, even years of movie premieres.

Hello, Angelina. Hey, Brad. Dude, listen, did you know there's already a script for a sequel of Troy? I got my hands on a rare copy if you'd care to take a look...

"He'll be there, too. Morgan Spurlock. I can't wait to see what he looks like."

The Green Man smiled indulgently. He wasn't threatened. He would let the wife have her little fantasy about this Morgan Spurlock. It's not as if she were going on about Morgan Freeman. Or Ashton what's-his-face, Demi's little twerp.

"I mean, can you imagine what a diet of nothing but McDonald's would do to you?"

"You know these stars," said the Green Man, suavely. "Onscreen they're like gods, offscreen they binge and blow-up like zeppelins."

"Yeah, but he did it for the camera. Nothing. But. McDonald's." She shuddered, then sauntered out of the kitchen, tossing a last hand grenade over her shoulder. "Thirty straight days of McDonald's, so he called it Super Size Me."

That afternoon one of the Greenfellas called, that is to say, a male friend who has either married or entered into a relationship with an environmentally conscious babe, or woman (probably the latter).

"So?" challenged the friend. The Green Man heartily rejoindered. The friend counter-filed. There were grunts of agreement. Now for the news: "I'm going to a movie premiere," said the Green Man.

"Oh god. Heather Graham is such a fox. No, let me guess. The pouty girl with the pearl lips—Scarlett Harry? Am I warm? No?" A pause. "Give me a clue. The title."

"Super Size Me."

"Ohmigod...you don't mean...the Angelina?"

"It's about McDonald's."

"Oh, okay, more of a Drew Barrymore vehicle. That's cool."

"Not even. It's about the food."

"You're going to a movie premiere about McDonald's and it's about the food? Boy, did you ever pull the short straw." There was a long brotherly silence of commiseration. "So, what are you going to wear?"

"A raincoat."

"In case you hurl?"

"You got it."

The premiere was on a night when the "It" girls are home watching the Hilton sisters and the "hot guys" are watching The Donald fire other hot guys. The Green Man pondered his wardrobe for all of five minutes. There was nothing to get worked up about. An environmentalist premiere about a guy eating McDonald's meant either the Michael Moore look or the Lyle Lovett look, aloha shirt with baseball cap or levi jacket and jeans.

Or so he thought, before the wife performed an emergency fashionoscopy. Later, he was glad she did. There was a crowd of a couple hundred stretching half-way down the block. They were of all ages, with many mostly younger people in interesting, angular clothing; the piercing level was low, and what there was seemed tasteful. The Birkenstock level was nil. When the Green Man eavesdropped on conversations in line, he heard people speak copiously and without notes about offgassing, outsourcing, organic labeling, globalism, obesity, and genetically manipulated food.

"Hey, there are a lot of us here," the Green Man said. "And we look pretty good."

After introductory remarks by a disappointingly un-oleaginous studio person, the movie started. From the opening sequence, it was crisp and startling: where you expected predictable sermonizing, Morgan Spurlock came across as an off-kilter, really funny, perky kind of every-guy who was willing to risk everything on a big silly stunt, a sort of every-guy fantasy of living on Mickey D, only the stunt turned out to be life-threatening and horrifying and really funny and best of all, galvanizing for everybody, not just against the McDonald's empire. Morgan Spurlock rocked. He ate for our sins. He hurled. And he directed, too—a major, major multi-tasking talent. You can bet the Green Man kept a tight grip on his wife's elbow.

As the Green Man and his wife walked home, they passed the corner creperie where they had often enjoyed an after-movie treat. He looked at her, she at him. They both nodded, and kept on walking.

The Green Man is a regular Green Guide feature.
© Don Wallace, 2004