‘Super Size Me’ Director Spurlock Goes From Gorging Burgers to Hunting Bin Laden

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.Watch the trailer for Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?