New Morgan Spurlock documentary will boldly film artisanal products

By Alex McLevy | April 7, 2015 | 5:15pm

Aux Features Film

Last year, we reported that Morgan Spurlock had signed a deal with the Associated Press to create content based on almost anything about which the AP has ever published a story. Since then, Spurlock’s been busy making movies about the rat population in New York, filming his CNN show Inside Man, and planning to tell the story of the weird colonialist guy in Virginia who stuck a flag in the ground in Africa and claimed it for his daughter. None of these were based on AP stories. (The last one was from a Guardian article, so he’s getting closer.) But now, Spurlock is ready to film his true passion: watching people make stuff and slapping the label “artisanal” on it.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Spurlock is carrying on his tradition of not doing a damn thing with that all-inclusive AP deal, and instead is making a documentary short film that will “look at the master craftsmen behind some of the world’s artisanal products and crafts.” Artisanal, of course, is the term for something that was made by hand, an increasingly rare commodity in this mass-market world of technology and Cool Ranch Doritos that taste just as perfect the one millionth time you eat them as the first. The project is being paid for by ice cream maker Häagen-Dazs, that famously artisanal little crafter of lovingly curated butterfat bombs owned by the mom-and-pop team of General Mills and Nestlé.

The film is not yet titled, but Spurlock sounds enthusiastic. “With this film, I wanted to explore what drives our culture toward artisanal products and crafts, particularly within the food industry,” he said, perhaps adding that last bit after remembering who was paying the bills here. Spurlock then returned to his own artisanal work, patiently developing his film stock out of goat droppings and henna, as his forefathers did before him.

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