Fast Food Nation
Greg Kinnear, Ethan Hawke

I believe in the theory that as long as you have a big enough glass of water you can eat almost anything. This theory was once put to the test when I was invited over to a couple’s house to eat. They were hippies, one of those return to the earth and eat health kind. It is amazing how much it will appear you ate by just moving the food on your plate around with a fork. I had one little problem with his plan. From a distance the main course resembled a hamburger except I knew they didn’t eat meat. Whatever replaced the meat resembled off-setting shade of yellow-green, the kind of green that was popular with shag carpets in the 1970s, and its can best be described in texture to that of Styrofoam peanuts used in packing material. I bit into it. I wish I had the verbal skills to describe the taste sensation that went through my mouth, but I imagine it was close to the taste of what licking the bottom of a gym locker must be. I reminded myself that it was just like taking a pill, but my gag reflex told me that it was not. I wish I was joking when I say I started sweating as I took a bite and then a large gulp of water. Now, I have never confused with Sir Alec Guinness, but I must have been a great actor that day because the wife looked at me and said, “Tastes just like hamburger, doesn’t it? Bet, you can’t believe it is a veggieburger.” Now people have told me since then that veggieburgers are delicious but I am not going to put that revolver to my head again and take another round. As I was leaving, the wife shoved a doggie bag with five more these patties from hell into my hand and said, “I know how much you loved them and wanted to make sure you could enjoy them throughout the rest of the week.” Driving home like I was transporting nuclear waste, I tried to figure out what I was going to do with my doggie bag. I thought about pitching them out the window, but that would be littering. Finally, I decided to give them to my dog. Getting home, I dropped all five into her bowl. The dog walked over to her dish, smelled them, looked at me, and turned around to lay back down. Over the course of the next week, I watched my pooch eat around and underneath those veggieburger. For a dog that drank out of the toilet and ate dirt on occasion, my darling had too much self-respect, or maybe common sense, to eat those things.
Anyone who has ever read Eric Schlosser’s 2001 book, Fast Food Nation, had the same reaction to eating at a fast food franchise. Much like Upton Sinclair, Schlosser took a muckraking approach to his examination of the fast food industry. He looked at a variety of ways that this aspect of society has changed our lives, and not for the better. Our fast food culture arose with our embrace of the automobile as the quintessential American form of transportation. Among the areas that he covered is how the fast food corporations start working on children early. Thirty percent of commercials geared towards children involve fast food. Considering the average child watches 21 hours of television a week, fast food corporations spend as almost as much time as their parents do with them. Psychologists hired by the industry work at figuring out the best way of reaching their potential customer as early in life as possible. Ronald McDonald is one of the most recognizable icons of childhood. They have wormed their way in to high schools. Even though every educator knows that a balanced lunch is one of the best ways to ensure the best scholastic results and avoid discipline problems, 30 percent of schools now offer fast food in their cafeterias. When though pop machines are not to be used during school hours, due to corporate tax cuts, the fast food corporations and soda manufactories make large contribution to schools to help pay their bills, and shockingly, superintendents and principals look the other way. Schlosser then turns his attention to the meat packing industry, not only its uncleanness and low safety standards for employees, but also its wide spread use of immigrant labor. He takes the reader in the laboratory to show the chemicals that are in the food and then out to the third world feedlots where the massive herds are kept much to the expense of the local population. Not only has the industry helped contribute to our ever expanding waistline, but as they have expanded globally they have helped contribute to obesity in places like China and Japan.
Given that Schlosser’s book was a best seller and a huge success when it was serialized in Rolling Stone, it was easy to predict that Hollywood would come knocking. On the surface, one would have thought it would have been perfect for a documentary like what was done with the books Hunting for the President, The Corporation, and The Republican War On Science. Instead like Malcom Gladwell’s Blink, it has been transformed into a fictional feature film. It is probably because it covers much of the same ground as Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, which was the fourth most successful documentary ever, and documentaries make peanuts compared to what plays in the multiplex. The studio turned to one of the best independent directors in America, Richard Linklater. A who’s who of indie talent appear before the camera including the likes of Greg Kinnear, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ethan Hawke, Luiz Guzman, Wilmer Valderama, Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Willis, and Avril Lavgine. Kinnear plays an executive at a corporation called Mickey’s Fast Food Restaurant. (I wonder what restaurant chain the name might be an elusion to.) In the course of his duties, he comes across all of the aspects of Schlosser’s book.
Linklater is known for being attracted to strange and unusual projects. This film is no exception. The acting and direction are exceptional, but I don’t know if this is a film for mainstream audiences. It clearly has an agenda and will be like raw meat for the conservatives of hate radio. It is not a fair look at the fast foot industry, nor does it claim to be. It is biased and perfect for the art house crowd that will go to it. Watching the film I have become more impressed with Kinnear who had taken a lot of risks as an actor since leaving the host duties at Talk Soap. He could have gone the Tim Allen route, done safe projects. Instead he has taken a good share of risky roles that might not increase the size of his paycheck, but will be talked about years after he retires. He does not chew up the scenery like a Johnny Depp or Nicolas Cage. In all of his films he comes off as a lightweight, likable, but smarmy. In other words, the perfect actor to portray a corporate executive. All in all this film makes you want to serve up a big old veggieburger.

Verdict: An Art House Flim