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IPFS News Link • Hollywood-Entertainment Industry

Morgan Spurlock, 'Super Size Me' filmmaker, dead at 53

• https://nypost.com, By Lauren Sarner

He died Thursday night from complications of cancer, The Post can confirm.

"It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan," his brother Craig Spurlock told Variety. "Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas and generosity. Today the world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him."

Born in 1970 in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Spurlock graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1993. 

He got his start in the entertainment industry as a playwright, winning awards for his 1999 play "The Phoenix" at the New York Fringe Festival. 

Before rising to fame, he also created and hosted the gonzo web series "Bet You Will," which paid contestants to do outrageous tasks for money, such as eating a full jar of mayonnaise. The show aired on both MTV and the now-defunct Spike. 

His breakout project was his 2004 documentary "Super Size Me," which chronicled the changes to his health when he spent 30 days consuming only McDonald's food. 

"It's a great way to take the edge off a very preachy subject," he told the Guardian in 2004. 

Spurlock was nominated for an Oscar that year, for Best Documentary Feature, and he won the award for best director at the Sundance Film Festival. 

Following that experience, Spurlock told Civil Eats in 2010, "There are great films that are out there that deal with food, [and] I think if there's a way I can help champion some of those other filmmakers, I'd rather do that than go into making another food movie."

"For me, movies have to be something that if you don't [make them], then you are going to go crazy. If you don't tell this story, if you don't put it on a page, if you don't put it on film, then it is literally going to affect your brain from this moment forward," he went on. "There may be something that comes along that kind of strikes me in that way, and if it does, I'll have to tell it."