The Real Price of a Big Mac

But doesn't it boil down to individual choice?

I think there is a level of personal choice. In the film it's not like I'm saying fast food is the sole problem. In the film we examine a multitude of issues that cause the obesity epidemic, personal choice being one of them. McDonald's every day feeds 46 million people worldwide--that's more than the entire population of Spain. You're talking about one company that has a huge impact. I think that sure you can argue personal choice, but on the same point, if there aren't healthy menu options available, and there isn't nutrition information available to people who come there to make a choice about what they're going to eat, you're really limiting your argument on some levels. Their marketing and advertising from the very beginning really targets kids. Children from such an early age are just so washed over with the idea of the happy clown and the Happy Meals and, oh, look, there's a playground, let's go there for fun. I know kids whose parents have never taken them to McDonald's, but if you ask them what their favorite restaurant is and they'll say McDonald's--and they've never even been in one! That's pretty scary.

This sounds a lot like Eric Schlosser's book "Fast Food Nation." Did you read that?

"Fast Food Nation" is a tremendous book and was definitely something that we referenced while we were making the film. Eric Schlosser and I were e-mailing one another back and forth but never really connected, and that was not really an influence on my doing the film. I read "Fast Food Nation" when it first came out two years ago, and it's a great book.

And you had this idea over Thanksgiving in 2002?

Yeah, what an amazing year. From the time that I got the idea to us getting into the Sundance Film Festival was exactly one year. I came up with the idea on Thanksgiving. And it was the day after Thanksgiving, I was in Oregon with my girlfriend [Alex Jamieson] at her parent's house. We were leaving her parents' house, and I got the call on the phone from [Sundance's senior programmer] Trevor Groth, and he says, "Congratulations, you got into the festival." It's like, "Oh, my God, are you kidding me?" This is everything that you work for, especially in America where this is the marquee film festival; this is the top. It doesn't get any better than this in the United States. It's an amazing feeling to have your film viewed as something that people believe in and ever since we've come here the film has been so well received from reviewers to just regular folks. God, it's been such a ride.