Morgan Spurlock: The Greatest TED talk ever Sold
With humour and persistence, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock dives into the hidden but influential world of brand marketing, on his quest to make a completely sponsored film about sponsorship. (And yes, onstage naming rights for this talk were sponsored too). By whom and for how much? He’ll tell you.
ABOUT TED
TED is a small Non Profit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment and Design. They make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted. Here at PLO.com I repost them for your convenience. All videos found in this section have previously appeared in the Major MindStylers section on the frontpage of my website. Enjoy.
ABOUT Morgan Spurlock
“Though it was as high-concept as any reality-TV show, Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 film ‘Super Size Me’ was something else entirely: a critique of modern fast-feeding, wrapped in the personal story of a charming, curious host.
And ‘host’ can be taken literally: eating only McDonald’s for 30 days straight, he went into a shocking physical and emotional decline, showing via his own body the truth about junk food.
After this Oscar-nominated doco came Morgan’s three-seasons-long unscripted TV show, 30 Days, based on another life-hack: Send a person to live, for 30 days, inside another worldview. Stories from 30 Days are human, engaging, surprising: An anti-immigrant activist warms to a tight-knit family of border-crossers; an outsourced US engineer meets the Indian engineer who holds his old job; a former pro football player spends 30 days navigating the world in a wheelchair.
In 2008, Morgan released ‘Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden’ about his month-long trek through Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Palestine following leads and interviewing people along the way. (In an interview, he guessed he got within 50 miles of Osama before winding up the hunt.)
He was also part of a group-filmed version of ‘Freakonomics’. He wrote a book about his fast-food odyssey, called ‘Don’t Eat This Book’ while his wife, vegan chef Alex Jamieson, wrote a bestseller about the eight-week cleansing diet she put him on after he got super-sized.
His latest film, ‘The Greatest Movie Ever Sold’, dives into the mysterious world of brand sponsorship, a major influence on how pop culture is developed and shared. Almost totally sponsored itself, the film was the first to be sold at Sundance 2011, and, it’s said, made a profit before it even opened. The film debuted in US theatres on April 22, 2011.”
The VIDEO
RELATED
1.Twitter 2. Video Trailer: Freakonomics 3. Book: Supersized: Strange Tales from a Fast-food Culture 4. Book: Don’t Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America
