Why Fast Food Nation became a drama instead of a documentary
Eric Schlosser feared a documentary of his 2001 bestseller would be softened to win television money. So he and producer Jeremy Thomas took it to Richard Linklater, who turned the exposé of the American meat industry into an ensemble drama about a burger chain, a meatpacking plant and the people caught between them.
Linklater and Schlosser wrote the screenplay together, borrowing the linked-stories structure of Winesburg, Ohio, a book both admired. The result follows several lives in the fictional town of Cody, Colorado. Don Anderson, marketing chief for the Mickey's chain and creator of its best-selling Big One, learns that independent tests have found faecal contamination in the meat and visits the Uni-Globe plant, where he is shown only spotless areas. A former supplier tells him production speed means safety rules are ignored, and a company executive admits knowing about the problem without caring.
Parallel stories widen the lens. Amber, a bright teenage Mickey's worker, falls in with young activists who break open a cattle pen, only to find the animals will not leave. Raúl, Sylvia and her sister Coco, undocumented migrants from Mexico, take jobs at the plant; after Raúl is hurt in a workplace accident, Sylvia is pushed onto the slaughter floor. Filming took place in Austin, Houston, Colorado Springs and Mexico, where the meatpacking scenes were shot.
The film premiered in competition at Cannes on 19 May 2006, earning Linklater a Palme d'Or nomination, and opened on 321 American screens that November. It grossed about $2.2 million worldwide, though DVD rentals brought in $6.44 million in seven weeks. Critics split. A. O. Scott of The New York Times praised it as a rich, dialectical critique of American life rather than a simple polemic, while Rotten Tomatoes' consensus judged the book more effective than the movie. Variety found its call to arms sympathetic but surprisingly mild, and the film later won Best Feature Film at the Genesis Awards.
Source: Fast Food Nation (film)
