Morgan Spurlock’s latest documentary will be available for free on more than 50 platforms including cable and VOD services. It is a series of 20 short films about the economy, kicked off by Spurlock’s Cave-O-Nomics, which explains the economy in simple caveman terms, with literal cavemen trading spears and meat.
The collaboration between Spurlock’s Cinelan and Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Productions is now available and we got to speak with Spurlock about the economy and look back at the legacy of his documentary films.
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CraveOnline: What is the biggest change that has to happen to get the economy back on track?
Morgan Spurlock: One of the biggest things is what these films are doing. I think educating people about this works is a great place to start. We live in a country where most of us don’t read The Wall Street Journal everyday or watch CNBC or Fox Business or any of these channels that teach us about how the market works or read economic textbooks. I think that having something like this, that can start you to demystify the economy in a way that lets us all have a much clearer understanding of it is a fantastic place to begin.
Cave-O-nomics really lays out how the economy was built from goods and services, but when so much of the economy is based on stock and trade and investment, is that too much of an abstraction? There’s no tactile thing to analyze there.
I think that part of what you hope, and what I hope comes out of all of these films is larger conversations. One of the things that these will continue to do in real time, and especially on the success of this first launch, we have the ability to add more and more films to the series. We have the ability to continue to add different talking points around them, that different economic advisors like the people that are a part of this, answer questions for people who are tuning in or have additional questions.
Some of those things I think can be very abstract in the beginning. I think setting up the basics of a very ground floor level of economics and economic systems is a better place to begin than starting to really educate people on trading and a deeper level of the market system.
I feel like whenever I say that stock markets or investments are an abstraction and I want no part of it, someone always tells me, “You have to participate or you’re throwing your money away.” Can I say, “No, I don’t. I don’t have to invest. I can keep my money and hold onto it for later.”
You could, but I think more of us participate in that than we know. If you put money into any kind of a retirement account or a 401(k), you’re participating in that. I think that’s what a lot of people don’t realize. They think, “I’m just putting my money in this retirement account” [but] that is also investing in the stock market.
I tell people constantly when they’re talking about these retirement accounts or where they’re putting their money, “You need to see where you’re putting your money. You need to ask questions. You need to understand the type of things they’re investing in and why they’re investing in them.” A lot of us want to have this idea that someone else is taking care of it and somebody else has your best interest in mind, but at the end of the day no one has your best interest in mind but you. So if you don’t look out for you, no one else will.
“In a few more years, the United States will just be a third world country and we’ll start producing again, so that’s the upside.”
I’m aware of that and I think the only stories I hear about 401(k)s are the ones that go bankrupt and people lose their pension. Wouldn’t it just be better to hold onto our own money?
It would until the point as you saw in the film, where suddenly your money doesn’t have value. Well, then where do I put my money? Because I had this money that once had value but somebody now tells me it doesn’t have any value. Then what do you do? Then where do you invest? Where do you keep your funds? I think you’re caught in a Catch-22. I think the more that you can start to understand the system and how the system works, the better you’ll protect yourself.
It reminds me of The Greatest Movie Ever Sold and it occurs to me that our economy has become all about sales. If you need more money, you need to sell more. Ultimately, there’s going to be no one left to sell to, is there?
No, the beauty of that economy is in a few more years, the United States will just be a third world country and we’ll start producing again, so that’s the upside. [Laughs.]
It becomes a problem that I’m seeing where some businesses are starting to rely on free labor. It’s fine if you’re doing an internship to get a foot in the door, but if everyone’s doing it for free, there’s no value to the actual work anymore. Is that a problem?
You also get what you pay for. You can only get the best quality and the best goods when you’re actually paying somebody for a job well done. What I think I find to be really interesting now is that there’s a lot of insourcing happening in the United States. You’re not outsourcing it to third world countries. You’re outsourcing it out to countries where they have much cheaper labor practices, but you’re insourcing to somewhere in the United States that has a much lower cost of living than, say, your own state.
Like, where I live in New York City has a much higher minimum wage, but I can outsource it to a place like North Carolina or West Virginia or somewhere else that has a much higher cost of living in the community, and I’m already saving thousands if not millions of dollars, depending on what you’re manufacturing. I find things like that to be really fascinating.
It’s also illustrated in Cave-O-Nomics that if you make a product, you can sell it to all the people who want it. But if you trick the people who don’t want it into buying it too, then you can sell even more.
Hence why everybody suddenly bought Furbies a couple years ago. I think that there is an excitement of market demand that people suddenly want to have what everybody else has in keeping up with the Joneses. Whether it be a new iPhone or a Tesla, depending on what price point you’re living at within the market system, there are things that are going to be made that you ultimately want to have one because it is the cool thing to have.
Are there other subjects that you might want to tackle in We The Economy?
I think there are so many possibilities of how this can expand. What you hope is that this first round of 20 films has positive reception that we believe they’ll have. We had so many people helping to support us and getting the films out there to be seen. 55 plus partner distributors that are helping to get the films out. That’s huge. It’s unheard of. It’s never been done before in the history of film distribution, to have this many people who, from day one, have helped us create this day and date on steroids. What you hope is that it opens the door for more coopetition like this and for more opportunities for not only filmmakers, but short films.
Is this a new economy in itself?
Completely. The beauty of this whole film series is when we first came up with it with Paul, is we weren’t having to chase a return on investment. We weren’t having to chase getting our money back. I think if you could make films within that world where you keep the price point low, you’re putting them out much more as an entertaining/public service vs. trying to chase a profit, then I think you can have a great impact. You can have a much greater good impact while also doing well.
Cave-O-Nomics is the very basics of the economy and others explore income inequality and seemingly ground for concepts that everyone needs to be aware of. Do you think there’s a next level Economy 201 that the next round of shorts can tackle?
I think that would be an incredible thing to get to do. Hopefully we can.
Did you approach Cave-O-Nomics like you do your feature films, where you might play a role and it mixes live-action and animation?
Yeah, the original idea was I wasn’t going to be in it, but when I asked John Steele Gordon to play one of the cavemen, he came back to me and said, “Well, you’re going to be in this with me, right?” So I couldn’t quite ask one of our economic advisors to be a caveman without myself also being a caveman. That’s why I said, “Yes, I will definitely be in it.”
Did you ask all your comedian friends to play roles too?
When I got Judah Friedlander to come in and agree to do a cameo, I was pretty excited but I was more happy that I was able to give all of these incredible economists little bit roles, from Adam Davidson to Annalyn Kurtz. These are some smart economic brains that we got to do cameos.
“It’s never been done before in the history of film distribution.”
What’s going on for you in the feature world?
We’ve got a couple big feature length projects that we’re prepping and we’ll hopefully go into production on, and hopefully we’ll knock out a scripted narrative sometime in the next 12 months as well, knock on wood.
Was your goal always to do scripted movies as well as documentaries?
I don’t know how many doc filmmakers grow up as kids watching TV saying, “Gosh, I can’t wait to grow up and make documentary films.” There probably are. There probably are some that from a young age do that. For me, I kind of fell into making documentary films. I fell in love with it in my 20s. I fell in love watching them and started making short ones. So for me, I always wanted to be a narrative filmmaker and docs just became where I got to make movies and tell great stories and didn’t have to chase millions of dollars in financing. For me, it was a very exciting middle ground to tell amazing stories that could reach audiences in a different way.
Might you appear in the narrative film?
Probably not. I will probably stay very much behind the camera on that one.
Since Supersize Me, it seems a lot of filmmakers and authors have picked up the reigns to really explore what the food industry is doing. Has that been gratifying to see that level of education expand?
I think there’s so much continuing to happen in the world of food, food manufacturing and food consumption. I think there’s been some really powerful films made. I think there’s room to make more, so hopefully that will just continue.
But have people changed their habits and gotten healthier?
I think some people have. I’m stopped every time I get on a plane or go through an airport, by some guy who’s either working for the TSA or just wandering through a terminal, who pulls out a picture of himself from his wallet, who wants to show me what he looked like 10 years ago before Supersize Me came out and he lost 50 lbs., 100 lbs. I think there’s a world of people who changed their habits but I think there’s still a world of people who could do infinitely better.
Has there been any long term effects of Greatest Movie Ever Sold? It seems like the industry is still dominated by big blockbusters.
I think the greatest thing that happened on the heels of that film is just awareness. The number of people now who recognize when they’re being sold something or when they’re being pitched something under the guise of entertainment on behalf of a brand is huge. That film did a tremendous job of pulling back the curtain and making us as consumers and as viewers much smarter.
As I said earlier, it made me aware of just how everyone is trying to sell me something, and I just want to say no. Hopefully my saying no is a start.
That’s right, that’s where you have to begin. It has to start with you.
How do you look back on Where in the World is Osama bin Laden after Seal Team Six got him?
A few years ago, when they finally got him, the number of people who called and said, “Oh my God! You were right, he was in Pakistan.” It was like, “Great.” It was a tremendous amount of vindication that happened out of that film. I’m proud of that movie. I think that that film reached a lot of people who needed to be reached. It started a lot of conversations that needed to be had and I think it’s one of those where in time, it continues to show people around the world that there are a tremendous amount of people in a lot of these countries, especially now as we’re seeing every day through all of this ISIS coverage, there are moderates out there who are preaching the same things as a lot of these other people.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
