Fast Food Nation
Spit on your burger's the least of your worries
BY AMANDA WITHERELL
Tuesday November 14, 2006
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Book lovers always lament movie adaptations: they rarely deliver. But Fast Food Nation, like a swift injection of growth hormone, adds flesh and character to the very real problems of where America's food comes from and the different ways it's absolutely mishandled. The feature film is based on the 2001 nonfiction book by journalist Eric Schlosser, who helped director Richard Linklater finesse the screenplay into something of a morality tale tracing the true origins of a Mickey's hamburger.

Following the tangled strands of food production and consumption, the film jumps between the perspectives of exploited immigrant workers clad in Hazmat suits in a meat processing plant and Greg Kinnear playing the hapless corporate hack trying to figure out just how in the heck his company's Big Ones are coming up contaminated on the buns. There's a predictable arc to the narrative, most noticeable in teenage character Amber (Ashley Johnson), a bright-eyed Mickey's employee who gets a see-the-light lesson from her ex-activist uncle (Linklater favorite Ethan Hawke). Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine) as the apathetic burger flipper is the perfect antidote to Amber's painful optimism, serving up some old food service clich©s.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T


But his spit in the burger isn't the biggest "eww-gross" moment.

Linklater, a vegetarian, wasn't able to get permission to shoot in an American meat processing plant, so the movie uses real footage from a Mexican one that agreed to be filmed because Schlosser's tale casts a true light on America's despotic immigration policies. The scenes of women trading sex for jobs at the border-town plant become very believable when juxtaposed with images of real-time slaughter. Schlosser said workers at a Greeley, Colo., plant whom he interviewed for the book criticized the movie after a screening in Denver — the Mexican plant looked too sterile and unrealistic compared to where they work.

It's been 100 years since Upton Sinclair's The Jungle inspired laws to reform meat packing plants. By turning journalism into fiction and translating that from print to real, stomach-turning imagery, Fast Food Nation once again questions America's massive appetite. I still haven't eaten meat since I saw the scene in which a cow's skin is stripped off its body with a chain and a winch, a process more befitting an offshore oil rig than a slaughterhouse. (Amanda Witherell)

FAST FOOD NATION

Opens Fri/15 in Bay Area theaters

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www.foxsearchlight.com/fastfoodnation

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( 1 comment | Comment on this article )
fastpaydayloans on Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 11:31 PM
We are lucky enough that we have access to food, fast payday loans, water, and other resources right at our fingertips. I might even say that we are spoiled rotten. In other places in the world, the people are not so fortunate. In Haiti, instead of mothers choosing what to feed their children, the mothers are choosing which children to feed. Starvation is a worldwide problem, but in America we are fortunate enough to have an ample food supply. That’s not to say that we do not have food issues of our own. America is the fast food nation. The American mantra is cheap convenience, and fast food restaurants embrace that mantra. The increased consumption of fast food has fueled the American obesity epidemic, and America is the fattest it has ever been. American families would be better off eating healthier, more nutritious foods found at the grocery store. However, many American families can not afford the wholesome foods at the grocery store. While eating has become a sort of an epidemic, eating healthily has become a luxury in the United States. Even though healthy foods are expensive, your health, the health of your family, and the health of the world food supply are worth the extra cost. It can be tempting to indulge on fast food on a daily basis, especially when your budget is tight and the value menu is calling your name. Plus, a grocery bill can seem like a big expense. That’s why when you need to feed your family healthy food you can count on fast payday loans to help cover grocery expenses until your next payday.

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