Interview: Eric Schlosser

Eric Schlosser began his career as a playwright, screenwriter, and fiction author before turning to journalism, a career choice that would lead to his becoming a major name in American culture with the publication of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. The book became an international bestseller, spending over two years on the New York Times bestseller list, and would become a must-read on college campuses (both in and out of the classroom). This weekend, the world saw the premiere of the movie adaptation of Fast Food Nation, co-scripted by Schlosser himself along with Richard Linklater, the film’s director. Diverting from the book’s nonfiction format (a move Linklater personally credits to Schlosser), Fast Food Nation examines America’s fast food industry from the point of view from all levels of the corporate ladder, from the company executives to the teenagers working behind the counter to the immigrant workers manning the meat-processing plants, as well as those caught in the cross-fire. Schlosser is also serving as executive producer on Paul Thomas Anderson’s forthcoming 2007 film There Will Be Blood, adapted from a novel by Upton Sinclair, about the early days of the Texas oil industry, starring Daniel Day Lewis. I had the chance to speak with Schlosser while he was in New York City for the release of Fast Food Nation.

Question: The production notes say Richard Linklater wanted to adapt Fast Food Nation into a film, but he says that you were the one who wanted to adapt the book?
Eric Schlosser: Wow, I got to read those production notes. That would be a good thing to do. I was approached by the British producer Jeremy Thomas, who’d been given the book by Malcolm McLaren, the empressor of the Sex Pistols, and they wanted to do a fictional film based on my book. And I have enormous respect for Jeremy Thomas, I was aware of him, I’d look at the films he had done, the filmmakers he had worked with. And he’s a true independent, and I really enjoyed meeting with him, but I just didn’t see how that could be done. But I agreed to think about it. I’d spent about a year and a half trying to set up a documentary without success, based on the book. And I was on a book tour in Austin, and I reached out to Rick, I wanted to talk to him about the idea. Of my generation, I think there are three or four really important directors, American directors. I think Rick is one. I think Paul Thomas Anderson and Alexander Payne and Steven Soderbergh are others. So I wanted to talk to him about it. So we got together, and we both felt like it could be a good idea, it could be a terrible idea, and it was clear the only way to do it would be to take the title of the book and just put aside the book. But I reached out to him, and I reached out to him just because of how much I liked his work.

Q: Are you pleased with the final product?
ES: I’m really proud of it. I think it’s a very tough film, I think it’s a very uncompromising film. And I think that this film, if you put it in a time capsule and watch it twenty years from now, has a very truthful depiction of what’s happening right now. And the aim was really to take these lives and portray them honestly and truthfully. And I think Rick did that. So yeah, I feel proud of it.

Q: What do you want audiences to walk away from this film with?
ES: There really isn’t one message. There really isn’t…. It’s got people talking about politics, but none of those political speeches are my point of view or Rick’s just thrust in there. They’re all – all the political discussion is supposed to feel totally true to the characters who are saying those lines. And the film doesn’t end with a manifesto, a list of the ten things you must do. I guess… if it opens their eyes, if it makes them think. And if it helps them feel compassioned, if it moves them… about people you normally don’t see in film… that’s great. I mean I’m just fine with thirty different people seeing the film and coming away with thirty different responses. There isn’t one. It’s really not meant as propaganda or agitproper or something like that. We really tried hard for there not to be villains and good guys and heroes. It’s all kind of messy and sloppy. ‘Open your eyes’ – if there’s a message, that would be it, I think.

Q: Were these thoughts you had in mind when you sat down to write the screenplay?
ES: As an investigative journalist I feel like I’m trying to get people to think, I’m trying to take things I think are important that are being hidden from view, that aren’t being discussed and push them out into the mainstream. And I’m not trying to persuade people to agree with every single thing that I believe, at all. I’m trying to write things that are complex, that are provocative, and that make you think. I had a book come out after Fast Food Nation and it had an epigraph – sounds really pretentious, but that’s me [laughs] – it had a Roman quote, in Latin, a Latin quote, and the Latin quote is from Horace and it’s ‘Sapere Aude’ and it basically means, ‘Dare to think.’ Dare to think for yourself. So there’s no one message and there’s no one way anyone should leave the theater. If someone were to go to McDonald’s after reading Fast Food Nation, it’s an informed decision based on knowledge, and that’s okay. What bothers me is living in a kind of denial, and living in a kind of ignorance that can prove to be so deadly and dangerous. So… that’s what I’m trying to do.

Q: When did your interest in fast food start? Were you a fast food customer?
ES: Yeah. I didn’t go to McDonald’s five days a week, but as a journalist out on the road, when I was hungry, that’s where I would go. I mean there’s no way to count how many quarter pounders with cheese, large fries, chocolate shake or large coke that I’ve consumed in my life. And the idea of Fast Food Nation, which I think is an amazing idea, wasn’t mine. That’s one of the reasons I can compliment it so much. I did a big investigative piece for the Atlantic Monthly on migrant farm workers in California. It was about how migrant farm workers are being exploited, it was about illegal immigrants and the whole issue of illegal immigration, it was about all this complicated stuff, where I told this very complicated story through something very simple and concrete, which is the strawberry. Every strawberry you see in the market is carefully picked by hand – and if you want a lot of strawberries, you need a lot of hands. So that was my way of getting into this complicated subject, something we all could relate to. And Jann Wenner, who is the editor of Rolling Stone, read that, and he and the other editors called me into the office and said, ‘We love that. We want you to do for fast food what you’ve done for strawberries. Show us where it comes from, how it’s made, what’s behind the counter.’ And I thought that’s an amazing idea for an article, but at the time I wasn’t even sure I wanted to take the assignment because I like going to McDonald’s, I’m not a gourmet food person at all, I like hamburgers and French fries, and I didn’t want to write something that was a put down of fast food, or a put down of the people that eat fast food, so I told them I’d think about it, and I went into the library and I started reading and researching the fast food industry, and I was amazed. I was amazed at how powerful it had become in a brief matter of time, I was amazed at how it changed food production and changed the food that we eat, I was amazed at how it had this impact on labor policies in work places. But what amazed me most of all was that I’d eaten this food all my life and I didn’t know any of this. And I started talking to friends of mine who were journalists, and some of them are really smart, and they didn’t know any of this either, and that’s when I knew I had to take this assignment and that’s what the beginning was. There’s this whole important world hidden from view that we’re all a part of and we’re not even thinking about. I didn’t set out to bring down Ronald McDonald. I set out, just fascinated and curious with this powerful industry I felt hadn’t been written about and hadn’t received a lot of scrutiny.

Q: Have you gotten any death threats from corporations or anything?
ES: I haven’t gotten death threats, but I have gotten threats and I have had really nasty things said and published about me. When I was on a book tour this spring, and there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that said McDonald’s had a plan to discredit me personally, and by discrediting me, discredit my work. There were people planted in the audience, there were protestors handing out nasty leaflets, there was all kinds of crap put on the internet about me that I felt wasn’t true. I was visiting schools, there were letter-writing campaigns and phone calls made to the schools encouraging them to cancel the visit, saying I was an improper person to speak to children, that I’m un-American and anti-American. And McDonald’s wasn’t openly doing any of this, but there were groups called The Young Americans for Freedom, The Center for Individual Freedom, The Heartland Institute that were doing it. And it felt like it was being orchestrated, and there was a Washington, D.C. lobby firm called the DCI Group that was clearly linked to some of this, that specializes in attacks on people. Some of the people in the DCI Group were involved in swift-boat campaign, and the McDonald’s Corporation uses the DCI Group, so it all seemed like it fit, and it was all really unpleasant. I mean it didn’t ruin my life, but it was definitely unpleasant. I’m criticizing this company’s business practices, and you should be able in this country to criticize companies without – we see what’s happening with Hewlett Packard in the last few months. Hewlett Packard was getting the phone records of journalists, going through the garbage of journalists, trying to plant spies at The Wall Street Journal. This is incredible. I never say the executives at McDonald’s are bad people, I never say that they are trying to harm their customers, I just disagree with some of their business practices. And even in the film I think we try to portray all these people as human beings who are caught up in the system.

Q: You started off your career working as a screenwriter and working in fiction before moving to investigative journalism, is this film your career kind of coming full circle? Are you interested in doing another film, working on another film?
ES: It’s really been a great experience, it really has. I had a play produced – I started out as a playwrightt – and I had a play produced a few years ago in London, and that was amazing. It’s just… there’s all kinds of writing, and I feel very fortunate now that I’ve been able to do different kinds. But I’ve been working on a book on prisons for years, and that is… come November 17th when this film is released, it’s all prisons, all the time, for me. It’s just that I’ve got to finish that book, I’m totally determined to finish that book. I worked for a film company in New York, I had the beginnings of a career as a screenwriter, and I left that to do journalism because I saw firsthand how film really is a director’s medium, and I’ve no desire to be a director, and I have friends that are screenwriters who are paid very well, but their work is changed by the producer’s cousin’s mistress, you know? That’s how it works. I’m the executive producer of a film that’s going to come out in the next year, I’ve been transcendentally involved in that. But primarily I think I am going to continue writing nonfiction, and after I’m done writing the prison book, I don’t know, but I’m not going to be a screenwriter, primarily be a screenwriter. This was because Rick wanted me to be involved, and his work process is so atypical from any Hollywood director, any Hollywood production. He is really, truly collaborative, not just with me, but the way he works with actors is in the whole spirit of collaboration. I’m just very lucky to be able to write about what I care about and get work and get paid.

Q: How close are you to finishing your book on prisons?
ES: Hopefully…. Someone said they read an interview with me from like three years ago where I said I was almost done [laughing] and that’s really disturbing. Really disturbing. I’ve spent a lot of time since Fast Food Nation came out trying to be an activist on certain issues that are important, like food safety and obesity and protecting children from marketing, and trying to help illegal immigrants and I’m calling an end to that. Now I’m just finishing my prison book. And I really hope it comes out in the next year and a half or so. I think the subject is amazingly important. I can’t say my book is going to be great, but I know I sleep soundly at night about the subject I’m writing about and I care about, and so that’s my next thing that I… it’s on my list of things to do: Finish Prison Book, Number 1, starting November 17th.’

Q: Does it have a title?
ES: It doesn’t have a title. I have a subtitle I like, but I don’t have a title. The subtitle is, ‘How the Land of the Free Became the Nation Behind Bars.’ Because we have more people in prison than any society in history. But I don’t have a title.

Q: What prompted you to write Chew on This?
ES: When Fast Food Nation was finished and I was getting it ready for publication, I hired a fact-checker from The New Yorker to go through the whole manuscript and literally attack every assertion of fact in the book as though he was working for a fast food company or a meat packing company. And I just wanted everything in the book to be right. I wanted it for my own ego reasons to be right, because I like being right, but I also couldn’t afford to be wrong. I couldn’t afford to be sued, and if there were serious mistakes in the book, even if I wasn’t sued, the industry could use those mistakes to try and discredit the whole book, which I felt had a solid footing. Anyway, I did another book and I hired him again as a fact-checker, his name is Charles Wilson, and his family has a small children’s book company, and he’s grown up around children’s books. So a couple of years ago he said to me, ‘You know, there should be a children’s book of Fast Food Nation, because the people who really need this information aren’t able to read the book, and they’re being so heavily targeted by these companies that there should be a book for kids 11, 12 years old that has his information.’ And I thought, ‘That sounds like a really good idea, why don’t you help me with it.’ So he went out and did a bunch of new reporting and went to Singapore and did all this stuff, and I did some new reporting, and that’s the story. I mean I never set out to be a children’s book writer at all, but it seemed like this could be an interesting thing to do.

Q: Do you think you would do something like that again? A children’s book on prisons?
ES: [laughs] I don’t see it. Maybe never say never, but I don’t see it.

Q: What’s your favorite part of the film, favorite scene in the film?
ES: Well, you say that and three come to mind. And if you asked tomorrow, three different would come to mind. This is like an impulsive, impulsive reaction. And now it’s four, so I’ve got to stop, I’ll just talk. The aerial shot of the feedlot I think is just beautiful. The scene with Greg Kinnear and Bruce Willis, which is a really long scene of dialogue you don’t really get in films anymore. The image of Wilmer on the couch as Catalina’s going off to work. Just that scene, and the way he plays it. And the final shot of Catalina’s face as she looks down and sees her future. So that’s four.

Fox Searchlight releases Fast Food Nation on November 17th in limited theatres.