Besides his successful documentary film "Super Size Me," in which he went on a McDonald’s-only diet for a whole month and gained 24 pounds, Spurlock was the creator of "30 DAYS," an unscripted, documentary-style program for the FX channel where an individual is introduced to a lifestyle that is completely different from his or her beliefs, religion, or profession for 30 days. For the pilot episode, Spurlock chose a Muslim family in Dearborn, Michigan, to play host to a diehard Christian Southern Baptist from Virginia. Spurlock told InFocus that the experience changed the man’s perspective on Islam and Muslims permanently, in a positive way. The pilot episode also convinced the FX network to pick up the series.

During a recent visit to Los Angeles to promote his film, Spurlock spoke to InFocus.

 InFocus: What made you want to make this film?
Morgan Spurlock: There are a couple of things. There is the year 2005, when we got the idea for this film. Bush had just been elected for another term, and Osama Bin Laden had just released another tape. I live in New York City, where this question is asked all the time. So, when the tape was released, everybody was like, “Where’s Osama Bin Laden? Why hasn’t he been caught?” And that’s a great question.
We were about two months into talking about this film and putting it together when we found out my wife got pregnant. And for me, that shifted the whole focus of the film in a lot of ways. It made the entire film much more personal for me. My wife said I don’t know if you should be going there and making this movie. We talked about it and ultimately she was supportive, but still didn’t agree with it. At that point, it wasn’t about “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” It was about what kind of world am I bringing a kid into. Anyone who is a parent or has kids can really relate to that. 

IF: Did you have any preconceived notions about the Middle East prior to making this film?
MS: It was my first time in the Middle East. I did have preconceived notions. I expected to be met with a tremendous amount of hostility because I am an American. I thought they hated us and not very many people would want to talk to us.
And it was completely the opposite. Everywhere we went, whoever it was, jumped at the chance to sit down and talk, open their homes to us and let us come in, and they were very hospitable. The majority aren’t the minority we see on TV all the time, the ones who rant and rave. The media here likes to show people who are screaming and angry, and that’s not the majority that is out there. For me, it was eye-opening. 

IF: How did this experience change you as an American?
MS: The goal of the movie was to go out and have a better understanding of what kind of world I am bringing a kid into and what I can do to make the world a safer place for my child. I think the film shows that all of us have a lot more in common than we’re led to believe. All of us around the world want so many of the same things for ourselves, for our family, for our future.
For me, there is an incredible amount of optimism and hope in that. And for me, when it comes to how do you make the world better and a safer place for your child, for me it is exposing each other to one another as early as possible.
I want my son to meet the people I met on this trip. I want him to go to these places and see how other people live and interact with them on a personal level. I went to places where I was the first American person they ever met in their lives. In Pakistan, Afghanistan, some people never met an American face to face.
I met some people who said, “Are all Americans like you that want things to be peaceful?” Once again, there is a parallel perception. The way that we see them is the way that they see us. All it took to shadow that, it took me sitting down and having tea and having a conversation with them. One person said that if there are more Americans like you, that’s a great thing.  One thing I did is fast during Ramadan for three weeks when we were shooting in Egypt and Morocco and the Palestinian territories.

IF: Why did you fast?
MS: I thought it would help when I was trying to talk to people. I thought it would help me connect with the people because I was feeling the same thing they felt. And it helped.

IF: What was your experience like in Morocco? It seems that you connected well with the Moroccan family you broke the fast with?
MS: That was Ahmed. He and his family were fantastic. If you look on top of their shanty little houses, there are all these satellite dishes. They get all these world satellite feeds of television. And so people are like,  “We see what America is like. We see Fox News.” So that’s their America. America is everything that’s on Fox News ... and that’s how people think and believe overseas, and that’s it. And until they sat down and talked to me, that was their whole world.

IF: So then the purpose of making this film is to get this message to the American people, right?
MS: Ultimately, I hope people all around the world see this film. I think people here in the United States could benefit from seeing this film. We live in a country where we don’t think beyond our borders very much,  and we don’t live beyond our borders very much. There was a guy who saw the film at the Sundance Film Festival, a young kid,  about 20 years old, who came up to me afterward; he said he’d been thinking about traveling overseas but was so scared, his parents were so worried, telling him not to go, how dangerous it is around the world. After seeing this film, he was like, “I’m going to get a passport and I’m going to go.” That was incredible. When he said that, it hit me. One in four people in the United States have a passport. There are 75 percent of us that don’t have passports. 

IF: There was a point in the film where you went to the Gaza border and stopped there. Why didn’t you go in?
MS: At the time, it was impossible to get people in and out. Hamas was firing rockets onto Sderot (Israeli border town), and Israeli tanks were firing at Hamas militants within Gaza. Journalists weren’t allowed access in and out. There was almost a lockdown. I would love to have gone, but it was impossible for us to go in at the time.

IF: Were you aware of the fact that it would be hard to please everyone when dealing with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict?
MS: I think what we showed in the film is incredibly fair. We show the struggles the Palestinians have to face in the West Bank. You see the chain link fence that wraps around Gaza, and at the same time you see people in Tel Aviv having to deal with bomb threats on a daily basis. You see the town of Sderot that has rockets falling on it every single day from Gaza.

IF: If you had a message to pass on to the American people and to the Islamic world, what would that be?
MS:  We all need to realize that we have a lot more in common than we envision, we have a lot more in common than we see on television, a lot more in common than we are lead to believe. One of the greatest things that should happen now is what Nadia Yacine (Moroccan woman interviewed in the film) says in Morocco. She says we need to work beyond our governments and start to build civilian bridges between people. We, as people, need to start connecting with one another and communicating with each other and not rely on the politicians to do that for us. There’s got to be some organizations or individuals that should be doing that now, whether it’s kids in classrooms or individuals, or by volunteering and getting people involved in overseas causes and any of that. We really have to start connecting on a personal level, on a citizen level.