PARK CITY, Utah -- As it turns out, finding Osama bin Laden is harder than getting fat eating Big Macs.
Who knew?
Not Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock apparently, whose highly anticipated documentary Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? bowed Monday in front of a sell-out crowd.
The project, in which the 37-year-old filmmaker treks across the Middle East in search of the 9/11 mastermind, has set the Internet abuzz with speculation he had succeeded at what the U.S. government has so miserably failed at -- namely, hunting down the world's most wanted fugitive.
"There have been a lot of rumours," Spurlock admitted prior to the screening.
His favourite? "That Harvey Weinstein bought the movie for $25 million. There's going to be a sequel in two years: Where in the World is My Money?"
Alas, bin Laden only appears in the forms of archival footage, digital and hand-drawn animated montages and one very broad dance sequence (yes, you read that correctly). Given the premise and pre-release hype, one has to wonder if audiences won't view the oddly lighthearted project as anti-climatic -- or worse, a cynical case of bait-and-switch.
"The goal was always to find Osama bin Laden," Spurlock insisted, explaining that during production he decided there's more to global terrorism than finding one man in a cave.
That's also the reason, he added, why he chose to focus more on Afghanistan than the conflict in Iraq, which, argues the film, only helped bin Laden escape U.S. military forces and re-build his terrorist organization after it was dealt a seemingly-mortal blow in 2001. "We were told we won and had liberated the country, but now it's worse than ever."
Another reason he didn't head into Iraq? His long-suffering wife -- and pregnant -- Alex had forbidden it.
"I said you're not going to Iraq. If you go there, I'm leaving," she told Monday's moviegoers.
That said, it's not like she was pleased he was nonetheless still going to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, among other potentially lethal locales.
"She didn't want me to go," said Spurlock, who was two months into pre-production when they learned they were going to be parents.
"When I went, she was upset. When I came back, she was ecstatic. And now I never have to go again."
For Spurlock, returning to Sundance carries special meaning.
Four years ago when he was just a "snot-nosed kid," Super Size Me debuted here. Its phenomenal success established him as Michael Moore Lite -- a more accessible alternative to other didactic, more heavy-handed documentarians.
As an inside joke, at one point during Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, Spurlock is seen exiting a McDonald's in Saudi Arabia.
So is he still off the Quarter Pounders?
"That was actually the first time I'd been in a McDonald's since March 2003. You know, I'm the kid who got stuck in the closet with all the cigars. I've had enough cigars."
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