Jessica Edwards of First Film Co. gave us some excerpts from the excellent new book she edited Tell Me Something: Advice from Documentary Filmmakers. This week’s advice is from Morgan Spurlock:
I feel like it was junior high when my parents REALLY started giving me advice. Maybe it was because they thought I desperately needed it, or maybe they believed I was finally smart enough to actually absorb some of it. Whatever it was, from the moment I became a “teen,” my folks bombarded me with a deluge of southern-fried logic that helped deep-fry my brain and make me the crispy human I am today.
When I turned 13, my mother said, “You’re officially a little man today, time to start acting like one.” What exactly she meant by that, I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure I did plenty of stupid things before that, but come on, Mom, when you say something like that, you’re only setting me up to do even MORE stupid things afterwards! Parental logic is confusing to me sometimes—speak up but don’t run your mouth, do your best but don’t try too hard, have fun but not too much fun.
Is there really such a thing as “too much fun”? For my parents, that essentially meant “Don’t do anything stupid,” a.k.a. “Don’t do anything that would get you arrested.”
Most of the advice that my folks gave me boiled down essentially to not being lazy. And the best advice I think they ever gave me wasn’t really advice at all, but more of a parental platitude. A channeling of both Plato and Machiavelli. It came after I’d promised my mom and dad that I wouldn’t have a party while they were out of town (“too much fun”) but then naturally ignored that and did anyway.
When they came home and found the house trashed, kegs in the yard, remnants of every eighties teenage coming-of-age film dripping and hanging from furniture in the house … my father gave me that look. THAT look. The look that screams how disappointed with you they are, how if they could trade you in at this moment they would, that look that says, “You’re right, we should’ve stopped after two kids.”
He gave me that look and he said, “Morgan, there are two kinds of people in this world. The ones who do what they say they’re going to do … and everybody else. Which one are you?”
And that was it. I made a decision that from that day on I’d be the person who did what I said I was going to do. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s not much fun. But for me, it’s the easiest way to avoid getting that look from anyone.
Selected Filmography: Super Size Me (2004), Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011), One Direction: This Is Us (2013)
Photo: Jon Pack (New York, New York)
