'30 Days': Q&A with Morgan Spurlock
By Emily Christianson, Hollywood.com Staff
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Monday, June 02, 2008
Morgan Spurlock’s hit FX series 30 Days starts with a simple concept; send a willing volunteer to explore an idea or way of life for one month. What’s not so straight-forward are the results that follow.
Now, Spurlock is back with a third season returning on June 3, ready to educate audiences about topics like coal mining, same-sex parenting and life on a reservation. We caught up with the documentary-filmmaker to find out more.
Hollywood.com: What do you consider to be a successful 30 Days?
Morgan Spurlock: I think a successful 30 Days is one where you don’t really know what’s going to happen. I think there are two. There’s a successful 30 Days as a participant where I go in and I’m surprised and my eyes are opened and I learn things and experience things that 99 percent of us will never get to. And I think that’s really what I love as a participant that I get out of the show. For me as a person who watches the show, I love that every episode isn’t tied up into a nice little bow, that at the end of every episode people don’t always get along…And for me that’s what makes the show real.
HW: Has anyone ever backed out of a 30 Days episode?
MS: Like in season one there was, our participant was doing steroids and human growth hormones for a month, and around Day 20 he went to get his sperm checked, and basically when he started he had a sperm count of like 80 million and on Day 20 he had zero. Basically he killed all the sperm in his body. And his wife was like, “You have to stop right now.” He was like, “You’re right; I’m done. I’m walking away.” So he was finished after three weeks. And once he got off the HGH and the steroids all of his semen count came back and it was back to normal…I don’t blame him. If suddenly after three weeks I went from 80 million to zero I’d have probably been really seriously thinking about dropping out, too.