Recently we here at the Post got to sit down and have a phone interview with Richard Linklater, director of the film adaptation of “Fast Food Nation,” which will be released this Friday. We learned more on his views of fast food and a little of his personal history with the industry. He also shared some of the reactions the film has received from players and opponents of the quick service industry with Sean Quast, assistant A&E editor.

Post: Why the decision to turn a book that was non-fiction into a fictional narrative?

Linklater: I think that the thing that jumps out at you is that it is a brilliant piece of non-fiction; it’s a great journalistic piece about that industry. It was actually Eric (Schlosser)’s idea to throw out the book and focus on the people. That’s what drew me in. I don’t make documentaries, which seems like the obvious thing it would be. This book itself is a document. The film is a companion piece. The film is trying to do what films do pretty well, which is tell a human story …

Post: There were some really great parts of the book, like when Schlosser visited the smell factory. Was there ever any attempt to include those more into the movie?

Linklater: That’s one of the few, where Kinnear is in the little chemical lab thing, that is something that strikes people from the book. Everyone thinks they have a general knowledge of the industry without being too specific. I don’t think that anyone really grasps that so much of your sensory perception of food in general is actually chemical … we did really come through the book and think we have to add that scene and cut out that, the way you would do a normal adaptation. It was literally just like Eric said, throw away the book and try to tell these people stories. The book will emerge out of it. That’s a specific that did leave and impression on people for sure …

Post: Have there been any animal treatment groups like PETA that have hounded movie or the screening because of how graphic some scenes are?

Linklater: I did an interview with PETA and they actually liked the movie, because it’s true. It reviles the truth, like the PETA Web site, that’s their goal, their mission … I haven’t heard anything about we were cruel to animals. What we did was just we documented it. We had a documenter go into their work environment and capture their day-to-day reality. I wanted to put at the end of the movie, “Animals were harmed in the making of this movie.” They didn’t do that specifically for us. They do that ever-single day …

Post: How much did you learn making this movie?

Linklater: I though I knew something going in, not only had I read the book, but my lifetime, well my lifetime of my adult life I had been interested in these issues, the industrialization of food. I tried to be a smart consumer in these areas, but there is nothing like making a movie about something to really learn so much more than you ever though you could. I see such a bigger picture now. I wish everyone could do this…my eyes were opened on all levels, environmental, worker and food prep. It showed in the movie I would say the preparation of the patties. I didn’t quite grasp where that totally came from, that is actually the unused parts of everything. It’s kind of worse than bologna and hotdogs in my view now …

Post: Did you eat at fast food restaurants before the move? Are you still going to eat at fast food restaurants now?

Linklater: I’ve tried to avoid fast food most of my adult life. There is a healthy fast food restaurant, I live in Austin, Texas and this guy opened up one right across the street from a McDonalds and he’s doing really well. He has all-natural beef, certified organic free-range chicken, whole-wheat buns, fresh produce, he doesn’t use trans-fats … As a consumer I have a choice. I can go there, which I went a couple weeks ago, and had a veggie burger. It was a real tasty veggie burger fries and a shake and it cost a little more than the McDonalds across the street. I can feel that fits my value system … but I don’t want to support a place that doesn’t do all those things…

Post: What happened to all the meat used in the filming process?

Linklater: That’s all real work going on. Everyone had to have hairnets, walk through the antiseptic stuff for our boots. We were all in the garb. We had clean everything. We were all kind of employees of the plant that day. We couldn’t bring in anything that would be considered a contaminant. We were all sterile, the typical worker. The plant we were filming, that we were making the patties were for a lot of the fast food places in Mexico. We shot in these facilities in Mexico and I just heard from a guy in the American meat industry, he’s a critic who doesn’t really like the movie, he said the only thing he didn’t really like about the movie is that the plants were too clean. They were cleaner than the ones in the U.S. All the meat you saw being made in the movie was being exported to Japan.

Post: Your last couple of movies were more political thematically, what lead to that change in directorial style?

Linklater: I think it was just a matter of timing. I’ve been tying for years to get a movie made about industrial workers. I my early twenties I worked as an industrial worker. I know what it’s like to be the absolute bottom of the industrial industry, the powerless expendable labor. I’ve been trying to make a movie from that viewpoint for a long time, because that is kind of my viewpoint of the world. You can’t really shake that … It’s not suddenly I got political. I’m the same person I always was; I just had an outlet for something I cared about.

Post: Did you ever work in the fast food industry when you were a teen?

Linklater: I worked at a bunch of restaurants. I worked at restaurant that were crappy enough it felt like fast food, but it was technically a little crappy dinner. I was the busboy or dishwasher. I think fast food would have been nicer actually. No I never worked in a McDonalds, Burger King or something. A lot of people have, but I did a lot of restaurant work, so I think I know. That was my own personal connection. I always had the crappy minimum-wage busboy job. I never even made it up to waiter …

> Comments