American director Morgan Spurlock. Photo / Supplied
Just as it did not come as a surprise that McDonald's is bad for one's health, it probably won't come as a surprise that advertising helps pay for many things, like movies.
It also won't come as a surprise that McDonald's refused to help pay for Spurlock's latest rabble-rousing documentary,
in which he asks companies to sponsor his movie in return for naming rights, or shameless moments of promotion.
The aim was to blow the cover of product placement - by making a film entirely based around product placement, but even Spurlock's examples show the advertising gimmick has failed to fool viewers since the 1990s, at least.
Still, his ability to pull in $1.5 million of funding from advertising companies and weave their products into a 90-minute feature loosely based around exposing truths of the industry is intriguing. If the interviews with the likes of media intellectual Noam Chomsky and director Quentin Tarantino don't shock or enlighten viewers, his creative pitches to boardrooms and quirky, self-produced advertisements will entertain them.
You might not leave the theatre wiser than when you went in, but you will most likely be craving a POM Wonderful hit, if not a whiff of Ban deodorant.
