The film Fast Food Nation is based on facts presented in the non-fiction book of the same name written by Eric Schlosser. The book is a scathing indictment of the fast food industry. In an usual move, director Richard Linklater has attempted to integrate these facts into a drama.
Synopsis: Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear)-a marketing executive at Mickey's Fast Food Restaurant chain, home of "The Big One"-has a problem. Contaminated meat is getting into the frozen patties of the company's best-selling burger. To find out why, he'll have to take a journey to the dark side of the All-American meal. Leaving the cushy confines of the company's Southern California boardroom for the immigrant-staffed slaughterhouses, teeming feedlots and cookie cutter strip malls of Middle America, what Don discovers is a "Fast Food Nation" of consumers who haven't realized it is they who are being consumed by an industry with a seemingly endless appetite for fresh meat. The cast includes names such as: Greg Kinnear (As Good As It Gets), Patricia Arquette (TV's Medium), Luis Guzmán (Traffic), Ethan Hawke (who also appears in director Linklater's films Before Sunrise, Waking Life and Before Sunset), Kris Kristofferson (country music star and film Lone Star, Avril Lavigne (rock music star, this is her first film), Esai Morales (NYPD Blue), Wilmer Valderrama (That 70's Show), and Bruce Willis. The film also features Sara Hickman, Mitch Baker, Bobby Cannavale, Michael D. Conway, Paul Dano, Frank Ertl, Gina Garza, Mark Harrison, Derek Chase Hickey, Aaron Himelstein, Ashley Johnson, Cherami Leigh, Jason McDonald, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Hugo Perez, Glen Powell Jr., Lou Taylor Pucci, Francisco Rosales, Stacey Storey, Ana Claudia Talancón, Justin Lee Tidwell, and Erinn Allison News about Fast Food Nation
Reviews of Fast Food Nation Making a shaped, involving film from Schlosser's intensively researched, highly popular expose of the junk food juggernaut in the United States repped a considerable challenge, and the author and Linklater have made eminently reasonable decisions about where to train their focus. J. Hoberman at The Village Voice: Fast Food Nation, directed by Richard Linklater from Eric Schlosser's 2001 bestselling exposé and timed to coincide with the centennial of Upton Sinclair's classic muckraker The Jungle, makes a valiant—if curiously anemic—attempt to use the scarcely fictionalized Mickey's franchise ("Home of the Big One") as a metaphor for American life. Videos This is the official teaser trailer for the film Fast Food Nation: You can view a trailer that began being shown in theaters in August 2006 here @ Hollywood.com this video is from Starz, The Hollywood Reporter, and is a 1-minute entertainment news piece with behind the scene footage and brief interview sound bites from Patricia Arquette and Richard Linklater: (Caution: the video below contains R-rated language.) This is a 2-minute scene from Fast Food Nation (featuring Avril Lavigne) with some of the characters discussing the fast food industry:  External Links for Fast Food Nation: |