Beefing Up 'Fast Food Nation'

"How many people are rocking the boat?" asks Eric Schlosser, author of "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal," the best-selling 2001 nonfiction book that he helped adapt for the big screen. In the fictionalized movie version, the food crusader and his director and co-writer, Richard Linklater, aim for the heart and the stomach. (See review on Page 35.)

Though the book seemed natural documentary material, Schlosser says he "didn't want to sign over the book" once he realized that "almost all the filmmakers I was meeting with were backed by networks that had relationships with the fast-food chains." Even PBS: "McDonald's is one of the biggest backers of 'Sesame Street,' " he says. (Neither PBS nor McDonald's will disclose the amount.)

Enter Linklater, the maverick writer-director of such hits and indie classics as "Slacker," "Dazed and Confused" and "The School of Rock" -- films Schlosser calls "bold, interesting things that aren't easily categorized." Linklater, being Linklater, wanted to turn the book into a sprawling, multi-character story, and Schlosser agreed. "When Rick made it clear that he wanted to do this, I would have been happy to give him the book and show up a year and a half later."

But Linklater took Schlosser on as a writing partner, coming up with three interwoven story lines: A fast-food executive (Greg Kinnear) looks into why there are cow feces in his company's hamburgers; a group of Mexican immigrants risks life and limb working at a meatpacking plant; and a teenager (Ashley Johnson) employed at a fast-food franchise has an ethical awakening that forces her to make some tough choices. The cast includes some big-name Hollywood stars -- such as Bruce Willis and Ethan Hawke (a Linklater regular) -- and some newer talents, including Wilmer Valderrama (Fez on "That '70s Show") and rocker Avril Lavigne.

Schlosser concedes that with so many familiar faces, "it was a risk, because some of the aim of the film is to make it as real as possible." But "this was a really difficult film to finance," and having the actors work for practically nothing was crucial. (Case in point: Schlosser claims that Willis's usual fee per film is bigger than the entire budget for "Fast Food Nation," which came out to about $11 million.)

As he and Linklater developed the script, Schlosser says, "we were thinking about coming-of-age stories." Most of these, especially the ones involving young girls, involve sexual awakening, but Johnson's character goes through "a different kind of coming-of-age. She's beginning to open her eyes, beginning to think critically. In some ways that's more important" than sex, he says. Amber's story is a slice of hope in "a very dark film."

Then again, Schlosser says, "it would have been a lie if [the film] had had a happy ending."

Ed Harris's Opus

Ed Harris's Ludwig van Beethoven is slovenly, rude and crude -- betcha didn't think "Moonlight Sonata" could be a dirty joke's punch line. At the same time, this Beethoven is a man struggling with God, mortality and a musician's worst nightmare -- deafness -- as he feverishly tries to complete his life's work before he dies.

Harris, who has racked up four Oscar nominations (most recently for his portrayal of another dying man, in 2002's "The Hours"), says playing the composer in "Copying Beethoven" was "very daunting." (See review on Page 35.) After his friend director Agnieszka Holland asked him to take the role, Harris spent a year preparing, taking piano lessons and conducting classes. "The only film I did at that time was 'A History of Violence,' and at that time I had a piano in my room."

He pored over biographies, history and Beethoven's letters; "I had all this stuff I could read about," he says. The most influential was an unmailed letter called the Heiligenstadt Testament, written in October 1802 from the composer to his brothers, a description of his deteriorating hearing and his belief in his artistic destiny.

That idea of creating with a purpose, of writing music that Beethoven called "the voice of God," is something Harris can relate to, at least as an artist. "I think that any creative act ultimately is one of surrendering a certain knowledge that there are experiences that one has to pay attention to" -- sometimes just "getting out of your own way," he says. "As an actor, it's not that you're not prepared, that you don't know your craft. But it's really an act of letting go, of letting this creative energy take place.

"I'm sure [his deafness] affected his music in a positive way, because it was all in his head, and he couldn't hear other music than his own," Harris says. Through it all, Beethoven kept writing, "even as he got older and his hearing was failing. . . . He was determined to get as much of this music out of him, out of his soul, as he could. He felt this responsibility."