In Timid Pursuit Of a Terrorist, Filmmaker Spurlock Mostly Shoots Himself

PARK CITY, Utah -- When film provocateur Morgan Spurlock premiered his documentary, "Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?," before a capacity audience here at the Sundance Film Festival, expectations were, honestly, not that high among anyone with a valid driver's license.

Yes, the Internet was "buzzing" about hints dropped (planted) by his cameraman that Spurlock had found "the holy grail." Sure, the New York Daily News reported that Spurlock made distributors at the Berlin International Film Festival sign "a strict non-disclosure agreement that Al Qaeda would have envied." And true, Spurlock had brought McDonald's to task in his 2004 debut film, "Super Size Me," famous for its scene of Spurlock, a kind of Michael Moore for the gamer set, purging his Happy Meal after living on nothing but Mickey D's fare for a month.

But flipping burgers is one thing. Finding the Big O is another.

We do not believe we are spoiling the ending to reveal that Spurlock does not, as he teases, throw a net over Osama bin Laden (he actually buys one). Because if he had found Osama, you probably would have heard the news. He does not even come close. Wherever the evil mastermind may be, he is safe from Spurlock.

The film, which was bought by the Weinstein Co., and is scheduled for release in April, sports a parody movie poster with Spurlock posed as Indiana Jones. On his self-described "journey of discovery," the filmmaker stops in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Morocco, Jordan, Afghanistan and finally Pakistan, where he learns that most people just want to live normal, peaceful lives. He also gets to fire a grenade launcher. "Awesome," he says. The film ends with the song "Why Can't We Be Friends?" from the band War. Seriously.

In the climactic scene, Spurlock dons his flak jacket, muses grimly on the dangers ahead and travels to the border of Waziristan, the semi-autonomous tribal area where many experts suspect OBL may be hiding/residing -- and then he stops. There is a sign reading: "Foreigners are not allowed." Darn it. "Someone should go after him," Spurlock says in the movie. "But not me."

After the Sundance screening, where the film won respectable but not wild applause, an audience member asked Spurlock if he ever truly intended to go all the way. "The whole point of the movie was to find Osama bin Laden," Spurlock says. "I got right to the border." But the audience had it right: Indiana Jones goes into the Temple of Doom. He doesn't go home.

As the reviewer Rav on the fanboy site Ain't It Cool News, put it: "This movie is . . . retarded. Maybe it would feel less retarded if it wasn't for all those rumors of him actually finding and interviewing bin Laden. Or maybe it would come off less stupid if he had just titled it 'Super Size Me 2: Middle East Vacation' cause that is more accurate as to what it really is."

The next day, Spurlock sits down for a few questions about the documentary. He is friendly, enthusiastic, defensive, cunning. In the movie, the filmmaker travels to Fez, Cairo, Amman and Jerusalem, which are not exactly scary places (unless you're trapped in a tour bus). In Israel, he goes to the border of the Gaza Strip, but does not enter. Why?

"Oh, you can't get into Gaza," he says. But don't news correspondents go there all the time? "It would have been nice to go into Gaza and speak to some people there, but it would have been incredibly dangerous," Spurlock says.

But if bin Laden and al-Qaeda are anything, are they not, you know, dangerous? The movie begins with Spurlock undergoing hostile-environment training (how to duck from a grenade; survive kidnapping; dress a head wound), though the roughest treatment he got was from an elderly Hasidic man in Jerusalem, who shoves him and tells him to go home. "I didn't feel like I was in danger in Fez or Casablanca," Spurlock says. "But you can't deny the fact that since 2003 there have been suicide bombs that killed over 50 people. There is the potential to be killed even in Morocco by homegrown terrorist cells." Okay. . .

He continues: "When we were at the Gaza border, the Israeli tanks were firing on Gaza, and from Gaza they were shooting Kassam rockets out. That was pretty harrowing. I don't think we hype the danger factor when they're firing Kassam rockets at a town a kilometer away. I think that's real violence."