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FRIES!: THE MOVIE will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York between April 15 and 26 this spring. Produced in part by Chrissy Teigen, I contributed to the content of this new fries epic and was filmed in NYC for it last spring. Whether I survive the edit remains to be seen. The film should be shown nationally sometime in 2020 after the premiere.
Fries! The Movie, directed and written by Michael Steed. Produced by Christopher Collins, Lydia Tenaglia. (USA) – World Premiere, Feature Documentary. To better understand the globe’s obsession with the fried potato, chefs, food scientists, historians and celebrities, including Malcom Gladwell and Chrissy Teigen, take the audience on a joyous and mouth watering journey around the world to delve into everyone’s favorite fried food. With Chrissy Teigen, Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Ripert, Dave Arnold, Harold McGee.
After the Movie: A conversation with cookbook author and model Chrissy Teigen, chef Eric Ripert, Museum of Food and Drink founder Dave Arnold, and director Michael Steed.
Giving permission for McDonald’s restaurants to appear in films had been part of my job description for a long time, but when producer Roger Weisberg, who I’d worked with before, approached me on this one, I had to pause. They not only wanted to film at the Museum McDonald’s in Des Plaines, IL, the recreation of Ray Kroc’s first quick service hamburgers and fries restaurant of 1955, but they wanted someone for the controversial host of the film to interview there. I knew this one would be trouble, but I was intrigued, as the host would be Andrei Codrescu, a colorful Transylvanian poet who was burning up the airwaves on National Public Radio as a social critic of all things American. But I was a fan of his show, and his oblique sense of humor, and I knew that Roger, and hopefully Andrei, had a soft spot for McDonald’s.
The premise of his documentary film, which was being produced for commercial distribution in movie houses, at least on the arts circuit, was that Andrei, who had never before driven a car, would travel from the east coast to the west, driving a 1968 red Cadillac convertible, producing a sort of “On The Road of the 90s” film of his colorful encounters with icons of popular American culture. I volunteered to do the interview with Andrei at Ray Kroc’s 1955 McDonald’s, but told almost no one in management as I was pretty sure Andrei’s controversial take on American culture would not sit easily with the keepers of our conservative corporate culture..So I donned my paper crew hat of the era, straightened my tie and walked onto the set of my first commercial film. When the movie came out, I think in 1993 or so, Vicki and I took our young niece and nephew with us to see it at a theatre in Evanston. We just told them it would have something to do with McDonald’s. When the McDonald’s segment came up, my niece Amanda exclaimed, “It’s uncle Chuck.” The film, Road Scholar, while winner of a prestigious Peabody Award, only attracted a limited audience, probably mostly hip college students and quirky NPR fans. Around the same time, Road Scholar was produced as a book, with the subtitle “Coast to Coast late in the century.” Following is the McDonald’s segment from the book (click on title), in which I’m quoted from the film.
The First McDonald’s PROOF of the power of dreams: Ray Kroc, one man with a single idea, a rounded idee fixe called a hamburger, began to dream an empire and, lo and behold, one day the entire planet is covered by the mighty waves of his single thought…If anybody’s going to get to heaven it’s Mr. Kroc on a ladder of billions of burgers, the number that most approached infinity. Next to rock ‘n’ roll, McDonald’s is the most enduring American creation of the second half of the twentieth century. They are chomping them down in Moscow, Beijing, Des Moines, wearing them in Poughkeepsie and Frankfort…(sing this) CHUCK, a company official, speaking of First McDonald’s (now a museum): This is the only early McDonald’s restaurant that’s been preserved exactly as it opened April 15, 1955. And these days the students who come through Hamburger University over at our McDonald’s campus nearby come over to get a little feeling for the culture. It’s really a cultural experience. It’s a chance to see, touch and feel what McDonald was like at the beginning. .Now we’ve got for you an official McDonald’s crew hat here just as was worn in the fifties. And we make you an honorary crew person. AC: (Pointing to life size replica of early McDonald’s employee) .I could look like him; he’s tall. A hamburger-deficient diet during my childhood in Transylvania must have stunted my growth. Eighty-five billion burgers sold vs. 250 million Americans equals 340 burgers per American…that works out to four extra inches per American versus your average Romanian.
CHUCK; We used to talk about hamburgers in terms of if we stack them all up it would be a stack that would reach the moon and back 16 times. But I think we have gone quite a way beyond that. So we haven’t related it to any more planets lately.
As Chuck and AC converse:, Ray Kroc’s voice is heard beyond the grave: Transfer your fears into faith. Any you will inherit the freedom of the future. And f you believe in it – and believe in it hard – it is impossible to fail.
And now there is the McLean Deluxe, a skinnier version of the Big Mac for the fat-conscious American of the end of the Millennium. McDonald’s has so penetrated out national consciousness we even have McPoems now, which are poems mass-produced in writing workshops at universities. And McTests, McThoughts, McReactions, McFeelings, and so on.
No meat eater myself, I watch the vast fields of wheat that end up between Mr. Kroc’s buns and the immense lowing herds that lay down their lives for Big Mac. I can see too the intense flows of these commodities through the banks and the money markets — the rivers of commerce paralleling the rivers of wheat and meat, like mind and body.
In the novel The Pit by Frank Norris, a madman tries to corner the wheat market. Like Napoleon he is filled with dreams of glory. Every leaf of bread on earth will be stamped with his name. Alas! The drought he prays for does not come. Instead, there is a plentiful harvest. The earth, which rarely sympathizes with the dreams of Napoleons, buries him in wheat. All his plans go awry. The peasants of Europe are starving, and the wheat he has been hoarding spills over the shores of America and feeds them. The Midwest harbors such dreams occasionally. It must be the immensity of her plains that allows imperial daydreams to roll unimpeded.
Dick and Mac McDonald’s original drive-in, walk-up service restaurant in San Bernardino, CA, as it looked when they completed the renovation from their old bar-be-que, car hop restaurant, in 1948. Showing an autograph by “Richard J. McDonald, Founder.”
2011 Top 10 Largest Chains (by latest-year sales)
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1. McDonald’s – $34.17B 2. Subway – $11.43B 3. Starbucks Coffee – $8.49B 4. Burger King – $8.13B 5. Wendy‘s – $8.11B |
6. Taco Bell – $7.00B 7. Dunkin’ Donuts – $5.93B 8. Pizza Hut – $5.50B 9. KFC – $4.60B 10. Applebee’s – $4.43B |
If eating 3 times a day is a sinister idea, then the critics of Ronald McDonald have a point. But what does Ronald do? He helps parents make breakfast, lunch or dinner, or a snack, a happy experience for their kids. Most parents would say that is helpful to them. McDonald’s offers many appealing menu choices for kids and parents, along with known nutrition, portion control and quality control. Add a little parental guidance and what do you have — a Happy Meal! McDonald’s is on the upward curve in nutritional responsibility.
P.S. And don’t forget Ronald McDonald House — no one made McDonald’s build all those wonderful places, but they did just because they could. Guess that’s social responsibility in action, too. 
McD uses social media to respond to violent video
Chain reaches out to customers on Twitter to condemn attack that an employee filmed and posted online
April 25, 2011 | By Ron Ruggless
McDonald’s Corp. and a Maryland franchise owner used social media channels over the weekend to communicate with customers after an employee-filmed video of a brutal beating in one of the chain’s restaurants went viral online.
The video, which went up on YouTube.com briefly Friday and was picked up by other websites, drew thousands of views during the day. The three-minute clip showed attackers repeatedly grabbing, punching, kicking and pulling the hair of 22-year-old Chrissy Lee Polis at a franchised McDonald’s in Rosedale, Md., while an older female customer and an employee tried to intervene.
After the video went online, McDonald’s posted a message midday Friday to its more than 121,000 Twitter followers saying, “We aware of the incident in Baltimore and are working with local police in their criminal investigation.”
McDonald’s tweeted several more times about the incident over the weekend. By Saturday afternoon, the chain had condemned the assault on Twitter and reported that the employee responsible for the video had been fired.
They say reputation is everything. The March 23 edition of Fortune Magazine names McDonald’s among the top 10 overall of the World’s Most-Admired Companies, among 1,400 major U.S. and International companies rated by 4,100 industry experts. McDonald’s rated #1 in 3 of 9 categories: Effectiveness in conducting its business globally; Quality of Management; and, Wise use of corporate assets. McDonald’s also rated #1 in the Food Services category.
Back in the 1990’s, when I was corporate communications officer of McDonald’s, I worked with Fortune for over a year to develop a category within which McDonald’s could be considered for ranking in their “Most-Admired” search. From a simple hamburger stand created by Dick and Mac McDonald, to a corporation and a brand nurtured by Ray Kroc and generations of leaders, McDonald’s is now known and admired around the world. McDonald’s has come a long way.
For more information, go to this Fortune website: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/mostadmired/2011/index.html
McDonald’s, my alumni group, just announced that U.S. 2010 4th quarter sales were up 4.4% in the U.S. Almost simultaneously, Nation’s Restaurant News announced that the number of independent U.S. restaurants declined 2% — losing some 5500 restaurants, in 2010 vs. 2009. The number of chain restaurants remained level. What’s going on? Rising commodity prices for groceries are tougher for independents to swallow than the more cost-efficient chains. As for McDonald’s, they continue to re-invest in “re-imaging” their restaurants, and coffees and other special beverages, together with strong promotions, are boosting brand appeal for the Golden Arches, though even McDonald’s sees some small price increases coming. As consumers, we need to watch for the bargains, as prices for almost everything, from groceries to gas, begin to climb. When I retired from McDonald’s at the Millennium, some 50 million customers a day were dropping by globally; 
Today it’s 62 million a day, and that still occasionally includes myself, as in this visit to a Shanghai McDonald’s last fall.
There was a time when the French had a big cultural problem with the company that built it’s success on what else than the French Fry. Activists made the term “culinary imperialism” into their anti-McDonald’s mantra. But those days are long gone. McDonald’s first innovated a policy called “Open Doors” in France, inviting the suspicious news media and the critics among the public to comes behind the scenes in its restaurants and suppliers to see that French people were serving them quality food from predominantly French suppliers. Now they can say the same thing about the beef. See this article from http://www.burgerbusiness.com for the details. http://www.burgerbusiness.com/?p=6402&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+burgerbusiness+%28βurgerβusiness%29
Apple Pressings 