Fast Food Industry Focus of UUF “Movies That Matter” Film

Fast Food Nation, the 2006 American/British drama film directed by Richard Linklater, will be shown on October 20 at 7 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (UUF) in Ephraim.

The screenplay for the film is loosely based on Eric Schlosser’s bestselling 2001 non-fiction book Fast Food Nation:  The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. The film takes the viewer from the cattle ranches, to the slaughterhouse, to the homes of the disaffected kids who flip those patties even after they’ve dropped them on the floor. The film drops in on marketing meetings and follows an executive as he sniffs new sandwich flavor samples fresh from the chemical lab.

Secondary plots deal with the exploitation of illegal immigrants from Mexico, the expectations of fast food restaurant employees and how they are treated, and the efforts of a small group of young anti-corporate activists to save the cattle from horrendous conditions.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone awarded the film three out of four stars and added, “It’s less an expose of junk-food culture than a human drama, sprinkled with sly, provoking wit, about how that culture defines how we live…the film is brimming with grand ambitions, but trips on many of them as some characters aren’t given enough screen time to register and others vanish just when you want to learn more about them.”

Fast Food Nation is part of the monthly “Movies That Matter” series sponsored by the UUF. Films are shown the third Tuesday of each month. The next movie, God Grew Tired of Us, is scheduled for November 17.

For more information visit http://www.uufdc.org.