Taking aim at our desire to buy

This holiday season, the man who took the joy out of eating a Big Mac is trying to put a damper on Christmas shopping. Morgan Spurlock, whose 2004 documentary, “Super Size Me,” made America reconsider its devotion to McDonald’s when it saw the results of his monthlong diet there, is returning to the big screen in the role of producer behind “What Would Jesus Buy?”

The film, which opened in L.A. on Wednesday, follows the cross-country journey of the Rev. Billy, a persona of street activist Bill Talen, who preaches his Church of Stop Shopping gospel to “spend less and give more.” The documentary, directed by Rob VanAlkemade, is another salvo in Spurlock’s campaign to tickle America’s conscience.

“I hope that the movie does what Rev. Billy asks people to do,” says Spurlock, sitting in his cluttered downtown Manhattan office. “He wants people to look at their consumption. And for them to take a step back and ask, ‘Why am I going to buy this?’ ‘How am I going to pay for this?’ And, ‘Do I really need it?’ ”

The 37-year-old filmmaker will also debut the third season of his television series “30 Days” on F/X this spring. The show follows the same format as “Super Size Me,” subjecting Spurlock and others to different 30-day trials to illuminate social and political issues. In past seasons, an anti-immigration activist lived with an illegal immigrant family in East L.A. and a straight man lived in a gay household.

But anticipation is most feverish regarding Spurlock’s sophomore feature directorial effort, the tentatively titled “Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?” The movie, picked up by the Weinstein Co. after a 15-minute clip was shown at the Berlin film festival last January, may debut at Sundance (the slate for the January festival will be announced next week). The film is tentatively scheduled for release in theaters in the spring.

For now, a shroud of secrecy surrounding the film (as well as its hot-button subject matter) has helped to heighten speculation on its content. Distributors who saw the footage in Berlin were asked to sign draconian nondisclosure agreements. In July, the film’s director of photography, Daniel Marricone, stoked the flames when he told Variety that Spurlock had captured “the holy grail.”

“There’s only one thing that that could mean, right?” teases R.J. Cutler, Spurlock’s “Thirty Days” executive producer, who professes to know little about the feature film. He adds, laughing, “We figured it must mean they were looking for Osama Bin Laden and instead they found the Holy Grail.”

For his part, Spurlock is keeping mum. “Until there’s something to see, why talk about it?” he asks, although he adds that Marricone was “misinterpreted.”

“I wanted to make a film about a subject that we all want to know the answer to,” he says.

Perhaps speaking louder than words is what rests prominently on Spurlock’s desk table: An Osama bin Laden action figure who wields a large white scimitar, standing behind a figurine of an anthropomorphized cow with bright pink udders. The Al Qaeda leader appears to be primed to slit her throat.

Is this a hint of the film’s tone?

“There is a way that I like to get certain stories across that are much more easy to stomach,” says Spurlock, who quickly changes the subject to “What Would Jesus Buy?,” a film he’s been working on for two years. He found a kindred spirit in Talen, who has a background in experimental theater and who came up with the Rev. Billy persona in the late 1990s when he walked through Times Square and found himself overwhelmed by the Disneyfication of the historic area. The street preachers who traditionally populate 42nd Street sparked Talen’s idea to create the character of an anti-commercialism preacher who delivers sermons against the “Shopocalypse” in evangelical cadences.

Talen estimates that he has been arrested close to 50 times for various actions, including being served a court order to not go within 250 yards of a Starbucks in California after he practiced one too many “cash register exorcisms,” an act of street theater in which he jumps over the counter and disrupts the commercial enterprise to raise public consciousness. “Starbucks is a brutal company -- with Wal-Mart and Disney, it’s part of the trinity of devils,” Talen says. “It epitomizes the killing of neighborhoods and the demon monoculture by surrounding us with identical details.”

The film tells Talen’s story and follows his and his “choir’s” cross-country activist antics at a Wal-Mart, the Mall of America in Minnesota and other retail outlets, as it questions the way Americans associate material goods with the expression of affection. Director VanAlkemade enters people’s homes along the way, interviewing them about their need to consume and talking with religious leaders and consumer analysts, delivering daunting details such as that 60% of Americans are in long-term debt.

The commercialization of Christmas receives special focus, as the film climaxes on a Christmas Day act of disturbance at Disney World, where a white-haired, white-collared and white-suited Rev. Billy is led away in handcuffs midsermon.

It brings to mind the adage, “What would Jesus do?” Which raises the question: Would Jesus buy a ticket to see a Morgan Spurlock production?

“I don’t know if he’d have to buy a ticket, but I’d hope he’d go. He was a pretty radical guy,” Spurlock says. “Then again, he might see ‘Transformers.’ ”