Their First Horror: Morgan Spurlock and Jeremy Chilnick’s RATS

Since his very first feature documentary, Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock has deliberately put himself into some very uncomfortable situations. He upped the stakes with his two series 30 Days and Inside Man, but he may have outdone himself by spending a year of his life shooting, editing and promoting a documentary film about everyone’s least favorite furry friends, simply entitled RATS.

After a recent screening (during which everyone watched with half-covered eyes in terror), Paste sat down with Spurlock and longtime writing partner Jeremy Chilnick to ask, “Dude, WTF?”

Paste Magazine: Everything y’all do is great, but this is very disquieting.
Morgan Spurlock: Yeah, it’s dark and weird and everything that we’d hoped it would be.

Paste: So where did the idea come from to then be like: “Let’s just spend a lot for time with rats for a while”?
Spurlock: Well, it started with Josh Braun [of Submarine Entertainment], who optioned the book Rats by Robert Sullivan. And for years, we’d talked about doing a horror film. I grew up loving horror films—Scanners was the movie that made me want to make movies. I still to this day love watching horror films. I love how uncomfortable they make me and I love being frightened and kind of on the edge of my seat. And so when Josh brought us this book, we said, “Well, what if we made a horror documentary? What if we made a doc but shot it like a horror film, scored it like a horror film, made it look like a horror film, feel like a horror film? Could we do that? Could we even figure that out?” And I think we did. Yeah, I’m really proud of it.

Paste: From the beginning of the section going into Vietnam until the food hits the table is the best horror movie I’ve seen all year.
Jeremy Chilnick: That is great!
Paste: And I love that when she starts preparing the food…
Spurlock: Yeah… [Michael chuckles.]
Paste: …that the film just goes silent. I love that ballsy choice.
Spurlock: Awesome.
Paste: Because there’s nothing you could have done to add to that moment.
Spurlock: No.
Paste: And I love that you dragged it out too, and made us just watch every little part of that.
Spurlock: Every piece of the preparation.
Paste: And I think part of the horror and the suspense of that is that it gives you a long time to go ,“Well maybe this is not gonna be what I think it’s…”—even though you know it is.
Spurlock: Yeah.
Paste: You still have like three minutes of hoping that you know: “It’s all gonna be a joke or something, right?”
Spurlock: Yeah. That’s why one of my favorite parts of that is the plating of the rat. And she’s plating everything and like showing it off to us.
Paste: There’s a fly in one of the frames.
Spurlock: All the flies! I was gonna say I love that too! It’s one of my favorite things is that fly on the table.

Paste: So obviously, y’all knew what you were getting going into. That was obviously not a surprise for you.
Spurlock: Correct.
Paste: But I love how you built it up as kind of a surprise. How long did it take you to find somebody that would let you do that?
Spurlock: In Vietnam we were shooting there in the middle of major political turmoil, and a lot of film crews were having trouble getting in. So we had one restaurant that completely fell through that was a bigger restaurant, so we had to basically call an audible on the ground once we were in the country to find another place. And the place we found I think is even better because I think it feels much more for locals. It feels so much smaller. I love that she squats and cooks on that little tiny burner that’s got coals on the bottom… As it came out, it was a much better thing to happen. The beauty of documentaries is, you know, that things go wrong in the field, you have to figure out how to continue to get the story you want and most of the time things work out for the better because of it.
Chilnick: Yeah.

Paste: And your Greek chorus guy, the cigar smoking sage.
Spurlock: Ed Sheeran.
Paste: Was he in the book, or how did you find him?
Spurlock: We found him through New York. We started reaching out in New York City to the rat community, which you know, is a small group of exterminators, and all the exterminators know everybody else. And I knew going in I wanted to find Quint. I wanted to find the guy on the boat telling me the shark stories. Like who was he? Who was that guy?

And so I said, “Here’s what I’m looking for: Somebody who’s been doing this for decades, like he’s old and grisly.” And everybody’s like, “Oh, you gotta call Ed Sheeran. That’s the only guy you need, you gotta call Ed Sheeran.” And so I called up Ed Sheeran. Ed’s like [deep voice], ”What do you want?” I’m like, “We’re making a movie,” and he goes, “Well, what do you want from me?” So then we talk to him and he’s like, ”Alright I guess I can do it.”
Chilnick: He’s just done it all—and he’s so beyond it all in the same way. He can talk just about anything.
Spurlock: He’s a great storyteller. Such a good storyteller.
Paste: He’s a philosopher. He’s got depth to him. If you had written that character in a fiction film, I think people would be going—
Chilnick: He would be dead.