There is so much you can’t put in a film. Because it’s 90 minutes, no one would go see the four-hour Super Size Me epic. So you have to cut things out, automatically, to make it interesting to the viewer. There was so much more I wanted to expand on, from government influence to school lunch programs, to community. What individuals can do for themselves to take the reigns and say, “We’re going to change this.” So it was really important for me to dive into those issues, provide more information to those people, talk in greater detail about things we just started to scratch the surface on in the movie. I think the book is a great companion to the film to kind of pick up where it left off because the book answers a lot of questions that the movie wasn’t able to. Like, “Why did I make the film?” “What happened after the movie came out?” as well as a lot of other questions that continually arise from people.

Do you have any new plans or projects coming up?

We’ve got a show that we’re getting ready to go back to New York to do with Comedy Central, a show called Public Nuisance, which I’m really excited about. We’re ready to go back and shoot a special for them and then they’ll decide whether to pick it up. For now I’ve been living in complete 30 Days land. I’m so proud of 30 Days, and I hope FX brings it back.

How hard is it to pitch a socially-aware project to a large media corporation that’s supported by advertising?

Yeah: “Here’s a show about DRINKING. Your sponsors are going to LOVE it.” I’m a big subscriber to the Mary Poppins school of filmmaking, which is “a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.” You have to make it fun, got to make it exciting. You don’t say, “We’re going to make a documentary about this…” You say, “We’re going to make this fun show about X, Y, and Z.” And for me, if you keep it fun and entertaining, it’s not hard to sell something that’s fun and entertaining. It’s not hard to engage a viewer and to get an audience. But the minute it’s not, then you start having problems. For me and for my company, the goal is to always keep it funny.

What kinds of responses do you get from these companies when you pitch your ideas?

Well, when we first started pitching 30 Days, we met with all the networks before FX picked it up, and that’s why I say kudos to these guys for saying it’s important and needed. The networks all looked at us like we had three heads while we were pitching this show. One network executive said, “So hold on a second… who wins this show?” I said, “Well you do, the viewer, every week by watching.” He said, “Well, it was nice meeting you.” And that was that. Especially for a network that is so dependent upon sponsor revenue, on ad revenue, it’s hard. Super Size Me will never show on any of the big four, ever. It will never play on commercial television. It played on commercial television in the UK, it played on commercial television all around the world, but in the United States, the corporations are so beholden to sponsors that it won’t happen. But there are plenty of other things I can make.