Several months ago the rumors started circulating, and everyone absolutely lost their mind. Had Morgan Spurlock actually found Osama Bin Laden for is new movie? It is called Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? after all. Tonight the rumors were cleared up. Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, and after four hours waiting in line for a ticket, I was there. If you don’t want to know whether or not Morgan found Osama (it is the whole point of the movie after all), then read no further. There be spoilers here.
So here’s the scoop: Morgan Spurlock did not find Osama Bin Laden. Neither did he find Osama Bin Laden’s corpse or any form of Osama droppings. In fact, I’m not even sure he was trying.
The movie is more about other issues, the big problems facing the middle east, not one man. Still, during the Q&A that followed the debut of his film, Morgan insisted that he did indeed start shooting with the goal of setting out to find Osama, and that it was only later during filming that he started to see Osama didn’t matter. Of course earlier in the Q&A he contradicted himself, by hinting that the movie was borne out of a desire to show what normal people in the Middle East thought was up with all this terrorism stuff. Paraphrasing there, Morgan’s an engaging and eloquent guy, I’m sure he said it a lot more eloquently than that.
So there you go, Osama Bin Laden remains at large, uncaptured by either the US government or Morgan Spurlock. At least Spurlock sort of gave it a shot, but not so much of a shot that he ended up getting shot. Let’s face it, there’s no way things would have ended well if he had actually found Osama.
Check back tomorrow for my full review of Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? on our dedicated Sundance Channel right here.
