By Fred Topel | Image property of respective holders
30 Days
Soon after Morgan Spurlock's Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? hits theaters, his TV show will begin airing its third season. 30 Days returns June 3 on FX with more month-long adventures presented in an hour-long format.
Morgan Spurlock Talks 30 Days
"This season's great," Spurlock bragged. "I went back to my home state of West Virginia. In the season premiere, I go underground and become a coal miner, an underground coal miner for 30 days. I get my apprentice coal miner's license and basically become an underground coal miner for a month. It's one of those things, we don't think about those guys. We have no idea or concept of what they go through and it's backbreaking work. It's the hardest job I've ever done in my life. Basically, they do it every day just so you and I can turn on a light bulb. 50% of our electricity still comes from coal and we don't think about it. We don't think about that there's somebody down there doing this [shoveling] just so we can turn that on or plug in our phone or turn on our tape recorder. That's one episode."
Other episodes tackle more diverse issues. "There's a great episode about gay parenting. There's an incredible episode about life on an Indiana reservation where I go live on the Navajo reservation for 30 days. We do an episode about gun control where a woman whose friend was killed by a stray bullet in Massachusetts moves to Ohio and moves in with a pro-gun family. She actually gets a job in a gun shop. We have a former NFL superstar who lives in a wheelchair for 30 days to see what it's like to be handicapped in the United States, a guy named Ray Crockett who lives in Dallas, Texas."
One episode, however, stands out as the piece de resistance to Spurlock. "Probably my favorite episode of the year is a hunter from North Carolina. I grew up a hunter, hunting in West Virginia. So this hunter from North Carolina moves to Los Angeles and moves in with an animal rights PETA family for 30 days. It is probably one of the greatest hours of television I've ever seen in my life. It's fantastic. It's such a good show."
FX continues to support Spurlock's controversial pursuits. "They're a fantastic network to work for. They've been just so gracious. I've never had an experience where they really just gave us such free reign. We go to them with ideas and they're incredibly supportive and just helpful and nurturing with talent. I use that term loosely for myself. We were very blessed to get to have the show there."
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