How Bunfight Became a McFeast
By Garry Maddox. Film Writer  

The film-maker Franny Armstrong reckons she's been thrown out of more McDonald's stores than anyone else. The making of McLibel: Two Worlds Collide, a documentary about two English environmental campaigners who were sued by the burger chain, involved some covert filming in stores that invariably led to being shown the door.

But as she explained in Sydney yesyterday - at a restaurant notably short on Big Macs and Quarter Pounders - being ejected from the Golden Arches was far from the only challenge in making the film.

First there was getting to make it, when it seems half the documentary-makers in Britain wanted rights to the story. Then there was finishing it, when the trial that was expected to last four weeks ran for more than two years - 314 sitting days - which made British legal history. Then there was getting it screened.

But 27-year-old Armstrong's persistence has turned Mclibel into a kind of cult film - screening on video, local-access cable channels, the Net and occasionaly cinemas through an international network of activists. On the day of the appeal against the verdict in January, her email around the world resulted in McLibel screening simultaneously at 104 locations in 22 countries.

As a would-be film-maker, Armstrong was inspired by the story of two campaigners, Helen Steel and Dave Morris, who had been sued by McDonald's for handing out a six-page leaflet called 'What's Wrong With McDonald's - Everything they don't want you to know'.

The leaflet accused the company of being responsible for starvation in the Third World, clearing rainforests for cattle grazing, selling products that caused cancers and heart disease, lying about its use of recycled paper, exploiting children, being cruel to animals during slaughter, paying low wages and treating its employees badly. McDonald's believed it was defamatory.

Steel, a part-time bar worker, and Morris, a single father who used to work for the post office, took on the company's lawyers in court. While McDonald's won, the case cost it millions of dollars in legal costs and was an international public relations disaster.

The film covers a series of bizarre developments - the company employing private investigators to infiltrate the activists' protest group, a former Ronald McDonald talking about how he couldn't live with himself any more for manipulating children, McDonald's executives offering a settlement ina secret recording...

Fertile as the ground was for a documentary, Armstrong found eight other film-makers had approached Steel and Morris before she expressed an interest. It was only when Britain's broadcasters wouldn't commission any of them (although Channel 4 commissioned a drama) that the others disappeared. As Armstrong says: "That left us, so we said 'We'll make it with no money. that's no problem'".

Armstrong thought it was the best story in the world for a film. "This was a story that had all of the issues I was interested in - the environment, animal rights, workers' rights, nutrition. Plus, it had this great human story - Helen and Dave were both magnetic."

McDonald's refused to allow its witnesses to appear in the film, so Armstrong decided to dramatise segments of the transcripts. That meant finding a drama director.

"We made a list of who we would like to direct our drama. At the top of the list was Ken Loach. At the bottom was me, I guess. We got in touch with his production company and got back this very sweet fax saying 'I would be delighted to help you with your film. Let me know what you want me to do'".

Despite a couple of near-things, the film has never screened on British television. While some see this as panic in the face of a powerful multinational, Armstrong admits the BBC citied libel, copyright and concern about the secret recordings of the McDonald's executives. Channel 4's lawyers simply believed it was libellous.

But when no-one would broadcast it, the publicity led to what Armstrong calls 'cult status' in Britain.

While the controversial secret recording took place before she started on the project, she has no qualms with its use in the film "McDonald's used every tactic against Helen and Dave, from putting the spies in and getting the police to hand over secret files.... Helen and Dave were two people against the corporation, so I don't think we felt too bad about exposing them for what they really are."

Armstrong regards it as a film that is not just about the burger chain and its business practices. "Obviously its about multinational corporatiosn - do we want them to run the planet for their own profit? Do we want them to exploit everything in their path? Are these slave-labour wages? Do we want those jobs? Do we want this kind of nutrition and the advertising that exploits children?"

While the film is long finished, the case continues. The McLibel Two are appealing to the House of Lords and the European Courts of Human Rights and are suing the police for handing private files to McDonald's.

Given the company's sensitivity over the case, it's fair to ak whether there will be any problems with the screening at the Women on Women Internatioanl Film Festival on Saturday, a subsequent season at the Chauvel cinema and a possible TV sale to SBS.

The film's Australian distributor, Gil Scrine, expects there won't be any legal problems in this country. "McDonald's have lost such a lot of credibility over this case that to pursue it to the ends of the earth -and Astralia in their terms would be the ends of the earth - would be futile and stupid."

A spokeswoman said McDonald's did not want to comment.

So are Steel and Morris the heroes they have been portrated as, or just two extremely stubborn activists? "They would always say, 'We're not heroes. Anybody could have done is. We just happened to be the people they picked on,'" says Armstrong, "but I've certainly never met anybody else who could have done it."

 
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