Thursday, January 19, 2017

The Founder


You will never look at another Big Mac the same way again after you watch the new movie The FOUNDER.  It's a true story of the beginning and the end of the fast food industry and the man that changed the fast food industry forever.

It's the story of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling salesman from Illinois, who unintentionally sells multiple Milkshake machines to a couple of genius fast food restaurant owners in San Bernadino, California.  He travels to San Bernadino to find out the story of the 2 brothers, Mac (John Carroll Lynch) and Dick McDonald (Nick Offerman), who ran a small takeout burger stand in the 1950's.  They had a system of serving up burgers and fries faster and more efficiently than anyone else in the business, they called it the speedy system.

The 2 brothers found ways to custom design tools to make service faster and they choreographed every move in the kitchen like it was a ballet.

Then the start of what I think was the beginning of the end of the food industry happened when a desperate but greedy and obsessive struggling salesman Ray Kroc decides he wants a piece of the pie.  He convinces the brothers to franchise the restaurants and he starts the first one and through kind of shady tactics he builds and empire while pulling the original restaurant founders out from under their business.  It's a very sad story but very well told and well portrayed by Keaton.

You will wonder what would have happened to the food service industry had this man never gotten the opportunity to change it.  It really presents clearly what greed and the bottom line has done to North America mostly but in huge part in America.  Where real food becomes less important than making a buck.

This is a film everyone should see because it's a piece of history, it's interesting and it's also an entertaining piece of film.  The production value of the locations and the details of the clothing and sets are also amazing.

Luckily I had a burger for lunch before seeing it but it's less food porn and more about trust, business practices, persistence and manipulation.

Go see it... but don't go hungry.


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