'Super Size' to minimum wage
For "30 Days" (debuting tonight at 11 on FX), Spurlock and his significant other, Alexandra Jamieson, will try to live on minimum wage ($5.15 an hour) for a month in Columbus, Ohio.
Each week on "30 Days," one person will immerse themselves in a different lifestyle. Future episodes will have a heterosexual man living in a gay culture and a conservative Christian among Muslims.
"It's people going through journeys, seeing life through someone else's eyes," says Spurlock, who was nominated for an Academy Award this year for his anti-McDonald's documentary "Super Size Me."
"I want people to watch the TV show and step back and say, 'I need to think about the choices I make in life.' This isn't a show about people winning money for doing what they do."
Spurlock wanted to face the first test for his series.
"When I first got the idea for this series, it was my idea to be the subject every week, to go out and do something different every week," Spurlock says. "Then Alex said, 'Well, you're not going to have a girlfriend very long.' "
The two had to find an apartment, take public transportation and get creative with their meals. "We did what millions of Americans do every single day," he says.
For an apartment, he found a landlord who allowed him to pay weekly.
The landlord, who was initially unaware that Spurlock was making a TV series, also pro-rated the rent when they moved into the flat in the middle of a month.
Spurlock took a variety of jobs, including construction, landscaping and as a dishwasher. He made an average of $200 a week. Jamieson had steadier employment at a coffee shop.
"The thing we both learned from this is how difficult it is," he says. "It really is hand-to-mouth. It's check-to-check. You're teetering on this precipices that, at anytime, could fall apart."
During the course of filming, Spurlock and Jamieson had to go to emergency rooms at different times for unrelated incidents. Neither of them had health insurance.
"We're stuck with these giant medical bills, and we had to find a way to pay these," he says.
They couldn't rely on their real-life finances, either. Spurlock and Jamieson gave up their credit cards and access to their own banking accounts for 30 days.
To compensate, Spurlock took two jobs — landscaping by day and dishwasher by night.
"I was gone from home for 18 hours and, on my best day, made $92," he says.
Spurlock says he didn't lie on his work applications. He admitted to being a college graduate but told employers that he was the subject of a documentary, which explained why cameras were following him.
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