My Morgan Spurlock Story — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

I have complicated feelings about The A.V. Club, but I will always be grateful for the incredible opportunities that came with being its head writer for over a decade.

I had so many surreal stories from that time in my career that I’ve forgotten many of them. Sometimes, it takes death to jog my memory.

When I saw that Morgan Spurlock had died of Cancer at fifty-three, I suddenly remembered my weird connection to him and his legacy.

At some point in 2009 Spurlock’s production company flew me and my former A.V Club colleague Steve Hyden to New York for what was essentially an audition to appear in a special that he was directing to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of The Simpsons.

The idea was that Hyden and I represented strongly contrasting attitudes towards The Simpsons. I was a superfan who still considered Matt Groening’s brainchild the greatest television show of all time. Steve, in sharp contrast, was a skeptic.

I remember almost nothing about the experience except that every person who worked in Spurlock’s office was an extremely attractive woman in her twenties. I’d love to think that this reflected Spurlock’s commitment to giving women jobs in entertainment but it just seemed like he enjoyed surrounding himself with hot young women he had power over.

So I wasn’t terribly surprised when Spurlock went through the unusual step of preemptively MeTooing himself after what he describes as a “history of sexual misconduct” involving infidelity, settling a sexual harassment lawsuit, and being accused of sexual assault in college.

I vaguely remember being very stiff when being videotaped about my feelings about The Simpsons. I tried to shoe-horn in an anecdote about being dragged kicking and screaming into a mental hospital where I spent the first night on suicide watch at 14.

While glaring at me, the mental hospital attendants had a conversation about what a terrible show The Simpsons was and how deeply wrong it was to derive laughter from a man physically abusing his son.

This was not the kind of story that the makers of The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special—In 3-D! On Ice! were interested in hearing or airing. It might just have been just a little too dark.

I was at a disadvantage because I was arguing a point seemingly everyone in the world agrees with. There are billions of people more attractive, popular and polished than myself who can articulate the greatness of The Simpsons.

Hyden, on the other hand, had the element of novelty going for him. For a pop culture writer to not gush about The Simpsons was different and rare.

During my strange day in Manhattan, I never met Spurlock. I don’t think he was even in town.

I didn’t feel like I did a particularly good job. Though I somehow ended up on thirteen episodes of Movie Club with John Ridley in 2004 and 2005, television was never my medium. I was too bald, my teeth were too bad, and I was just too damn awkward to feel comfortable in front of television cameras.

So I wasn’t surprised when I did not get a call from Spurlock’s office, though I was surprised to learn that they’d picked Hyden to represent folks who feel at least a little ambivalent about the show.

Apparently, Hyden filmed a lot of stuff for the special. The role of the Simpsons fanatic trying to convince Hyden of the show’s enduring greatness ended up being played not by me but rather by—and I hope you’re sitting down and have your monocle fastened tight because this will shock you—Morgan Spurlock himself.

I could be sullen and resentful that one of the most popular and influential documentarians of all time took a role on the special that could conceivably have been mine had I not sucked so badly in my audition.

But that would be stupid. Spurlock became rich and famous because he was a likable guy the camera loved and who, in turn, loved the camera. He absolutely should have had the pro-Simpsons role on his special.

I never watched The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special—In 3-D! On Ice! for reasons that have nothing to do with bitterness or professional jealousy, but apparently, Hyden did not make it into the special either. He either got cut out completely or just barely appeared.

That must have been frustrating, but it almost must have been fascinating.

I have other anecdotes from that time that do not reflect well upon me. One bleary night while we were taping something with the lead singer of The Hold Steady in Manhattan, for example, I apparently got blackout drunk and humiliated myself in front of my colleagues and Craig Finn.

I would tell you more, except that I do not remember a goddamn thing. It’s hard to take pride in drinking Finn under the table when I very well could have actually ended up under a table at some point during that lost evening.