‘Founder’ presented major storytelling challenge
Entrepreneurship’s dark side portrayed in screenplay tracing McDonald’s origins
There's something quintessentially American — yet also distinctly unsavory — about the origin story of McDonald's.
As told in the new docudrama "The Founder," it's largely the story of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a traveling milkshake-machine salesman who, in 1954, chanced upon a small San Bernardino, Calif., hamburger stand run by Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch).
Kroc partnered with the brothers, becoming head of franchise operations, but soon grew impatient with their reluctance to embrace what Dick McDonald calls Kroc's "crass commercialism."
Ultimately, "The Founder" also is a story of betrayal, as Kroc cuts the McDonalds out of the business entirely, eventually buying their name and forcing the original store to close on his path to leading what would become a global empire.
Director John Lee Hancock ("The Blind Side," "Saving Mr. Banks") phoned from Pasadena to talk about the film and its love/hate relationship with its antihero.
Q: Considering "The Founder's" unflattering look at McDonald's, were you concerned about obtaining legal permission to use the company's intellectual property?
A: That was my first question when I walked in the room to inter- view for the directing job.
Q: As I understand it, the principle of fair use would apply to a historical film. Is that why no approval was sought from the company?
A: We thought we were on good legal footing. This is not a contemporary McDonald's takedown. It's not "Super Size Me" (Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary about the effects of an all-McDonald's diet). On the one hand, I can see how some people might watch the movie and think, "I have a different feeling about McDonald's now, and it's not good." I can also see how some would go, "Wow, I only saw McDonald's as this international behemoth, and there are faces behind it now." Two of those faces — the McDonald brothers — are kind of endearing.
Q: The website of Lisa Napoli's 2016 biography of Ray Kroc and his second wife, Joan, takes issue with the film's accuracy, including the scene in which Kroc delivers a blank buyout check to the brothers at Mac McDonald's bedside, after he's been hospitalized from stress. Nitpicking aside, is the film broadly accurate?
A: I think it is. Kroc wanted to buy them out and said, "Come up with a price." The way to dramatize that is: Hand them a blank check. As opposed to having a phone call or lawyers talking, which would put everybody to sleep.
Q: Even some people who know Kroc's story may be surprised by details in the film, such as the revelation that he was briefly a professional piano player.
A: Michael's line was an ad-lib, when he says, "I used to sell pianos," and then gets up and plays. It's not a documentary. We don't have any proof that Ray sat down with Joan (Linda Cardellini) and played a duet of "Pennies From Heaven." We do know that he met her when she was playing piano at Rollie's Steakhouse.
Q: There are stories about Kroc being something of a neat freak, and you show him cleaning his garage to relax. Just as he rushes off camera to the garage, the film cuts to a shot of his suit, neatly folded on the bed. What does that suit represent?
A: In that particular scene, he was coming in from work, and his first wife (Laura Dern) was almost ready to go to the club for dinner. She's laid his suit out. I just liked the idea of there being an empty suit there. Does that mean he's dying inside? In terms of him being fastidious, we do have the scene with him at night, sweeping like a maniac. There are all these stories about him going through the McDonald's parking lot at night and picking up gum. It's something that Michael and I talked about a lot. Do we define his journey —his forward lean — from a behavioral standpoint, from a dialogue-and-delivery standpoint or from a clothing standpoint, as his clothes change? He just becomes more sharklike as the story progresses.
Q: Can you talk about the similarities between this film and "Saving Mr. Banks," another true story revolving around an ambitious genius, in that case Walt Disney?
A: I am aware of the similarities. I think the difference is that "Banks" is really about ("Mary Poppins" author) P.L. Travers. At the start of this movie, Kroc is very accessible, if you will. You understand his pain and what he wants. And he is — to me at least — very likable in the first third to half of this movie. In the first third to half of "Banks," P.L. Travers is really not relatable. She is standoffish. She is tough on characters that are doing nothing but trying to please her. And then, little by little, we start to understand the source of her pain. They're flipped journeys, in a way. But I enjoy the parallels in the way both movies are trying to understand people.