How do you adapt an incisive book into a 114 minute film with a cohesive story line and compelling characters? Fast Food Nation‘s author changed his style from carefully annotated, investigative journalism into a character driven fiction piece in his own screen adapation of the 2001 best seller. With the successes of Super Size Me, and Farenheit 9/11, why not craft a documentary?

Santa Monica public radio station KCRW aired this interview with writer Eric Schlosser and director Richard Linklater on today’s The Business. The film makers describe the creative challenges of the adaptation, and those of financing and distributing a controversial fim through a Hollywood machine so closely allied with fast food corporations.

Fast Food Nation premiers in the US this Friday, November 17 with a cast of lesser known leads and star studded appearances by Bruce Willis, Greg Kinnear, Patricia Arquette, Luis Guzmán, Ethan Hawke, Kris Kristofferson, and Avril Lavigne to name but a few.

This blog will vacation for a week in the wilds of Western Colorado. If fortune smiles, I’ll bring back some elk meat and prepare some tasty wild game for your vicarous enjoyment.

How do you like the new peach masthead? Like the good parent I am, I pledge to dress my blog in clean clothes once a year, whether it needs it or not.

If you’re still seeing the old cheese masthead, hold down the shift key and refresh your browser. Let me know if anything’s broken.

Corporations have midlife crises too. McDonald’s is reputedly dumping the McRib sandwich after 25 loyal years to chase after a younger, fitness conscious female market. So farewell, McRib, you boneless pressed porkwich. Hello slim sexy Asian salad!

Or is it possible that the “Save the McRib” petition is just a poorly disguised ploy to harvest gullible McRib lovers’ email addresses? Perhaps the site’s images of iPods and tattooed young people are an attempt to reposition the old porker as a hip, teen-savvy object of desire?

There’s a photo gallery on the McRib website where consumers can submit photos of themselves from their cell phones. Though I have to believe the fetching young people wearing McRib logo tees are paid models, Carl’s Jr has a similar web promotion, where seemingly real people submit unflattering photos of themselves on the Burger Slayer of the Month website.

Welcome to corporate food marketing aimed at the MySpace generation. I wonder if teens are buying this, or as on MySpace, if they can spot a balding, middle aged marketing man on the other end of the screen?