Morgan Spurlock must have been a fun kid to go to high school with. After all, the situations that the New York-based filmmaker puts himself in — such as a month of eating only McDonald’s in his hit documentary Super Size Me, and living on minimum wage for the same duration of time in his TV show 30 Days — could certainly fit in with the assortment of teenage stunts that are typically too crude to discuss outside of the football locker room.

Although Spurlock probably should have had a nervous breakdown after all of the pseudo-masochistic activities he’s filmed himself doing, his latest film — POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold — is absolute proof that he’s only getting more imaginative.

The movie, which comes out on DVD on Tuesday, August 23 following a run in film festivals and theatres, documents Spurlock’s attempt to explore the world of product placement in Hollywood. But instead of simply filming talking heads to discuss the subject, he journeyed to the centre of the industry by persuading businesses and organizations to finance his $1.5-million movie. In short, he made a movie about product placement by convincing companies to place products in his film.

“I don’t think you’ll ever look at film and television the same way again,” Spurlock says. “This film will change the way you look at Hollywood movies forever. A tremendous amount of awareness goes a long way, and I think that this film really pulls back the curtain and takes off those rose-coloured glasses that we’ve all been wearing for a long time and lets you really understand everything.”

Spurlock says that the idea of the project was inspired by the TV show Heroes, which consistently features a Nissan SUV. Once he and his writer began to examine other examples of product placement in the media, they decided that the best way of communicating their findings was through the submerging techniques that the filmmaker is notorious for. After being rejected by dozens of companies, Spurlock finally found 19 brands that were willing to toss their name — and some money — into the hat. The juice company POM Wonderful, which paid $1 million to be the above-the-title sponsor, was officially made part of the movie’s name.

“Finding companies was a long, arduous process and a really big undertaking,” Spurlock says. “The fact that we got any brand on board is still remarkable to me.”

In addition to telling the story of the filmmaker finding sponsors, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold reveals the world of marketing in movies via interviews with directors, musicians, academics, ad agency directors, social critics and neuroscientists. Although Spurlock talked with most of the people he wanted to — including Donald Trump, Quentin Tarantino and Noam Chomsky — he says that he really wanted to interview Michael Bay.

“He’s the godfather of product placement,” Spurlock says. “You watch Transformers 3, and it seems that every other frame is product placement.”

The conclusion that the filmmaker has drawn from his lengthy investigation into the world of marketing is that all advertising is manipulation of some form. Although that revelation isn’t exactly revolutionary, Spurlock says that the purpose of POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is to remind audiences that they are being coerced every day.

In perfect irony, the “insane amount” of POM Wonderful that the filmmaker consumed throughout the course of the film does the trick: For the entire day after watching the film, I was scouring every store I went into for the drink. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only marketing pushover.

“You’re not alone,” Spurlock says, laughing. “That’s the thing. There are so many people that watched this film and immediately have to get POM.”