Appetite for a fight

'I didn't come to this as an activist, but I hope I can make a contribution to the larger dialogue that is going on," says the American writer-director Richard Linklater. His latest film, Fast Food Nation, a fictionalised version of Eric Schlosser's 2001 best- selling expose of the American junk food market, is released this weekend. Ten years ago, he insists, it wouldn't have got made.

Shot in the style of Traffic, with a cast that includes Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, it covers all aspects of food production for a fictional burger chain called Mickey's, from the migrants in the packing plants to the wealthy executives. The closing scenes, on the "kill floor" of a burger factory, will make you gag.

The message of Fast Food Nation is that we in the West are responsible for unethical and inhumane treatment of poorer people, animals and the countryside in order to make more money and eat quicker food. Instead of creating a national panic about obesity, he insists, we should be looking at why low-income families become reliant on junk.

"Poor health is the ultimate poor tax. I see it in moral terms, not just in freedom terms. We can be brainwashed into thinking we have a free market, but corporations are very happy to feed off you. At a consumer level they can make money off you selling you a bunch of crap you shouldn't be eating. And then they get to make money off you in a medical role, treating your symptoms.

"I was talking to someone recently diagnosed with breast cancer, which is often thought to have an environmental factor, and the first thing her doctor said to her was 'Oh, you really should now only eat organic food because it's often felt all the hormones are maybe contributory.' It's like: 'Now you have the disease, then we'll help you."

Linklater first came to prominence in 1991 with the sprawling low- budget Slacker and then, in 1993, Dazed and Confused, which summed up the Gen-X phenomenon, and inspired fellow indy directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Since then he's made mainstream Hollywood films alongside more experimental fare. But many of us love him for his talky adult romances Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, which made stars of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

Fast Food Nation is his most overtly political project. A vegetarian since his twenties, he wants us to think more about how food is processed. The film isn't about giving up meat but making better free-range, non-exploitative choices. "You have to ask the big questions and do that with almost everything you buy. We all get to vote every single day with our dollar; in elec-tions you only get to vote every now and then."

He thinks there is an analogy with smoking or wearing a seat- belt. "As a culture we've decided you really shouldn't smoke until you're 18. So if you're making a product that you know is unhealthy and advertising it to children who barely have verbal skills and they get addicted ... Nobody uses those terms but salt, sugar, fries, it all tastes chewy and pretty damn good because of all the chemicals in it. It's a Pavlovian response." He also thinks maybe medical-industrial companies don't want us to live longer. "If you die 20 years before you're programmed to die - say you're to live to be 84 but you die at 64 - no more benefits. After all, retired people are kind of expensive to have around. So if you can just be a work-er and die at the end of your work, that would be ideal," he adds.

Linklater was raised by a single mother, and the Ethan Hawke character in Fast Food Nation is based on his uncle, who came to live with them when Linklater was 15 and opened him up to cool books and anti-es-tablishment politics. He went to college on a "low- income programme" but dropped out to work on an oil rig. It paid well and he spent all his free time at the cinema. He bought a Super 8 camera and moved to Austin, Texas, where he started an off-campus film society. Slacker was based on himself and his roommates - "the sort of guys who sit around bullshitting". He assumed it would alienate most audiences, but it was picked up by film festivals and is still influential.

His hardcore fans may find Fast Food Nation a little didactic. "I don't believe in conspiracy but I do believe in unwilfully ignorant and unseen things behind events. The more important something is - a war for instance, people dying - you as a citizen aren't really qualified to talk about it: 'Leave it to the masters, you don't know what they know, they have the information on our behalf '."

Typically he identifies with the students in the film - "it's the point when your justice metre is as pure as it'll ever be" - but now, at 46, he also has sympathy for Don, the executive, who finds out something's wrong with the meat in the Mickey burger. "He represents a lot of us at this stage of life: you've got some kids, you've got a wife, you've got something to lose. He has a small chance to make a difference: we have these chances all the time. But is it worth everything you have?"