Yesterday I went to the mysterious compound in the City of Industry where they’ve filmed every McDonald’s commercial since 1978. It’s a full-sized fake McDonald’s with a deluxe basement storage unit that houses every kind of McDonald’s wardrobe and furniture you can imagine. I was there to work as an extra in a pair of McDonald’s commercials.

Much like Nicolas Cage in Adaptation, I took on dual roles for these spots. I played both an indistinguishable McDonald’s uniform-wearing blur (as seen above), as well as a fuzzy customer languidly pretending to eat stale french fries across the room. In one of those many weird, unfortunate (but not for me) and unfair (for other people) twists of capitalism, I was paid exponentially more than minimum wage to pretend I was doing the ultimate minimum wage job. I walked back and forth, picked up burger-less Big Mac containers and put them down, operated unplugged McFlurry machines, and mimed as if I were checking the empty deep frier.

They had a food artist on hand to ensure that the featured meals looked irresistibly delicious. For the first spot, his task was a relatively easy one. There was no eating involved, as the star of the ad (a well-dressed, middle-aged Asian-American) simply had to gaze at his food reverently, portraying the wonder and admiration that McDonald’s food inspires in a man, without actually taking a bite.

The classic Big Mac, from an advertisement vs. reality comparison on Zuzafun.com

The star had to express unbridled excitement for hours, chomping down on those unholy concoctions– at least until the director yelled “Cut!”, at which point a man whose job it was to hold a bucket just out of frame would catch the masticated faux-burger in his receptacle and the food artist would deliver his next inedible work of art. Now, that actor really did deserve to be making far more than minimum wage for what he was doing. Me and Dane Cook– not so much.

But when you get down to it, how can you dislike a corporation that provided so many great childhood memories? McDonald’s needs to exist in our world, as the video below clearly proves. I’m lovin’ it!