A New Documentary Will Celebrate Outlandish McDonald's Locations—but Only With Your Help
McDonald's fans can donate to a new effort to document some of the nation's finest, weirdest McDonald's, courtesy of the Nonstandard McDonald's Twitter account.
A few months back, we reported on Nonstandard McDonald's, a Twitter account devoted to archiving the world's most outlandish McDonald's locations. The Twitter account now has well over 150,000 followers, and Max Krieger, the visionary behind it, hopes to document American McDonald's in a new way: by hitting the road and shooting a documentary in Florida, one of the U.S. states with the most remaining active Nonstandard McDonald's locations. (By "nonstandard," we mean McDonald's locations that don't conform to the chain's exact brand specifications. We're talking chairs shaped like saddles, weird dinosaur decor, etc.). But before Krieger and his team can get started, they need funding through Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform.
The project's Kickstarter explains that the documentary route will include "at least 12 Nonstandard McDonald's locations (both active and deceased)" throughout the state of Florida. The team writes:
"Along the way, we intend to ask questions (to ourselves and to other diners) about matters at the heart of the project – about what makes a Nonstandard McDonald's so appealing, and the feelings surrounding their ongoing disappearance. We also intend to interview those involved in the creation and preservation of famous nonstandard locations."
Actually, the documentary is only the beginning. The Kickstarter has a few different tiers, and the lowest tier of $45,000 only covers the road trip and the documentary. If it raises $65,000, the team plans to build an interactive website for planning your own "Nonstandard Roadtrip," which the page says will be "complete with an updated listing of active locations and route-planning functionality." Other tiers include a coffee table book and a Blu-Ray set containing the documentary. Finally, if the team raises $350,000, they'll provide the repair funds for the currently defunct Mac Tonight animatronic located at the Epic McDonald's in Orlando, Florida, representing a glorious reclamation of forgotten fast food history.
Curious about the campaign? Check out the Kickstarter, which includes information on backer rewards—including hot, hot merch. To clarify, The Takeout is not affiliated with the effort, but we love funky fast food history as much as anybody. We know where our extra pennies are going this month.