In the case of most directors, it is rare to have two films released in the same year. Not so for Richard Linklater when, in 2006 and for the second time, two of his films were released in a single year. In 2001, Waking Life and Tape had made their screen debuts and, five years later, 2006 saw the release of another Linklater duo, Fast Food Nation and A Scanner Darkly. Cannes in 2006 was a busy time for the director. Fast Food Nation competed for the Palme d’Or while A Scanner Darkly was screened as part of the Un Certain Regard competition, forcing Linklater to make multiple trips to the festival and juggle interviews and promotion. In addition to both films being in competition at Cannes, Fast Food Nation and A Scanner Darkly shared other similarities. Both were adaptations of well-known books; the former a 2001 non-fiction investigation and exposé of the fast-food industries by journalist Eric Schlosser, the latter a 1977 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. Both films harbored a dark tone, they both suggested a sense of disquiet with contemporary American culture and politics, and each treated its source material in innovative ways; Fast Food Nation was a non-fiction best-seller turned satirical drama for the screen and A Scanner Darkly used the interpolated rotoscope animation technique. The films’ critical reception was however a different story and here the similarity ends. While A Scanner Darkly was reasonably well received, Fast Food Nation divided critics and was considered one of Linklater’s less successful films. One reason given for the lackluster critical reception of Fast Food Nation was that it was an uncomfortable fit with the original source material which, it was proposed by a number of critics, surely leant itself better to documentary rather than drama. Moreover, despite both films reflecting Linklater’s political views–something that is arguably characteristic of much of this director’s output–Fast Food Nation was branded as agitprop by reviewers.

For many of the film’s critics it was an odd decision to turn a piece of hard-hitting investigative journalism into a satirical drama.