The bizarre movie award Ronald McDonald won in 1989
Ronald McDonald, the mascot of fast food chain McDonald’s, might not be the first name you think of when it comes to those who have been the recipient of a film award, even if that award is a Golden Raspberry (Razzies), yet that’s exactly what happened after the clown character appeared in the 1988 film Mac and Me.
The science fiction film was directed by Stewart Raffill and starred Christine Ebersole, Jonathan Ward and Tina Caspary, focusing on a ‘Mysterious Alien Creature’ (MAC) that comes into contact with a young boy called Eric Cruise after he escapes the clutches of malicious NASA agents.
The pair soon try to find MAC’s family. If this all sounds amazingly like Steven Spielberg’s 1982 science fiction movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, then that’s because it’s pretty much a direct rip-off. But if that weren’t bad enough, then the blatant product placement of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola certainly was.
Producer R.J. Louis was well-known for his work with McDonald’s and believed that the character E.T. was only slightly behind Ronald McDonald in terms of iconoclastic status. The mascot subsequently appeared in a dance sequence in the film as well as the theatrical trailer.
Apparently, McDonald’s hadn’t actually wanted Ronald to appear in the film at all, and Louis denied there being any genuine funding from the fast food chain, even though there were indeed finances made available by Golden State Foods, a food service distributor closely associated with McDonald’s.
The whole enterprise looked to be made solely for the purpose of advertising, and Raffill was hired even before a script had been completed. He told Slash in 2016, “I was hired out of the blue. And the producer asked me to come down to the office. So I did, and he had a whole crew there, a whole crew on the payroll. It was amazing. He had the transportation captain. The camera department head. The AD. The Production Manager.”
Raffill continued: “He had everybody already hired, and I said, ‘Well, what’s the script?’ And he said, ‘We don’t have a script. I don’t like the script. You have to write the script. You’re gonna have to write it quickly, so prep the movie and write the script on the weekends.'”
In the end, the film was panned by critics and at the 1989 Golden Raspberry Awards, it was nominated for four gongs, winning ‘Worst Director’ for Stewart Raffill and ‘Worst New Star’ for old Ronald McDonald. The poor clown just didn’t stand a chance.
