The star of « The Founder » on how the true-life tale of a little 1950s startup called McDonald’s reminded him of a certain social network.
The movie » The Founder « , hitting cinemas worldwide this weekend, tells the story of its early years. Michael Keaton plays Ray Kroc, the man who turned a family-run California burger stand into a vast empire. It’s a tale Keaton compares to another startup success story with a somewhat contentious beginning.
Kroc took on the fast food idea pioneered by Dick and Mac McDonald. The brothers were hard-working and exacting, but their attempts to franchise their idea had failed. As with the story of nascent startup Facebook, when Mark Zuckerberg made a success of an idea rooted in his work with the Winklevoss brothers, it took an outsider to take the idea and build it into something huge.
Michael Keaton plays McDonald’s magnate Ray Kroc in « The Founder ».
« He had a big set of balls, man, » Keaton said of Kroc. « He was brave, and he was sometimes successful and sometimes not, but he took his chances. I actually admire the young, wilful, hard-working Ray Kroc. He worked hard, was driven, had a vision and went after it. He then became another thing that I don’t really admire. »
The film portrays Kroc’s shift from driven entrepreneur to what Keaton describes as « almost sadistic » in his scheming to wrest control of McDonald’s from the brothers who created it.
« This guy has worked his ass off, » Keaton said. « Then he does stuff that you think, ‘Oh Ray, come on! Did you really have to do that?’ A lot of times people say, ‘Well that’s what you have to do [in business].’ That’s obviously not necessarily true. »
He’s lovin’ it.
« A friend of mine had used that expression before, » Keaton recalled.
