Morgan Spurlock, Male Grooming and 'Mansome' After tackling fanboy culture ("Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope") and product placement ("Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold"), the documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock has now turned his focus to men's grooming habits with "Mansome." The movie, which had its premiere last month at the Tribeca Film Festival, opens in theaters Friday. In the film, Mr. Spurlock interviews many men, from celebrities like Jason Bateman and Zach Galifianakis, to the award-winning beardsman Jack Passion, in a quest to understand how men's grooming habits have evolved in the 21st century and how male identity has changed in the process. Mr. Spurlock's own handlebar facial hair factors into the mix. In a recent interview at his SoHo production offices, Mr. Spurlock spoke about the film. Below are edited excerpts from that conversation. How did you want to structure the film? We wanted to use characters as the best place to jump off from, to find people who had interesting and compelling stories. Jack Passion is an amazing character. Here's a guy who is the European beard champion and the U.S. beard champion. He represents you and the rest of us Americans as the finest in "beard building," as he calls it. Once I met Jack, I thought this is someone we should use as a model. We wanted to find the people who represented the fringes of this idea. Only by understanding the extremes of certain people can you start to understand what the middle represents. I find myself more in the middle with the exception of this ridiculous mustache that I've been shaving around for eight years. You did a little bit of life imitating doc with your own mustache at the film premiere at Tribeca, correct? Yes, in the movie, I talk about how I came across Adam Garone, who created Movember, a charity fund-raiser for prostate cancer research where they get guys to grow mustaches. I called him and said I've had this mustache for a long time, so we came up with the idea of me shaving off my mustache during Movember to raise money for charity. And then my little boy, who's never seen me without a mustache, sees this weird man in his house and kind of loses it. So for the premiere, I had my mustache, and while the movie showed, I shaved it off. After the movie, everybody's looking at me like, "You kind of look like somebody I should know." People couldn't tell who I was. How did you determine which celebrities you were going to use? Well, first you go to ZZ Top. You have these guys with these iconic rock "n" roll man beards that they've had for years. It's their identity. Then John Waters, with his pencil-thin mustache, was good. Zach Galifianakis is one of those guys who has always made fun of how he's a bit of a schlub. Yet he's incredibly successful with this dirty-mountaineer look to him. So I thought he'd be interesting. Beyond facial hair, what were you interested in exploring? The film does look at this world of male body dysmorphia, where men are supposed to look and be a certain way. Shawn Daivari is an example of this. As a professional wrestler, there's a certain way he's supposed to look, which is completely ripped and cleanshaven without a hair on his body. He has to shave his whole body every single day before he goes to work. He has this mental image of what he has to live up to every single day. So there are some serious questions that are raised and some serious conversations that come up in the middle of a lot of funny parts. What ways have you found that male identity has most changed over the years? Men now are made to feel as insecure as we've made women feel for decades. Magazines cater to this insecurity. You're too fat, you're too ugly. Get that girl! So you think: "I don't have six-pack abs. What's wrong with me? I think that men have lost the confidence of self. We've lost this confidence of our own identity.