The Big Picture - Adam McKay on ‘Vice,’ Power, Comedy, and Criticism | Interview (Ep. 114)

Episode Date: January 4, 2019

‘Vice’ writer-director Adam McKay joins the show to talk about his relationship to the politics of Dick Cheney, learning to take criticism from his days in comedy, and whether ‘The Big Short’ and ‘Vice’ are a better indication of his future than ‘Step Brothers’ and ‘Anchorman.’ Host: Sean Fennessey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy New Year and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Liz Kelley. The NFL playoffs are officially here and that means tons of coverage up on the site. Robert Mays is writing about Philip Rivers' legacy, Danny Kelley discusses Russell Wilson and the Seahawks' offense, and Danny Heifetz gives us his wildcard weekend viewing guide. On the pop culture side, we have a live Golden Globes wins pool featuring Sean Vennessy, Amanda Dobbins, Chris Ryan, Micah Peters, and Kate Halliwell. You can check that out on YouTube.

I kept saying during when we were doing it, like, no Republican should be mad about this. They succeeded. Like, this is a win, what they did. Like, if it was what I believed in winning, I'd be like, hey, great. So, but I think, you know, some of these forces hate the fact that we're calling it out and mentioning it. They rely on people not knowing this. I'm Sean Fantasy, editor in chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most interesting filmmakers in the world.

And boy, do I have an interesting one today. It's Adam McKay. He's the writer and director of Vice, which, you know, some of you have seen and some of you have not yet seen. I would highly recommend it if you've been listening to the Oscar show, you've heard Amanda Dobbins and I talking about what we've liked about it and also what the reaction of the film has been. And in talking to Adam, we learned a lot about how he sees the world, how he sees power, how he sees these figures in his movies, and also how he sees the reaction to his movie. This was a fascinating conversation about one of my favorite movies of the year. So without further ado, let's get right to Adam McKay.

I'm really delighted to be joined by one of my favorite filmmakers, Adam McKay. Adam, thanks for coming in. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Adam, I will say, at the end of the big short, when that coda came up on the screen and I saw that note about Michael Burry in water, I was like, man, I wonder if Adam McKay is only going to make movies like this from now on. I had kind of a gut feeling, and then I heard about Vice, and of course, it's got you moving in a new kind of direction from your previous films.

Is this kind of what your career is going to be now? Sort of more national issue oriented, historical? Or is this just sort of a moment in time? You know, I think with every movie we've done, we're kind of trying to respond to what's going on in kind of the moment in time. So for a while, the comedies really felt right. Comedies were huge. We were getting to put certain themes and ideas in them that really excited us and at the same time laugh like goons while we're doing it. I was getting to learn a lot about filmmaking, working with different DPs. And then it was before The Big Short,

it just felt like, man, the world is so off its hinges right now. I got to try something different. And I just got lucky that that script had stalled at a production company, Plan B, and I loved the book. And it was one of my favorite books. So it was one of those cases where everything just lined up. But even going into the big short, I didn't really think of it like as a serious movie. I mean, there's a lot of funny stuff in that movie. But definitely in the end, it lands pretty dark and pretty heavy. So unfortunately, after that movie, we did, well, we did Succession, which was great and pleasure doing that. But unfortunately, the world went even more off the

rails. It got worse. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I was kicking around this idea. I was just intrigued by Dick Cheney. And when I started doing research about him, I realized he was a great sort of face for the last 40 or 50 years. I thought maybe I'd go for this movie. I knew it was going to be hard. He's not a charismatic guy. He's not a likable guy. So I went for it. All of this is a very long winded way of saying, no, I will not be doing a certain type of movie, every movie out. But boy, these last two certainly felt right for the times that we're living in. I think people tend to forget how long it takes to make a movie. And the idea of living with Dick Cheney for years feels like it's a risk. There's something bold about that.

Was there ever a time in the development or even in the making of the movie where you're like, God damn it, I'm still with Dick Cheney? I would say that moment would be when I was in an ambulance, staring at the ceiling of an ambulance, having a heart attack.

That seems like a relevant moment. That would be the moment where I was like, why did I choose Dick Cheney? This could have been Step Brothers 2. I don't mean to make light of it. I did have a heart attack after the shoot. I got very lucky. I got into the hospital extremely fast.

No damage was done to my heart. Basically, the doctor said, you idiot, stop smoking. And I stopped smoking. So since then, things have been a lot better. But once Uh, and I've stopped smoking. So since then things have been a lot better, but I, but once again, no damage to my heart, man, did I dodge a bullet, but that did happen. And, uh, it was a really rigorous, tough movie. I mean, from the point of the script, the amount of research we had to do hiring journalists to interview people, reading articles, talking to like people, it was just, I've never gone through anything like it.

Whereas with the big short, you have a book, you have a source. And then the shooting was tough, but fun. Fortunately, we had some of the best actors on the planet, one of the best DPs on the planet, on and on. And then the edit was tough. He is a character that did not want to be depicted. Everything about what Dick Cheney's done has been, you are not making a movie about me.

Yeah, seriously. Oh yeah, without a doubt. I mean, you read his biography. It is, it's like instructions on how to like assemble a vacuum cleaner. I mean, there's nothing in it whatsoever. So, but it also felt like given the times we're living in, like, you know what?

We should be dealing with this kind of challenge. It kind of felt right in a way. Was there anything you learned about Cheney when you were doing this research, reading the times we're living in, like, you know what? We should be dealing with this kind of challenge. It kind of felt right in a way. Was there anything you learned about Chaney when you were doing this research, reading the books, having people interview people that surprised you or maybe gave you, like, some empathy for him or just found a new way into this figure? The big thing, and it certainly made the movie more difficult, was that the first act of Dick Cheney's story is not Dick Cheney's story. It's Lynn Cheney's. And I kept researching going, there's got to be something here. This can't be like, you know, old Sid Field structure, McKee, you need that inciting incident. But everything I read, all the research we did, all the interviews we did, we talked to people from Casper and they would say, no, we still say whoever Lynn Vincent would have married would have been president or vice

president. I mean, she was a remarkable young lady, straight A student, beautiful baton twirling champion, charismatic. And she picked Dick Cheney. So that gave me empathy for him because he was kind of a bit of a normal guy in the beginning. And like, I think his brother was like a plumber. I'm not sure what his sister did. Like his whole family did pretty ordinary. You see him working on the line and you're like, how can this be Dick Cheney early on in the film? But, and I think that's what he would have ended up doing.

I think he probably would have managed a line crew, maybe eventually worked in the head office. Um, so yeah, that gave me sympathy seeing that he was kind of a regular guy feeling that kind of desire from him to like impress his wife to make good I think that's something we all kind of feel I mean for me a big scene is when he calls his wife and says you know in the White House you'll never guess where I'm at and I think we've all done that one way or the other like you know hey mom I just got my first paycheck or hey honey I'm I'm here, you know? So, yeah, he started to pull me in a little bit as a human. And then you start to see as history ticks by how he's just getting, you know, pulled in slowly by like the pull of that

power, that intoxication. In reading his story, you can really feel it when you go through it. You know, it seems like the movie is, even though it has these very small flashes of empathy for Chaney, or at least trying to understand how he got to where he is, that it's ultimately a pretty angry movie. I thought sort of impressively angry. Oh, yeah. Not many movies these days are fired up about something. Yeah.

And I'm curious if that's something that you guys discussed very much at the beginning when you started to make it to say, we feel like we have something straightforward and aggressive to say here. Or if you were just saying, we're trying to create the portrait of a man. Portrait of a man was always the center, that first and foremost. And once you do portrait of a man, you're doing portrait of a man and his wife with Janie. So that was always the center. But what we realized was his portrait has to include the rise of the Republican Party because that's also what made him from the late 70s on. So that had to be a major player in the movie. And that also made it more difficult because you're trying to do this portrait. It's like playing guitar, your

own baseline and your own lead. And we kept having to bop back to show what the Republican Party was doing. And I think that's where a lot of that anger you're talking about was going on. I mean, a lot of it we didn't really depict with any overt anger. I think the anger is built into what you're seeing. That may just be completely my lens. But it's like it's very frankly told. Yeah. Like when they ripped the solar panels off the White House.

Yes. They really did do that. It really was that naked and open. And so when you show that, it's naturally going to feel angry, but that is what they did. So, yeah, there's a bunch of it. When you see Frank Luntz warping words and manipulating people like, oh, man, they feel angry about that. Well, Frank Luntz is amazing at that. He did a bunch of it. So, but there's no question that you can't tell this

story without feeling degrees of anger, sadness, regret, and also a lot of it too, really funny. It's so ridiculous, like what they got away with, what they did, how flagrant it was that there are many points that you, you know, when Frank Luntz says it's, uh, it's always been very difficult to get poor people to accept cutting taxes for the rich. Every screening we did, there would be a 10th of the audience would laugh really hard at that, including me. And, uh, here's a crazy story. After our premiere, I walk out of the theater and a guy taps me on the shoulder and it's Frank Luntz. I knew that he would be very keenly aware of himself in this film. And he came up to me, he's like, hey. And he goes, you know, I really did do a double thumbs up

after that death tax moment. And I was like, yeah, man. I go, you know, some of that stuff, not so good for people, especially the global warming. You've got a power. Maybe you should use it to reverse some of that. Oh, yeah, yeah. You could tell he's kind of clueless. Maybe I will. Maybe I will. And that was it. I walked away. And I was like, how did he get in here? But I love that he said he really did do a double thumbs up after the death tax. That's the thing that has to be most accurate to him. It's amazing. So when you're dealing with, I don't want to say Frank Lentz is soulless, but there's some erasure of feeling when you're doing some of this stuff that they're doing. And when you're trying to portray people like that, you know, I've heard Christian Bale talk a little bit about in his performance trying to find a little bit of humanity.

That's what makes a great performance all the time. But as a filmmaker, are you like, fuck it, Frank Luntz deserves this? Like he should be shown in this light? I mean, we just played him real. I mean, that's what he would do. He would address them and sayuntz deserves this. Like he should be shown in this light. I mean, we just played him real. I mean, that's what he would do. He would address them and say, we did this. He would run a focus group. I mean, there's that fine line.

In fact, interesting question because he does the thumbs up and I think the original cut hung on him for like another eight or nine frames. And I felt like it got too arch. And I'm like, play it like he would have done. He would have given double thumbs up and then cut. And so my editor and I were like, all right, shave like half a second off of that. So we were aware of that stuff. You don't want to indicate some of this stuff they're doing is so

monstrous and so crazily horrifying that I wonder, I don't actually have an answer for it. Are we laying that on that it's villainous? Are we laying it on that it's so bad? Or is it in the performance? I can't really tell because I always tried to get the actors to play it straight. Always was like, no, it's your job.

You show up every day, you do this. And the actors are so good, they knew that. So it's an interesting question. I'll have to watch the movie one time. Are we indicating any of this? One of the ones is when they ask Cheney and Rumsfeld, hey, the two generals go, we're worried about these no-bid contracts for Halliburton. And Rumsfeld just goes, well, we're not worried, are we, Dick? And Dick goes, not at all. Does that look arch? Does that look like Paul Servino in Goodfellas? I can't tell, because that is what they would have said.

I think it's that blank affectation that kind of covers so much of what Cheney does, that kind of confuses us. And even in the marketing of the movie, there's something pointed about saying, this person is a bureaucrat, and this is the destruction that a bureaucrat can rain upon a nation. It's a fascinating thing. There's part of me that thinks that some of the reaction to the movie, both positive and negative, is related to the fact that we're going through such a traumatic time right now. And that you go to, I think, very expertly show us kind of how brutal 2000 through 2008 was. And the movie is a reminder in many ways of a lot of the terrible

things that happened, not just during the Nixon era or in the Gulf War or any of those things, but specifically 10 years ago. And I think people don't want to be told now isn't the worst of all time. Did you see the movie on a kind of a historical continuum to today? Or do you feel like it kind of ends at the end of his term? Oh, I definitely saw it as connecting to today. I think one of the big things we don't talk about enough is how this is a 50-year story. This is not a Donald Trump story. This started in the late 70s. You could argue it started with the Powell memo in the early 70s when Powell wrote the,

who later became a Supreme Court justice, wrote a memo calling for billionaires and big businesses to bring their money to D.C. You're getting your butts kicked by the unions. Come in here. That really changed everything. And that's where the think tanks came out of. That's where lobbying exploded. From that point on, it was like game on. And then eventually they got Reagan in, who was the perfect guy.

I don't think most Americans connect this as one long story. That was not the reason we made the movie, but in creating that as kind of the baseline behind Cheney's character portrait, I felt like it was really important. So yeah, I understand with the bombardment we're getting from the news, what a bummer it is to see stuff that happened bad before. But I think the power of it is understanding that this is not a one-time thing. This is not about Donald Trump. Donald Trump could go away tomorrow, and I guarantee you someone else sits right in that chair and does more of the same. So I love that part of it. I love that we got to show the Koch brothers and

the Coors and Richard Mellonscaife coming to DC in the late 70s, creating those right-wing think tanks, the Cato Institute, putting the money behind ones like the Heritage Foundation. That's a story you don't hear very often. There's a couple of writers who have written it really well, which is obviously where I got it from, which Dark Money by Jane Mayer is amazing. Kim Phillips Faines, Invisible Hands, Democracy in Chains. These are reputable reporters. Everything's sourced. These are facts. I kept saying during when we were doing it, no Republican should be mad about this. They succeeded. This is a win, what they did. If it was what I believed in winning, I'd be like,

hey, great. But I think some of these forces hate the fact that we're calling it out and mentioning it. They rely on people not knowing this. They don't want the curtain pulled. No. Yeah. Well, there's also something synchronous, too, about the big short there where the film, which sort of opens with this explication of mortgage ratings and this is sort of inciting incidents seem to be like an interesting and relevant way for you to tell your stories.

Well, there's an interesting connection. I was actually thinking about it the other day because obviously there's always so many layers to any great historical inflection point. It's never just one event, one person. And I was thinking, how does the story of our get traction you go into the reagan era reagan starts deregulating lobbying opens way wider all of a sudden way more money's coming in and then with that money that the banks have been making from the new products they're able to buy off congress people and away we go so um no they actually dance quite nicely with each other. Yeah, they're connected. Yeah. I wish I had been clever enough to find one little one sentence reference that linked the two, but I'm not. We're doing it right now. I'm not that clever. I'm curious about your relationship to Cheney in the past. When he was serving as vice, I think you were at SNL at the time and

then making Anchorman and things like that. Were you politically active? Were you a voracious consumer of news? Did you have an awareness of all that? I mean, it obviously shows up in the writing that you were doing then, but I wonder if you had quite as much engagement with it. Well, you know, I don't think I had the resources to do obviously what we're doing now, but, you know, definitely I was in those marches, you know, against the Iraq war in New York. I was definitely writing a lot about it. I wrote a lot of cold opens when I was at SNL about that period. So yeah, I was very engaged.

And right from the jump, I mean, I'll never forget the first debate between Al Gore and W. Bush. How old were you? I'm 36. I was kicking for that. You were around. Yeah, I was a voter.

I remember watching that at SNL and we were in a room with about five or six people. And we were just like, this is embarrassing. Like, this is really bad. Was this lockbox? I might've been a lockbox. I think it was the first one. And we're like, W. Bush doesn't look competent. Like he doesn't look like a competent professional. I'm not saying I'm doing backflips for Al Gore. Don't get me wrong. I have some issues with Al Gore too, but clearly right away, you're like, this guy's not qualified. He's not competent. This is over. And then I went and I walked around the hallway and I was like, God, are you watching this? And people were like, yeah, I know Al Gore is terrible.

Oh man. And I remember looking in people's eyes and just being like, what are you talking about? And I feel like that was the moment where we started to like let go of the dock, undo the rope that connected us to the dock of reality where people started defending George W. Bush in this kind of tribal way. So yes, off of all of that, when Cheney came in, it was really apparent that at least Cheney

was W. Bush's James Baker. At least he was going to be as Donald Reagan. We knew that right from the beginning. Then as time kept clicking by, all of a sudden you started hearing the things that were going on coming out of those offices. And, yeah, I was pretty aware of it. Oh, this guy is really steering some stuff. Oh, he's got a team around him. Is W. Bush even engaged? That having all been said, when I started picking up all these different great books by Jane Mayer

and Susskind and Barton Gellman and all these great writers, I was still astounded at the level to which Cheney had planned all this. And his just awareness and mastery of the bureaucratic machine just blew me away. I don't know if there's ever been anyone who's come through Washington, D.C. who understands the machine like that guy. At the time when you were working at SNL, did you imagine that you would be making films like this? Because I've heard you talk about Hal Ashby and other filmmakers that you admire and the way that they would create these interesting portraits of complex people. And I'm curious if that was sort of the long-term aspiration for you. I never knew exactly where it was going to land. I just first and foremost am a huge film lover. I just grew up probably like you, probably like a lot of us, just inhaling films my entire life.

Every kind of film you can imagine. I mean, you know, some of my favorite movies are like The Man Who Would Be King, Breaking Away. And then at the same time I can jump to, you know, one-on-one with Robbie Benz. Sure. Yeah. It's a Bill Simmons favorite. Yeah.

You could just go anywhere. And I watched it. So I just love movies. So, I mean, Halloween is one of my all time favorite movies. So I was game for anything. And,

and really the big break I got was at SNL. My last two years, Lauren, God bless him. Let me direct short films. And that was when it became a reality. Because even though they're short films, you have a script supervisor, you have a DP, you have monitors, you have a crew, you have gaffers, you have grips. It's all there.

Great actors, Buscemi, Ben Stiller, Willem Dafoe were all doing cameos in these short films. I was shooting 16 mil, which was incredible. I was getting to use actual film. And that was it. That was when I started going, oh, wait a minute. At the least, I want to direct some comedies, which is what led to Anchorman. Let's talk a little bit more about the formal aspects of Vice, which is one of the things that I like most about it. I suspect that this was a very long script that then came down a little bit.

Is that accurate? You know, it wasn't crazy long. I think the script was 135 pages. What is it now? 120? Yeah, I guess it was around 210, something like that. So that's not bad. 215, I think, with credits. So there wasn't that much on the cutting room floor, ultimately. There were two big chunks that got cut. There was,'ve heard a musical number in the top. And then there was a whole run about them as teenagers where they fell in love. Oh, my God. It was so beautifully shot. Both will be on the extra footage thing when it comes out.

And then there were two other little small bits. There was a bit about Nelson Rockefeller and the death of Rockefeller Republicans, but it wasn't that long. And there was a little scene with Carell and Bale. That's the one where Bale is shirtless and you see his belly and that got cut as well. And that was pretty much it. Right, that's in the trailer. That was it, yeah.

What did change in the edit room, your instincts that there was definitely growth, you know, change in the script of the thing, is that, you know, the form and the order changed. I mean, we learned pretty quickly, you can't open this movie with two actors that you don't know playing Dick and Lynn Chaney as 16-year-olds.

The audience has showed up. It's Christian Bale. It's some of the great actors on the planet. And as great as those scenes were, we just got murdered going through those scenes. I mean, it was nothing against the actors. The footage was beautiful. You'll see it when it comes out.

They just weren't with us. They're like, look, we showed up. I mean, this is a movie about a vice president who's pretty boring at that. Like we were in the theater, give us something. So pretty quickly we had to change to, I like what we did, him getting the DUI and the 9-11 as kind of a contrast of the alcoholic,

comfortable in the center of chaos. And I thought that was kind of nice. So that was a big change that we made off of screenings. That style that you started to hone with your editor, Hank Corwin, on the big short is obviously very much in effect here. How much of that stuff just goes on the page? How much of we're going to flash to fly fishing? We're going to flash to a lion hunting its prey? These kind of moments that you have. Those were all scripted. That's all in script. That was all in the script.

And I know the way Hank cuts and I know the way I like to cut with him. That having been said, twice as much ends up in the movie. Really? Yeah. Why did you start to add more? You just feel it rhythmically. And it's a funny thing because as you're screening, there are definitely audience members that don't like that style. And you're being told,

why does it jump around? I don't like that. And so I don't want to go too far, but at the same time, I don't want to just follow the audience. I like it. I find it engaging. I think it gives an energy and a frenetic kind of subconscious quality to what you're watching. So I like it. You know, I find it engaging. I think it gives an energy and a frenetic kind of subconscious quality to what you're watching. So I like it. So you try and find that balance between, you know, the person in the mall out at Arclight Sherman Oaks going, it gives me a headache and well, we ain't getting rid of it. Well, that's really interesting. I mean, I have to assume you're a fan of Adam Curtis. I just met with him. Oh, did you really? I did a whole piece with him. They're actually going to publish it. He and I sat for an hour

and they transcribed it. Really? Yeah. Oh yeah. He's a huge influence on me. Oh, that's fascinating. I mean, you can really feel it in this movie even more than the last.

I love his movies too. Is he making another movie right now? He is. He was in the edit room. That's good to know. I guess there's something interesting though about being unafraid of the audience's reaction, you know?

And this cuts in another way too, because obviously so many of the audience's reaction you know and this cuts in another way too because obviously so many of the films that you have made are literally beloved you must have people come up to you and say like you make my life so much better because of your films but this movie is depicting something that is a little bit more polarizing for people and you have said before that even the banks are not really polarizing people hate banks so the big short is not polarizing is there any weirdness in the aftermath of having put this movie out in the world? You're obviously very vocal and active politically on Twitter and elsewhere, but for what you make, the art that you make, this is a really a clear statement. And I wonder like what

that's been like. We knew that there were going to be people that hate this movie. There's no question about it. When we made it, we were prepared for it. That is not a problem. We had that with Step Brothers. Step Brothers got pretty terrible. Well, 50% good, 50% bad. Those people are idiots. But it was not well-received.

And a lot of people did not like Step Brothers. Farrell and I beforehand looked each other in the eye. I was like, you know, this one, we have a fart joke in it. That means you're not getting good reviews. Are you okay with that? And Farrell's like, I'm okay with it. I'm like, so am I. Let's go. So coming from comedy, you're okay with that. I think the only thing with this movie that surprised me was some of the flack from the kind of left-wing scholars and journalists. That I did not see coming. And I didn't realize that it would become like a territorial thing of

like, hey, you didn't do the history, right? Look at my book. I did it right. And by the way, with all due respect to those people, because they're amazing and they were a major part of how this movie got made, that was the one little thing that surprised me. And it's the one little thing that I bid on on Twitter, which I regretted was I actually started arguing with a couple people. I'm like, ah, why did I do that? Don't ever do that. That was stupid. Everything else I'm fine with. You knew the right wing was going to come after it. You knew certain formalists who like their movies very traditional are going to hate it. We knew that was coming a million miles away. So with comedy, I'm pretty used to people, a certain group of people not liking what you're doing. I'm perfectly okay with that.

Even the big short, even though we did really well with it, there was some very vocal detractors of that movie. 100% fine with that. You have a crazy five-year effect on all your films, though, where five years later, people are like, this movie's a fucking masterpiece.

Like, almost every movie you've made? It's kind of weird, yeah. Well, that must be lovely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you anticipate that now when you're making a movie? Like, they'll get it in the future? Well, I mean, this movie, once again, very different, uh, part of the way movies play overall. And you know, this, there are other filmmakers who have that as well as with the streaming with cable. It's fantastic because

like a movie like idiocracy, idiocracy and office space, two of my all time favorite comedies never would have been found without screaming, without streaming, without cable, all that kind of stuff. So that's a nice bonus. However, with this movie, we had a very different feeling going into it. I was joking with someone that this movie is not cool. This movie is not removed. This movie does not have an analytical remove to it. We are waving our arms frantically. You can see our pit stains in our shirt. We are a little freaked out, to be honest. And that's a different game than these other movies. I mean, there's no question. You can ask my wife. I'm a little freaked out by what's going on in the world. And there was definitely a little quality to this film that was like, Hey, everyone, Hey, please listen. You know, and some people don't like that. You

know, some people don't want someone waving their arms and going, Hey, we got a big problem. They feel like, Hey, calm down. Who are you to tell me we have a big problem, which by the way, I'm not the one who found out we have a big problem, you know, There's a thousand other people who figured it out. But yeah, this is probably the least cool, least removed film we have ever made. I mean, I definitely feel like you can see the sweat on the forehead. There's definitely like we're out of breath while we're doing it. And that is definitely our spirit in which we made the movie. And yeah, I mean, people don't always respond to that. You know, when someone runs in freaking out, someone banging on your door at 2 a.m. going,

there's been a terrible car accident. You're like, wait a minute, you know. That's every morning when you wake up and look at your phone. Yeah. So it's been interesting. It's been interesting because as I'm actually a believer in criticism, I think criticism is really great and healthy. And I think there's a lot of, I will read bad reviews. I actually think they can be incredibly helpful and I don't take them personally, but there is an interesting extra edge to this movie.

And I think it relates to that kind of sweaty forehead, waving your arms kind of quality that the movie has. That's pretty interesting. At the same time, I wouldn't change it for anything. There's two other things I want to ask you about before I let you go. You have two great themes in your movies. This one, I think, does an amazing job of doing both of them. One is power. I feel like every single person who's at the center of all of your movies is powerful in some way or is aspiring to power. Is that a conscious choice for you when you're making a movie? Because it's Ron

Burgundy all the way through. Well, you know, our first three movies we did, we jokingly called them the mediocre white man trilogy. And Farrell and I have always loved average to below average generic white guys who think they got everything covered. I mean, that is our comedy formula to a T, is the guy who manages the movie theater coming out to tell everyone to form an orderly line and treating it like it's way too big a deal. I will laugh about that for about four or five hours. I don't think you're wrong. I mean, this is the kind of stuff I can't really see from what I'm doing. You're definitely a mile above me in that. But if you're talking about the big short and you're talking about vice and you're

connecting them to the comedies, I don't think you're wrong. It's not that far from Ricky Bobby. Yeah. I mean, aren't we kind of living in the era of, is it the demise of the white mediocre man? Hopefully we are. Hopefully we're hashing that out right now. Lumpy white dude. I would vote for that. I think America needs that change clearly. So, um, yeah, I do think that's a theme we we've been banging over and over again. And, uh, the only trick with the big short is none of those guys have any power. Like they're all like scurrying around the power, but, uh, yeah, no, I think you're a hundred percent. Right. One other thing then the fraternal awkward nature of male relationships is obvious in the

comedies but is very clear in the big short especially with Steve Carell's group and then particularly I don't think I really knew the depths of Chaney Rumsfeld and this movie does a fascinating job of pairing them and showing how sometimes people are up and sometimes they're down what they learn from each other how they take

advantage of one another what interests you about those relationships between men? Well, that one was just there. I mean, the more I read about it, it was deeper than I even thought. He really was his mentor. That really was the guy who steered Cheney through DC and his approach to DC. And like I said, we even cut some scenes. I mean, there's more to that relationship.

I mean, that is a funny relationship. I just love that Rumsfeld, from everything I read, and you watch the Errol Morris documentary, kind of confirms it. I don't see any mortal compass there at all. He's blank. Yeah. He is a masterful tap dancer. And then by the end, even his tap dancing wasn't that good. But Chaney's just loyal to him.

And Chaney is a master. Even to this day, Chaney could probably smoke most of the people in Washington, D.C. pretty easily. So it's a funny relationship because Rumsfeld's got that kind of two-bit charisma that he's just chasing around. I mean, you really could do a comedy movie about Rumsfeld and Chaney. And I no problem could watch it for an hour and 50 minutes, the two of them just interacting with the world. There was a scene that actually happened that I was dying to put in the movie. I mean, we're dealing with five, six decades of history, so there are like a hundred scenes I wish I could have put in. But one of them was that Nixon,

super paranoid, super touchy, Kent State it happens happens. So Washington, D.C. was flooded with protesters. And Nixon comes up to Rumsfeld and says, what's going on out there? There's all these protesters. I don't like this. Why don't you and Dick walk around and see what's going on? Mr. President, I don't know what we're going to find out. Yeah, go out there. Go out there. So Cheney and Rumsfeld go out and they walk around. They walk around. And it's basically hippies, protest signs. And then they go by the reflecting pool. And the reflecting pool is filled with topless hippie women swimming in the reflecting pool. So Rumsfeld and Cheney just saddle up to a bench, sit down, crack a pack of cigarettes,

have a cigarette, and sit there for about an hour looking at topless women swim. That's the opening scene of your Cheney-Rumsfeld movie. Adam, we end every show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? What's the last great thing you've seen? Last great thing I have seen was Lynn Ramsey's You Were Never Really Here. Holy moly, that lady can direct, man. Yeah, what did you like about it?

I loved her style. I loved that she took really a pretty straight ahead script. I didn't think the story was unusual. I've seen stories like that before. I thought it was all about her and Joaquin Phoenix, just the two of them. And I love her fractured impressionistic style, yet she was able to give it some oomph when it needed to have it. And that's very hard to do with that style. And then on just a 12 year old level i just love

that his weapon was a hammer a fractured style with some oomph would be maybe a way i could describe vice adam thanks for doing this oh thank you sir my pleasure thanks again for listening to this episode of the big picture. And of course, thank you to Adam McKay. If you are interested in the Golden Globes, I would encourage you to check out this feed late on Sunday night, where Amanda Dobbins and I will be coming to you with a new Oscar show, recapping that entire show. And if you're not up Sunday night late, that's okay.

You'll find us on Monday morning. See you then.