If you’re going to count the number of directors who went from very broad, silly, mainstream comedies to respected, dramatic Oscar contenders, the list is small and arguably only contains Mike Nichols who admittedly never made anything as ludicrous as “Step Brothers.” So, with this in mind, it’s been rather remarkable to see director Adam McKay’s transformation from “Anchorman” director to a filmmaker who’s likely going to earn back to back Oscar Best Picture nominations with his last two films, “The Big Short” and “Vice” (possibly a Best Director nod too).
But there is a through line to all his work, even the silliest of movies. McKay, especially recently, has been using comedy and entertainment as a kind of Trojan Horse to try and transform apathy for “dull” socio-political matters into engagement. He’s engaged serious topics and how they affect us in comedies—the rise of 24 cable news, which lead to fake news in “Anchorman 2,” the Occupy Wall Street and economic disparity in “The Other Guys”— and in “The Big Short,” he used an entertaining visual style to break down in layman’s terms, the complex story of the 2008 American housing crisis was caused by white-collar crooks.
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His approach with “Vice,” an examination of former Vice President Dick Cheney is similar: using a wild, irreverent, entertaining aesthetic to engage you in the story of what on the surface is an old, boring white dude—McKay’s remit is to try and pull the public’s head out of the sand and ask them to pay attention to figures like Cheney who were silent, but deadly.
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In this DGA Director’s Cut Podcast where McKay discusses the movie with Gus Van Sant (“To Die For”), “The Good Will Hunting” director reminds the audience, and McKay of another commonality threaded throughout his entire career: the examination of the white guy failing upward (see all his successful buffoons and especially Ron Burgundy). “We used to joke about that,” McKay said about frequent comedy partner Will Ferrell and this theme they kept revisiting. “The unearned confidence of the mediocre white guy and that was how we made ‘Anchorman,’ and ‘Talladega Nights’ and “Step Brothers” was just this entitlement of the white dude which we were a part of, but we just thought it was hilarious. But then, it wasn’t so funny. It started to swing, and that’s what really led to ‘The Big Short,’ and that sort of thing became much darker in the world and it was clear that perspective wasn’t going to let go.”
“The world started getting more and more crazy,” he continued, “and the idea of doing absurdist comedies became less and less tenable at that point.”
The DGA Director’s Cut podcast pairs two interesting filmmakers together, and the conversation is always really fascinating. This “Vice” convo, and discussion into McKay’s filmmaking evolution is no different. Take a listen and pray we’ll get to one day see the entire musical sequence that was cut out of “Vice.”
Bonus: listen to McKay’s hour-long Variety podcast where he talks about the film and his career in-depth. Additionally, McKay recently admitted that Marvel asked him to work on “Spider-Man: Homecoming” following his screenwriting work on “Ant-Man.” It seems only a matter of time until he makes a Marvel movie. Listen below.