{"id":91480,"date":"2018-12-24T03:03:05","date_gmt":"2018-12-24T01:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/?p=91480\/"},"modified":"2018-12-26T03:06:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-26T01:06:25","slug":"vice-big-dick-cheney-energy-adam-mckay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/en\/news-el\/entertainment\/vice-big-dick-cheney-energy-adam-mckay\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Vice\u2019: The Big Dick-Cheney Energy of Adam McKay"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a fever, a bookshelf, and possibly divine intervention, that made\u00a0Adam McKay<\/a>\u00a0realize he didn\u2019t know Dick.<\/p>\n

In the late winter of 2016, the writer-director had just finished the awards-circuit death march for\u00a0The Big Short,<\/em>\u00a0his look at the housing crisis. Then, a week after the Oscars, the 50-year-old filmmaker found himself laid up with what he characterizes as \u201cthe worst flu you could possibly imagine.\u201d He\u2019s recalling this while slumped down on a couch in the green room of the Robin Williams Center on West 54th Street, in midtown Manhattan; you can hear the dialogue, and occasional laughter, bleeding in from a Screen Actors Guild screening happening below us.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, was sick for close to a month,\u201d he says, trying to adjust his six-foot-five frame so he can get comfortable. (McKay\u2019s been having back issues lately.) He finally gives up, slouches back down and settles for adjusting the scarf around his neck. \u201cI mean, I made comedies! You do a junket or two, maybe you go to England \u2026 but this? It was nonstop for months, just constant. You know how your body will hold a sickness? Suddenly, everything just hit me all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delirious, the director behind\u00a0Anchorman<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Step Brothers<\/em>\u00a0turned to his bookshelf for salvation. \u201cAnd I looked over and went, \u2018Oh, a Dick Cheney book.\u2019 It could have been any book. But for some reason, that was the one thing that caught my eye.\u201d He doesn\u2019t remember which biography it was \u2014 probably \u201cAngler,\u201d by Barton Gellman \u2014 but the more McKay read, the more he realized the former vice president may have been an even bigger influence on modern politics than he\u2019d realized. Once he recovered, he started going down a research rabbit hole, reading as many articles directly (and indirectly) about Cheney and perusing his interviews for a slip of the tongue. \u201cWhich I couldn\u2019t find,\u201d he notes. \u201cI kept thinking there would be some point where he made a mistake, said more than what he meant to say. He never did \u2014 there\u2019s no crack in his game. It made him even\u00a0more<\/em>interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn\u00a0SNL,<\/em>\u00a0we joked that he was Darth Vader,\u201d he adds. \u201cBut I always felt like we maybe weren\u2019t quite grasping how much he was gaming the system in Washington. I was always the one going, \u201cGuys, I think it may be even\u00a0worse<\/em>\u00a0than we thought.’\u201d<\/p>\n