Speaker 1: You're listening to playback a Variety I Heart Radio podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Variety Awards Editor Chris Tapley. I hope
Speaker 1: you're having a happy new Year. This is our first
Speaker 1: episode of two thousand nineteen. Today I'm talking to Adam McKay,
Speaker 1: the writer and director of Vice. Adam won the adapted
Speaker 1: screenplay Oscar for his last film, The Big Short, and
Speaker 1: this is yet another dive into the decay and dysfunction
Speaker 1: of U. S. Government as he sees it, only this
Speaker 1: is far more epic and scope, centered on former Vice
Speaker 1: President Dick Cheney. Christian Bale plays the part and yet
Speaker 1: another uncanny performance. But if you've noted the critical reaction
Speaker 1: to this film, it's been incredibly split. I've frankly been
Speaker 1: a bit taken aback by some of the more grandstandy
Speaker 1: proclamations I'll call it. Adam pointed this out himself on
Speaker 1: Twitter recently. Some find it to be one of the
Speaker 1: finest films of the year. I'm one of them. Others
Speaker 1: have literally called it the worst. So there's a spectrum
Speaker 1: for you. I guess I found it to be brilliant,
Speaker 1: a movie that sank into my bones, honestly, and I
Speaker 1: was very eager to catch up with Adam to talk
Speaker 1: about it. If you haven't seen the film, i'd encourage
Speaker 1: you to do so before listening to this particular episode. However,
Speaker 1: when I got together with Christian Bale and Sam Rockwell
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, Sam plays George W. Bush in
Speaker 1: the film, we steered pretty clear of too much detail,
Speaker 1: so that's a safe bet, and i'd encourage you to
Speaker 1: listen to that anyway, because those two guys are delight together.
Speaker 1: But for now, here's Adam McKay and a deep dive
Speaker 1: into Vice. I hope you enjoy. All Right, everyone, I'm
Speaker 1: here today with Adam McKay, the writer and director of Vice,
Speaker 1: which is, uh, you know, the wholesome story of Dick
Speaker 1: Cheney and his Shenanigans. And we're happy to have him
Speaker 1: here today. Thank you, Adam for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: My pleasure, Thanks for having me quite the holiday movie Christmas.
Speaker 1: Whatever kid wants in the Christmas Tree is a curmudgeonly
Speaker 1: bureaucratic vice president snarling at them, so we deliver absolutely.
Speaker 1: I love the movie. As I was saying earlier, Bravo
Speaker 1: on it. It had to be just like, is this
Speaker 1: the kind of movie that when you embark on an
Speaker 1: undertaking like this, it's going to have a huge spotlight
Speaker 1: on it for obvious reasons. Are you just freaked out, scared,
Speaker 1: or just excited ready to just tell people what you think? Essentially?
Speaker 1: You know, it's more that you get excited by the opportunity,
Speaker 1: And I feel like, you know, after movies I've done before,
Speaker 1: I sort of had a little bit of room to
Speaker 1: give this a shot. Um, So No, I get excited
Speaker 1: about the open field of it. And as soon as
Speaker 1: I caught wind of this and and really started to
Speaker 1: see who Dick Cheney was and really started to research them,
Speaker 1: I just kept getting more and more excited. So you
Speaker 1: don't really think about that part of it. I guess
Speaker 1: the first time you really feel that way is when
Speaker 1: the movie like Gonna be released or people start seeing it.
Speaker 1: Then it hits you a little bit. People start to
Speaker 1: have takes exactly, and the word take becomes involved, and
Speaker 1: it's a little worries exactly. We'll tell me, like, give
Speaker 1: me a little bit of chronology here. When does the
Speaker 1: idea to do a movie about Dick Cheney first hit you?
Speaker 1: So it's like two weeks after the end of the
Speaker 1: Academy Awards, uh, and the run on the Big Short
Speaker 1: and my body does that thing that bodies tend to
Speaker 1: do where it's like, oh, I've been holding onto this
Speaker 1: horrible flu for months. Here it is all at once,
Speaker 1: and I think I was set for three straight weeks,
Speaker 1: like it was really crazy. So I was just laid
Speaker 1: up and I started looking at the bookshelf and it's
Speaker 1: all these books that friends have given you through the years.
Speaker 1: And I've always been kind of intrigued by Channing. I
Speaker 1: always felt like there was more more there than than
Speaker 1: we knew about sides the shooting the guy in the
Speaker 1: face and the Darth Vader jokes. So I just started
Speaker 1: reading the book and every four or five pages I
Speaker 1: was going, oh my god, Oh my god. And uh.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon, I, you know, did what we do. And
Speaker 1: at that time, I guess what, two thousand sixteen, I
Speaker 1: went online and ordered like five other books, and all
Speaker 1: of the books had me doing the same thing, like
Speaker 1: this is an epic American story. This is crazy. I
Speaker 1: didn't know any of this about this guy. I knew
Speaker 1: he had affected history, but the manner in which he
Speaker 1: did it just blew me away. Because there's something that like,
Speaker 1: as you're reading all of this material, is there a
Speaker 1: certain thread that you're trying to track down because it's
Speaker 1: obfuscated in this book or you know whatever, like trying
Speaker 1: trying to put it together with the various source materials. Essentially,
Speaker 1: that was exactly the trick. There were tons of great
Speaker 1: books that were written about them, but each one kind
Speaker 1: of had its own take on who he was, and
Speaker 1: they were looking at certain chapters in his life for
Speaker 1: certain through lines of what he did when he was
Speaker 1: in office as vice president. So between reading all of them,
Speaker 1: it really started giving a full portrait. And then there's
Speaker 1: also you know, interviews, and there's the documentary Chainey in
Speaker 1: his own words, and and you just start looking at
Speaker 1: all of that and and that's really how we got
Speaker 1: the complete picture. And then at that point, when you're
Speaker 1: trying to track down this mysterious character, then you kind
Speaker 1: of break glass in case of emergency and you call
Speaker 1: Christian Bale and you know he's going to get to
Speaker 1: the center of it. Um. So that was the final move. Well,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the movie, you know, you get
Speaker 1: the standard this is based on the true story, and
Speaker 1: then you say, or is as close as it can
Speaker 1: be given how secretive a leader he was. We tried
Speaker 1: our fucking best. As as you say at the beginning.
Speaker 1: What that leads in the whole movie in general left
Speaker 1: me wondering, is how bulletproof do you have to be
Speaker 1: with your screenplay essentially to avoid any kind of litigation
Speaker 1: or something like that. Well, you know, I mean that
Speaker 1: statement kind of says it all. Like we did our
Speaker 1: absolute best. He's so secretive. There are hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of documents that he's never handed over. There over twenty
Speaker 1: million emails that have disappeared. There are things he just
Speaker 1: won't talk about. You know. He tends to only do
Speaker 1: interviews with very sympathetic journalists. So yeah, we had to
Speaker 1: research our butts off, and we had to triple check everything.
Speaker 1: We hired fact checkers. We actually hired our own journalists
Speaker 1: at one point who interviewed people from Chenese Circle was
Speaker 1: all off the records, so they would talk to us,
Speaker 1: but just to make sure we weren't crazy people. The
Speaker 1: good news is it's out there. You can find it.
Speaker 1: It's just took a lot of work. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: anything you see that's like policy, times, dates, actions has
Speaker 1: all been quadruple checked, and then there are those couple
Speaker 1: scenes where just no one else was there besides Jenny
Speaker 1: and Rumsfeld or Janey and his wife. And in those cases,
Speaker 1: you just do the best you can. You know, you
Speaker 1: look about people that talked about that moment, you look
Speaker 1: for little flickers of what they said about it, and
Speaker 1: you try and go conservative. You try not to do
Speaker 1: anything too crazy, like let's not have Channy breakdown in
Speaker 1: tears here. He hasn't really done that in the rest
Speaker 1: of the movie, so you play a kind of straight
Speaker 1: line at that point. But yeah, he's a secretive dude. Man.
Speaker 1: He covers his tracks. I mean, I kept joking with
Speaker 1: my editor, Hank Corwin. I was like, this guy did
Speaker 1: not want a movie made about him, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just the truth. There's nothing he left out there
Speaker 1: for anyone to go, Hey, let's make a movie about
Speaker 1: this guy. Um. I want to just tell you about
Speaker 1: my react. What what what? What I felt after I
Speaker 1: saw the movie. And I don't know if it's what
Speaker 1: you were going for hoping people would take away, but this,
Speaker 1: this was what I took away. I felt unbelievable emptiness.
Speaker 1: I felt like I I stared into the void for
Speaker 1: a bit afterwards, I felt like I had just I
Speaker 1: said this to Christian and Sam. I felt like I
Speaker 1: had just seen a portrait of a soulless individual. And
Speaker 1: did you feel that way when you were making it?
Speaker 1: Is that? What is that what you were aiming to
Speaker 1: kind of portray? I know what you mean. I mean
Speaker 1: what really surprised me about the movie was that we
Speaker 1: looked for his humanity. We wanted to find out who
Speaker 1: he was, and we wanted to find out who Lynn
Speaker 1: was and the family, and we feel like we found it,
Speaker 1: like there were real people there, There was a real
Speaker 1: family that cared about each other. And then in the end,
Speaker 1: just when those daughters were split and it it I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say emptiness, but it made me really sad. That's
Speaker 1: what struck me about it. And I never expected to
Speaker 1: feel that way at the end of a story about
Speaker 1: Dick Cheney, but I felt I felt sad for him.
Speaker 1: I felt sad for his daughters. I felt sad all
Speaker 1: the people who had suffered because of his policies. I
Speaker 1: felt sad for a crazy country which seems to have
Speaker 1: no faith in its own government right now. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I remember the first time we watched it with a
Speaker 1: really big crowd. I remember having tears in my eyes,
Speaker 1: and I did not expect that. Yeah, Christian said something similar,
Speaker 1: just profound sadness. I think what what I'm What I
Speaker 1: was taking away was you know, he says things like
Speaker 1: when he sees Rumsfeld for the first time, what's he
Speaker 1: that's a Republican? That's what I am? Uh, he asks,
Speaker 1: what do we believe? There's nothing there? Right? And then
Speaker 1: and then I I come away wondering, why, uh this
Speaker 1: this huge push for power to what end? You're not
Speaker 1: the president, so you don't get the credit per se,
Speaker 1: you don't need the money. Why And and you know,
Speaker 1: in some sense, maybe it's he thought he was being
Speaker 1: a patriot, but it's just not what I came away feeling.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's my personal politics coming into play. But
Speaker 1: I just to kind of put that to you and
Speaker 1: ask you, like, what's the why of it for you?
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there used to be I feel
Speaker 1: like when I was a kid in the seventies and
Speaker 1: the early eighties, we used to talk about the toll
Speaker 1: that power would take on people. I feel like we
Speaker 1: don't talk about it that much anymore, and like power
Speaker 1: screws you up like it's the It's the biggest drug
Speaker 1: there is. I mean, there's nothing better than power, not
Speaker 1: even money, sex, anything else you can think of. Power
Speaker 1: is the one I Originally in the very first draft
Speaker 1: of the script, I had some voice over talking about
Speaker 1: how power is the thing that comes closest to disguising
Speaker 1: itself as love, because you're needed. People look at you with,
Speaker 1: you know, a want in their eyes, and it really
Speaker 1: feels close to love. And I think what you saw
Speaker 1: was out of the sixties and seventies, not just with
Speaker 1: the Chinese, but I think a lot of people in
Speaker 1: America like this idea of career and ambition and this
Speaker 1: idea climbing ladders came about and and just some degree
Speaker 1: that's fine, But I think with the Chinese it just
Speaker 1: it took an extra step. It became about this kind
Speaker 1: of the fatherhood, the father le nature of the presidency,
Speaker 1: mixed with this desire for his wife to love him,
Speaker 1: for his family to be proud of him. And these
Speaker 1: are all kind of like decent things to want. And
Speaker 1: then when you threw nine eleven in there, and the
Speaker 1: paranoia and fear of that, I just feel like it detonated.
Speaker 1: I feel like it became a very scary individual in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. From that point one definitely, um
Speaker 1: how much was left on the cutting room floor. This
Speaker 1: is a movie I look at and I feel like
Speaker 1: they shot so much, but there's there's like because just
Speaker 1: I love the editing style, but it just if you
Speaker 1: know what you're looking for, you can see where, Okay,
Speaker 1: they shot a lot of stuff that's around this image
Speaker 1: or that scene, and I'm just curious, like what you're
Speaker 1: editing process was like what you found through the editing
Speaker 1: things like that? Well, I was, you know, obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: Hank Corwin is one of the great living editors. He's
Speaker 1: a genius. And uh and we definitely had quite a
Speaker 1: chore on our hands once again to tell the story
Speaker 1: of the man who doesn't want his story told. The
Speaker 1: big two things we lost. There was one thing I
Speaker 1: really didn't want to give up was the story of
Speaker 1: them as teenagers, Dick and Lynn Cheney, and how they
Speaker 1: met and how they fell and fell in love. And
Speaker 1: Greg Frasier, our DP, just shot that so beautifully. Man,
Speaker 1: it looked like Splendor in the grass. It was just
Speaker 1: like luscious film. And then Nick Brittell, our composer, put
Speaker 1: this beautiful music over it, and the audience was just
Speaker 1: not into it. They just did not care about fifteen
Speaker 1: year old sixteen seventeen year old Dick Cheney. So we
Speaker 1: tried so many times. We did it long, we did
Speaker 1: a medium, short, we put in different places, and that
Speaker 1: was probably the biggest loss. And then the other one
Speaker 1: that was pretty ambitious was we had a musical number.
Speaker 1: You know, I had people telling me it was the
Speaker 1: musical number in there. I was like, no, tell me
Speaker 1: about the musical number. Thought about the musical I couldn't
Speaker 1: get that one to work either. Those are the two
Speaker 1: things I couldn't get to work. Um. It was kind
Speaker 1: of when Runs felt his teaching Cheney about Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: And how to get ahead, and it's sort of like
Speaker 1: neither a borrower nor lender b is kind of giving
Speaker 1: him that speech. But the speech is basically like who
Speaker 1: cares about anything? You gotta just get ahead of people, like,
Speaker 1: you know, making your moves. I think there was a
Speaker 1: line in it like the means justify the ends, which
Speaker 1: I always loved just and we have Brittany Howard from
Speaker 1: the Alabama Shakes just wailing on it. Nick Brittel wrote
Speaker 1: this just beautiful song. Uh. We had to composed. The
Speaker 1: choreographer from Hamilton choreographed it. It's breathticking, it's incredible, and
Speaker 1: it just didn't work. It was like you didn't need it.
Speaker 1: It was too long in that area of the movie.
Speaker 1: You know, storytelling beats everything we tried. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: we tried fifteen versions of it. I mean, we moved
Speaker 1: it here, we moved it there, We played it really short,
Speaker 1: we played it way longer. We put scenes in the
Speaker 1: middle of it. I mean, we tried every single thing
Speaker 1: you could do. I mean, the only reason it doesn't
Speaker 1: pain me to this moment is because I know we
Speaker 1: tried everything we could do. But but those were the two.
Speaker 1: Those were the two like when you were in the
Speaker 1: edit room, you're like, well, this is amazing, this is
Speaker 1: gonna work, and you just forget, like the movie tells
Speaker 1: you what it wants. And in that case, it was
Speaker 1: like get rid of these two things. Other than that,
Speaker 1: we did pretty well. Other than that, it was just
Speaker 1: those two chunks that could not make their way in
Speaker 1: the movie. Special features on the DVD maybe darn right. Well,
Speaker 1: what I did was I took um then as teenagers
Speaker 1: and actually cut it into a short film, a black
Speaker 1: and white short film, a little bit in the spirit
Speaker 1: of trying to think of the anyway. It's its own
Speaker 1: little kind of short film about their young love. Do
Speaker 1: we have a title for that yet? It's called best
Speaker 1: of All He Loves Me Back, That's what it's called.
Speaker 1: Looking forward to that? Yeah, Yeah, and the musicals on
Speaker 1: there too. And there's another little scene we cut out
Speaker 1: too that's on there. So you mentioned Greg Fraser there.
Speaker 1: I've done Greg for ten years, one of the best
Speaker 1: dps working. I feel I could not agree with you more.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the visual approach to the movie. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, i'm i'm. I often ask filmmakers if there
Speaker 1: were references in any kind of inspiration, not just in film,
Speaker 1: but artwork, uh, photography, anything like that. What kind of
Speaker 1: a visual approach did you guys sit down and talk about.
Speaker 1: You know, the big trick we had was that we
Speaker 1: wanted an evolution to the visual approach without looking gimmicky.
Speaker 1: You know, the very lazy first thought would be, you
Speaker 1: shoot the early wyoming stuff in black and white. When
Speaker 1: you go to DC, you go to color. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: that's kind of lame. So what we just talked about
Speaker 1: was just subtle gradients in the color palette. As we
Speaker 1: moved ahead, you know, we were looking at stuff like
Speaker 1: Eggleston still photographs for the early days, kind of what
Speaker 1: you would think you would look at. And you know,
Speaker 1: we looked at a bunch of the famous seventies movies,
Speaker 1: as far as offices in Washington, d C. We looked
Speaker 1: at all of that. But uh, and then because we
Speaker 1: were shooting on film, we also talked about how we
Speaker 1: were gonna let some of the dirt stay in the
Speaker 1: film and the early stuff. But really the big breakthrough
Speaker 1: was when Greg was like, we should use sixteen, we
Speaker 1: should use Super eight, we should use the vintage old
Speaker 1: TV cameras whenever we can. And once that came into
Speaker 1: the movie, I feel like the movie really kind of
Speaker 1: found its its visual style. UM. So the thirty five
Speaker 1: was always the lush reality the bottom of the movie.
Speaker 1: I mean that was the movie. Man oh man. When
Speaker 1: that's sixteen and that Super eight started getting him there,
Speaker 1: we were just like, oh, I can't get enough of this.
Speaker 1: Um And that gave enough diversity to the look that
Speaker 1: because you know, the movie covers six decades UM and
Speaker 1: we just needed something to reflect that. And you know,
Speaker 1: obviously as we got later, you start seeing video, you
Speaker 1: start seeing more modern looks. It was always complimentary, was
Speaker 1: always off to the side. Um, but yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: He just loved it. You know, he's such a camera geek.
Speaker 1: He knows every one of those cameras, He knows everyone
Speaker 1: how they work. He gets every look like perfect. I mean,
Speaker 1: I still can't believe the way he shot Colin pal
Speaker 1: like Tyler Perry. I mean, it looks like it's the
Speaker 1: real footage of Colin pal speech. It just blows me away. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's something special man, that guy. Wow. How about color palette.
Speaker 1: You talk about what colors would mean, color palette, but
Speaker 1: you know, we we definitely had richer, kind of earthier
Speaker 1: tones in the beginning. That was closer to wyoming, closer
Speaker 1: to like a man, an American man, kind of forming himself.
Speaker 1: Our idea was that once you have a fully formed
Speaker 1: chainey's a cooler, colder, kind of more sie uh palette
Speaker 1: to it. That came about, But at the same time,
Speaker 1: we didn't want it to feel like a giant gear jump.
Speaker 1: You know, we wanted them all to be a little
Speaker 1: bit close to each other. So it was pretty subtle stuff.
Speaker 1: But uh, and a lot of that. The way it
Speaker 1: came out was just in the modern day stuff. With
Speaker 1: the thirty five, I would say, okay, now clean all
Speaker 1: the dirt out. Now, let's get a little sharper, and
Speaker 1: we would hit some of those blues and grays a
Speaker 1: little bit harder in the more modern stuff. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we just let the earlier stuff be dirty
Speaker 1: and little mange gear, and it mixed in a little
Speaker 1: that Super eight and a little bit of that sixteen,
Speaker 1: and then as it was moving forward, it was just
Speaker 1: getting like a little bit colder, a little bit you know, cleaner. Um.
Speaker 1: But hopefully our our goal was that the audience never
Speaker 1: consciously was aware of it, just it's just happening. Was
Speaker 1: it always like on the page? Was it written like
Speaker 1: in a scattered, temporally speaking kind of way, Like, was
Speaker 1: it always going to just bounce all around, you know,
Speaker 1: starting with nine eleven, then going back and then things
Speaker 1: like this. Um, there's a few of the things we
Speaker 1: discovered in the edit room and actually originally did. That's
Speaker 1: not true. The first draft of the script did start
Speaker 1: with nine eleven. I then switched it out and we
Speaker 1: then started more on them as kids. So actually then
Speaker 1: we went back to nine eleven for the beginning part.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there were always little time jumps back and forth.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things we were aware of
Speaker 1: is just the biopic structure is a tough one. It's
Speaker 1: something we've all probably seen hundreds of biopics throughout our life,
Speaker 1: and when it's when it's um sequential like that, when
Speaker 1: it's just lined up, it can get a little tiring,
Speaker 1: a little pounding. So that was a big thing that
Speaker 1: Hank and I were playing around with in the edit
Speaker 1: room was when do we time jump? How much do
Speaker 1: we time jump? Is it okay to sometimes stay semi
Speaker 1: sequential um? And what we found was just like a
Speaker 1: little bit of a time to ash, a little bit
Speaker 1: of a jump would go a long way, just taking
Speaker 1: it a little bit out of sequence, then let it
Speaker 1: go back to sequence, a little bit out of sequence,
Speaker 1: back to sequence. UM. That was a lot of our
Speaker 1: experimenting in the edit room is just trying to get
Speaker 1: that exactly right. How much jumping, how little jumping, when
Speaker 1: to let it play out? Very tricky, very tricky, but man,
Speaker 1: you could feel it when it would get too sequential.
Speaker 1: It's just all of a sudden, you just start feeling
Speaker 1: like you're watching a biopick, like you've seen three hundred
Speaker 1: of them. So we would have to go and mess
Speaker 1: with it at that point, even within scenes. And you
Speaker 1: know when it said it's most radical if it'll just
Speaker 1: throw something in there, it's almost expressionistic. And in the
Speaker 1: way it's do have the editorial, it's there's a it's
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting tradition. JFK to me is one
Speaker 1: of the most exquisitely crafted films of all time, especially
Speaker 1: in the editing, So I kind of think of that,
Speaker 1: you know, the way it's just it's shards, you know,
Speaker 1: at times, I think that's kind of I think that's
Speaker 1: one of Hank's signatures. I think that's he does it
Speaker 1: probably better than anyone. There's a moment in the movie
Speaker 1: I really love where Dick says, let's make sure to
Speaker 1: get my daughter Liz into the State Department, and Hank
Speaker 1: just did this quick cut to Liz at the table
Speaker 1: going okay, Dad, and it's like the table from like
Speaker 1: a scene ten minutes before, and he's like, okay, Dad,
Speaker 1: and then it goes right back to the scene. But
Speaker 1: like it's sort of a feeling than it is like
Speaker 1: a logical thing that you're clocking. And when he's on
Speaker 1: his game, which he almost always is, that's that's how
Speaker 1: that stuff really lands. Yeah, how did you decide on
Speaker 1: Nicholas Pertel for the score? That was easy, That was
Speaker 1: I had the luck of working with him and Hank
Speaker 1: on Big Short. I forgot Nicholas did Big Short? Did
Speaker 1: he did the Big Short? Okay, well there you go.
Speaker 1: Well that answers the question. Well, but part of the
Speaker 1: trick is the reason you don't think of him immediately
Speaker 1: with The Big Short was there's so much found stuff
Speaker 1: in that movie. You know, we were trying to show
Speaker 1: the kind of irrational exuberance of our culture and how
Speaker 1: crazed our culture was. That there's a lot of like,
Speaker 1: you know, what you called diagetic music in that movie,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of people weren't aware or what
Speaker 1: was nick score and what was something that was you
Speaker 1: know source um, because man, he wrote some beautiful music
Speaker 1: for that movie. And I always felt like Nick never
Speaker 1: got his due for it. And then later I would
Speaker 1: ask to friends, and then I would talk to friends
Speaker 1: and they would say, oh, yeah, that's that classical piece
Speaker 1: she played was like no, no. Our composer wrote that,
Speaker 1: like he's amazing, He's incredible. So this was such a
Speaker 1: treat because on this one he was just totally off
Speaker 1: the chain, Like we hardly use any source music. I
Speaker 1: think it's over seventy five minutes of score and he
Speaker 1: just he knocked us over on this one. It's just incredible.
Speaker 1: He really harnesses some of the just like Shakespearean qualities
Speaker 1: of the epic, you know, especially and just I watched
Speaker 1: it again last night. It's the one movie, by the way,
Speaker 1: my wife has been dying to see all year. I
Speaker 1: want to mention that because she doesn't get to see
Speaker 1: everything anymore. We've got a two year old now, so
Speaker 1: it's always like one or two movies and this was
Speaker 1: like number one. So we watched it last night. She
Speaker 1: loved it. But I was the big just crescendo of
Speaker 1: the movie that ends with that this is going to
Speaker 1: air after the movie comes up, that ends with that
Speaker 1: heart lying on the table. Uh. The score there is
Speaker 1: just everything stunning. He's a beast man. He's the real deal.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's really got something special. You don't see
Speaker 1: guys like him come along, but you know, for every
Speaker 1: once every ten years. I'm in that lineman queue with
Speaker 1: those giant horns, and when you see him when he's
Speaker 1: on the pole, I can't get over that queue either.
Speaker 1: He and I talked about it. We bring him in
Speaker 1: very early in our process because he's more like just
Speaker 1: a collaborator than just you know, he's more than just
Speaker 1: a composer. He's definitely a collaborator. So I talked to
Speaker 1: him when I was writing the script, and I just
Speaker 1: talked to him about what I was thinking about have
Speaker 1: this epic quality. He's like, you should check out Maler's
Speaker 1: Ninth because Maler's heart was failing him and some people
Speaker 1: think the time signature is off because of his heart.
Speaker 1: So when I wrote the script, I listened to Maler's
Speaker 1: Ninth pretty much the whole time. But then, like very
Speaker 1: early on, and he comes in way earlier than any
Speaker 1: other composer would. He starts coming in writing these demos
Speaker 1: for the movie that are just mind blowingly good, and
Speaker 1: Hanks able to like bounce off of them, and I
Speaker 1: sort of got like half of them ended up. The demos,
Speaker 1: he went to London and recorded with orchestras, like a
Speaker 1: lot of his music that was his first thought ended
Speaker 1: up staying in the movies. So he's a huge part
Speaker 1: of our process. And it's like Hank, Nick and I
Speaker 1: just bounce off each other in the edit all the time. Um,
Speaker 1: what were you guys talking about that? What would the
Speaker 1: music convey? What was it meant to be? This kind
Speaker 1: of like turn it into almost this. I don't know
Speaker 1: if the words baroque, just this big epic in a
Speaker 1: way always it always was supposed to be a big
Speaker 1: American sound. I mean, one of the ideas we talked
Speaker 1: about was like we kind of know what the three
Speaker 1: acts structure of the American epic is. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of Act one is like striving, I'm gonna rise up.
Speaker 1: Act to is things are starting to work, Okay, the
Speaker 1: end of Act two there's a moment of doubt, but
Speaker 1: you overcome it. N Act three is triumph. And one
Speaker 1: of our questions was, like what's act four? And you know,
Speaker 1: so I another friend of mine saw it. He called
Speaker 1: like the music that Nick did for this, like dark Copeland.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good description, and that was kind of it.
Speaker 1: It's it's the like heroic infrastructure of the American mythology,
Speaker 1: but like kind of screwed with and warped a little bit. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just released the score yesterday, actually just came out.
Speaker 1: I just bought it. It's like he bought it an
Speaker 1: they couldn't send you one about it. Uh, we're recording
Speaker 1: this in December, I imagine. Uh Cheney has not seen
Speaker 1: this film. Um. Has anyone in Washington seen the film? Like,
Speaker 1: I'm just curious if what that world might think of
Speaker 1: the movie if you've shown it to anyone. Well, remember
Speaker 1: we're talking about Dick Cheney, so he probably has getting
Speaker 1: getting you know. Like thinking on Shaney is he's a
Speaker 1: tough dude and there's been a lot of things written
Speaker 1: about him, a lot of comments made on him. I
Speaker 1: think most of the movie he wouldn't have a problem
Speaker 1: with him, and it's accurate to what he did, I mean,
Speaker 1: invaded Iraq, Like all the stuff's true. I think the
Speaker 1: very end where we definitely give it a tragic twist
Speaker 1: in the end, he probably wouldn't like that. Um. I'd
Speaker 1: be most curious what his daughter Mary would think of this.
Speaker 1: I'd really be interested to hear that. We are attempting
Speaker 1: to do a couple of screenings in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: They're not locked in yet, but to let you know
Speaker 1: how that goes. You know, he's such an enigmatic but
Speaker 1: looming figure. I'm also curious to see, you know, when
Speaker 1: he left office, his approval writing was under twenty. It's
Speaker 1: one of the lowest ever recorded. And I'm curious to
Speaker 1: see how much the right just comes out to defend
Speaker 1: him out of like habit, where did they kind of
Speaker 1: go you're on your own, Like, I'm curious just about
Speaker 1: the way they react to I'm talking about like the
Speaker 1: militant right. Not when we screened the movie, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of Republicans in the audience. We're like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: fine with it is what happened. So we didn't have
Speaker 1: any problems with that, But like that that's super militant side.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if they complain about it at all. We'll
Speaker 1: have to see. And he's kind of bubbled back up,
Speaker 1: you know, with the passing of HW recently, and we
Speaker 1: saw him at the funeral and you know, so it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting to see him again right before this movie
Speaker 1: is about to come out. It looks pretty spry, didn't
Speaker 1: look bad, and you know, his daughter now is like
Speaker 1: third in command in the House of Representatives. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's in the minority, but still that's a high position
Speaker 1: that she's she's reached. That's the position her her father
Speaker 1: used to have. So I mean, there's a chance you
Speaker 1: could see Speaker Liz Cheney. That could actually happen. It's
Speaker 1: five or ten years. Yeah, since we're on the subject,
Speaker 1: I was kind of just wanting to get your thought, Well,
Speaker 1: what are your expectations for God, no idea at this point,
Speaker 1: right I don't think the Democrats know what they're going for.
Speaker 1: I think I mean the question is does Trump make
Speaker 1: it to or did the Republicans turn on him. It's
Speaker 1: kind of up to the Republicans at this point. He's
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble right now. I Mean, one
Speaker 1: thing we all know is if the economy falters, that
Speaker 1: that's an easy story to write. But and the other
Speaker 1: thing I've learned is it seems like in the last
Speaker 1: five or ten years, all all political predictions have been
Speaker 1: horribly wrong. So it's almost like predictions. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: been weird. Man, everything's just weird right now? Is breaking down?
Speaker 1: It kind of is. Yeah, I think we're at that place,
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I don't know. You know, with
Speaker 1: the Dems, it's a battle between kind of the traditional
Speaker 1: d n C and the more progressive Dems. Which side
Speaker 1: will win and very curious Biden's making noise like he
Speaker 1: wants to run. That seems strange to me. What's that? Does?
Speaker 1: I feel wrong to you? Goes wrong to me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like you're going back to kind of a
Speaker 1: system that really hasn't worked very well for the d
Speaker 1: n C. But you know, we'll see who he runs against.
Speaker 1: I I really have a feeling Trump's not going to
Speaker 1: run again. I think even if he gets to, he resigns,
Speaker 1: and I think he walks away and just says, you know,
Speaker 1: I was too good for you all, or give some
Speaker 1: speech like that I'm going out on top spend it.
Speaker 1: I mean, doesn't seem like Yeah, I can't imagine he
Speaker 1: gets past. But once again, I clearly don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. I know you're a Bernie fan. I mean,
Speaker 1: are you are you hopeful that he would run again?
Speaker 1: That would be exciting? Uh? Yeah, I think no matter what,
Speaker 1: even if he wins or not, I just think he
Speaker 1: brings a nice, you know, breath of fresh air into
Speaker 1: any kind of Race. I love that no one owns him,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no big money like pulling him around
Speaker 1: on a leash. I think that's exciting. I think there's
Speaker 1: some other you know, I think better work from Texas
Speaker 1: certain clearly got some people excited. Uh. You know Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 1: I've always been a huge fan of She's another one
Speaker 1: no one owns her. That's my big thing is like
Speaker 1: I just want someone that no one owns, you know,
Speaker 1: I want someone not taking money from banks oil And
Speaker 1: you know, if you're someone like that, I'm immediately interested.
Speaker 1: So I like Shared Brown out of Ohio, and I
Speaker 1: think he's really sharp. Got to Elizabeth Warren and Shared
Speaker 1: Brown would be a really rock solid ticket. Like they're
Speaker 1: both veterans of d C, they're both progressive, they're realistic
Speaker 1: that yet no one owns them. You know. Um, now
Speaker 1: that I just said that, there's no way it's happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see. I mean, as as you say, it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to kind of figure out where the one's gonna blow.
Speaker 1: No idea, so if or there's going to even be windy. Uh,
Speaker 1: last thing here, Uh, you're a guinea pig for a
Speaker 1: new segment on this show. This is our one first episode,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna try something different. Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: We're gonna ask people, I think at the end of
Speaker 1: every episode, you tell me what is the movie that
Speaker 1: made you fall in love with movies? I like that question,
Speaker 1: all right. I got a very definitive answer for you. Awesome.
Speaker 1: It's the first movie I really remember as a young kid,
Speaker 1: and I remember watching that. I saw it in a
Speaker 1: movie theater with my dad, I believe, and it was
Speaker 1: The Man Who Would Be King, and I've never forgotten
Speaker 1: it to this day. It had such a mystery to
Speaker 1: it and a scope and the reveal in the end
Speaker 1: of the If you haven't seen it yet, don't listen
Speaker 1: the reveal in the end of the skull with the
Speaker 1: gold crown on it. Also, that score was so incredible.
Speaker 1: Where were you? I was in Worcester, Massachusetts and what
Speaker 1: was that? In second grade? First grade? Something like that?
Speaker 1: God bless my dad. We went to the movies a lot,
Speaker 1: and I remember that was a big one. And that's
Speaker 1: what I've gone back and watched through the years and
Speaker 1: it's still hold quite nicely. But I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: maybe fall in love with movies and I'm fifty years
Speaker 1: old now and I could still watch it and still
Speaker 1: love movies because of it. Was that the atmosphere of
Speaker 1: the movie. Was there something about the visuals, like is
Speaker 1: it just hard to peg down? Why it sticks with you?
Speaker 1: It's such a mystery. They're going into the snow, They're
Speaker 1: going into Alexander the Great supposedly had this kingdom. No
Speaker 1: one knows if it's real or not. Who are these people?
Speaker 1: What is this strange land? You know it's kipling And uh,
Speaker 1: it's just the mystery of the whole thing of it.
Speaker 1: And I remember being a kid and it made the
Speaker 1: world feel so big and full of such like crazy possibility.
Speaker 1: It's also shot beautifully, I mean it looks amazing, and
Speaker 1: then it also has a turn in it that's kind
Speaker 1: of tragic, like you fall in love with Sean Connery's
Speaker 1: character and his ego starts to take over. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm realizing as I'm talking about it sounds a
Speaker 1: little bit like vice. What note to end on movie
Speaker 1: is called advice. You should check it out because it's
Speaker 1: fantastic and it's out. Now take the family, Uh, find
Speaker 1: out a little bit of maybe how we got to
Speaker 1: where we are Adam McKay. Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it so much for having me really
Speaker 1: fun