Back in 2008, while working on Will Ferrells Broadway debut, Youre Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush, writer-director Adam McKay had a conversation with either his friend or his shrink—the details are fuzzy—regarding his capacity for compassion. The thought experiment, as McKay saw it, involved his propensity for understanding human nature, in particular bad guys with tough upbringings. Bush may have illegally invaded Iraq, McKay posits, but he was a man potentially forced into a job he didnt want by a father who wasnt around. Donald Trump had a monster for a father. Even Charles Manson was abused as a child. The only man McKay couldnt figure out was then vice president Dick Cheney.
Upon hearing this, the friend, or shrink, urged McKay to make a Dick Cheney movie, an idea he dismissed. Though McKay, a liberal-leaning voter and former Saturday Night Live writer, had dabbled in political humor, he had yet to venture outside comedy in his feature films. The Oscar-nominated The Big Short didnt debut until 2015.
The idea stayed buried in the recesses of McKays brain until New Years 2016, when, felled by the flu after finishing his marathon press duties on The Big Short, he was stuck in bed. McKay began reading Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency, by Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein. He was shocked to discover the domineering influence of wife Lynne in Cheneys life. (Her own memoir, Blue Skies, No Fences, would prove surprisingly insightful.) He then picked up Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, by Barton Gellman, and was surprised at how swiftly the quiet, Machiavellian character locked down the U.S. government on September 11, 2001. Then there were Hubris, The One Percent Doctrine, Bushworld, and others. Each book revealed more details of a man who had quietly wielded power over the inner workings of the U.S. government for 40 years.
“I realized that Cheney had this Zelig-like position where he was just there for a lot of things—the Nixon White House, Roger Ailess pitching Fox News, the Ford White House—and eventually he got his hands on the wheel,” says McKay during an interview in his Hancock Park home, days from locking his opus, Vice (Annapurna), which stars an utterly transformed Christian Bale as Cheney. “He was in the middle of all these things, and I realized that the story of America is his story, from his ambition to make his family proud—which is the American Dream, which is healthy—and that mutating into this addictive quest for power, and how dark it got, and where we are all now.”
“A lot of Cheneys power . . . came in this quiet way that we just didnt pay attention to.”
For Vice, which opens Christmas Day, McKay did more research, reading every Cheney document he could get, and conducting off-the-record interviews with people in Cheneys inner circle from his Casper, Wyoming, hometown. “Everyone in Casper, to this day, says that no matter who Lynne would have married, [they] would become president or vice president,” says McKay. “I dont know if you would have heard the name Dick Cheney if Lynne hadnt gone, I need a date. ” The result of McKays investigative work is another quick-cut, information-heavy, stylistically dizzying film, one that spans 50 years and includes some of the same touches he experimented with in The Big Short. It breaks the fourth wall, inserts stock footage, and tweaks traditional narrative structure.
“Is there a word in the English language that is more boring than bureaucracy?” asks McKay. “After The Big Short, I thought we uncorked this storytelling style that has some power to it. Why would I throw this away? When I stumbled on Cheney, I was like, Oh, my God. This is perfect. Hes such a boring person on the face of it. Hes a bureaucratic genius. And a lot of his power and maneuvers came in this quiet way that we just didnt pay attention to. Using these stylistic flourishes is a blast, and it allows us to mix in different styles and cover five, almost six decades of American history.”
Despite the structural fun he had with Vice, McKay stuck as close as he could to the facts—inventing dialogue, of course, but not creating scenarios out of whole cloth. Even though McKay says early test screenings suggest the film plays as well with Republicans as with Democrats, hes preparing himself for pushback from the right.
“As far as Republicans, or right-wingers, hating it, [the film] details their triumph of the Republican revolution,” he says. “Still, the professional right will assail it. I feel like Dick Cheney wont hate the movie. The one whos going to is Lynne. I think she, and her daughter, [Wyoming congresswoman] Liz Cheney, are going to go total warpath on it.”
While he braces for the response, McKay takes a minute to contemplate how he now feels about Cheney. Does he have compassion for him?
“I have more understanding of how a person can make the dark decisions Cheney made,” McKay says. “I find it sad. For him, his family, the nation, the dead, the tortured . . . Does that add up to compassion? Im not sure. All I do know is that power can turn the soul black if a person is not careful. And I dont think the Cheneys were careful.”
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Nicole SperlingNicole Sperling is a Hollywood Correspondent for Vanity Fair.
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