Adam McKay on How To Be Political and Entertaining and Not Destroy the World (Published 2021) (2024)

Some creative people wrestle with the whys and hows of responding to the frazzled and fractured period in which we’re mired. Adam McKay shows no such hesitation. The director, who made his name during the late ’90s as head writer for “Saturday Night Live” and put that name in lights with the hit comedies he and Will Ferrell collaborated on in the ’00s (“Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights,” “Step Brothers”), has jumped headfirst — from a distinctly progressive, populist angle — into our shared mess. He did it first with his film “The Big Short” (2015), adapted from Michael Lewis’s book about the 2008 financial crisis; then with his polemical Dick Cheney biopic “Vice” (2018); and now with his new nonfiction podcast series, “Death at the Wing,” which uses the premature deaths of several notable basketball players as a lens through which to view the still-reverberating political upheavals of the ’80s and ’90s. (He also served as a co-producer on the director Cullen Hoback’s QAnon documentary series, “Q: Into the Storm,” which just aired on HBO.) Later this year, McKay will deliver “Don’t Look Up,” a film he directed and wrote that stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as astronomers who discover an asteroid on course to destroy Earth. It’s a comedy. Of a sort. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” says McKay, who is 52. “We’re going unto the breach of this new time and trying to figure it out. It has been interesting to see what works, what lands, what feels right.”

Even though it’s nonfiction, “Death at the Wing” fits with the wider body of your recent work in that it’s entertaining storytelling made out of complicated political issues. Do you ever wonder if that approach is at all counterproductive? Isn’t one of America’s problems the way we reduce serious political issues to entertainment content? For me, I’ll give this example: Someone said, “You’ve got to read ‘The Big Short,’” and I read it in one night. Why is Michael Lewis so good at those stories? He does two things. No. 1, we all love the taste of making a lot of money. We can’t resist it. The other thing we all love is knowing things that we’re not supposed to know. Michael Lewis did both those things in “The Big Short.” He tells me things when I’m reading that book that most people don’t tell me, because they think I’m going to be bored. But Michael Lewis leans in and says, Most people are bored by this, but if you really want to know what’s going on, here’s what it is. It’s exhilarating. There are a lot of things that most of us think are boring that are actually exciting. The details of, for example, an omnibus bill about drug-sentencing laws: If I started telling you about that, a lot of people would be like, Jesus, are we talking about a crime bill from the ’80s? But the trick with the podcast is that’s not just what we’re talking about. We’re also talking about a history of dog-whistle racism. We’re talking about a hinge moment in U.S. history in which there’s a movement to use language about race, about class, about divisions, that connects to a basketball player dying tragically in a dorm room. I think that kind of storytelling is legit. Now, if you’re going to talk about extremist right-wingers using meme culture to pull their voters along, yeah, that is dangerous. That’s not rooted in any sincere effort to understand the world. That’s the difference: Is there a sincere attempt to understand the world, or is the action just one of manipulation and distraction?

As far as getting at the truth: If people are making good-faith efforts to understand the world, they could feasibly have a more conservative perspective or — I have to interrupt you there. I would love to live in that country. If you know a place where that is happening, please point me toward it.

What I was getting at is that there are plausible conservative and liberal ways of understanding the world, and as a result you can find conservative podcasts or liberal podcasts, you can read conservative newspapers or liberal newspapers, you can follow conservative Twitter or liberal Twitter. But there isn’t really a right-wing analog of you — someone creating smart and well-made mainstream Hollywood entertainment that espouses a right-wing worldview. Why is that? I actually think there is. For all intents and purposes the Republican Party is no longer a functioning political party with actual policies and ideas. It’s motivated by pure power, reactionary beliefs. So I would say the real right wing in our country is the moderates; the right-wing version of me — maybe this isn’t the best example — is an Aaron Sorkin. You’ve got to remember, we just saw seven Democrats vote against raising a minimum wage that is $7.25 an hour. That’s extremely right-wing. Bill Clinton, the policies he pushed through are right-wing. The whole definition of right and left in our country is shattered because of this Republican Party that is almost a Ponzi scheme of meaning.

If the guy who made “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is now considered — Did you look at his interpretation of that? A lot of Republicans nowadays will admit that the Vietnam War was a misadventure. So that’s hardly a liberal perspective. I’m not calling Sorkin a Republican. I’m not calling him a raging right-winger. But I would say Sorkin is slightly right of center. I think that’s fair. His interpretation of that trial was one of supporting the system. There’s a lot of dialogue in that movie about belief in our institutions.

It’s true that his film’s sympathies are ultimately with Tom Hayden. Exactly. I like Sorkin. I get along with him. I’ve had many conversations with him. He’s an institutionalist. That’s what I would say about him. It does sound on the face of it like an insane statement, but I was thinking that ideally Aaron Sorkin would be the right-wing version of me. Aaron Sorkin’s not a right-winger, but our right wing is so crazy — it’s like if Aaron Sorkin, I and a member of the Taliban are in a room together, of course both Aaron Sorkin and I are left-wingers. But in a dream world Sorkin and I would have constructive, interesting arguments, and he would be slightly more right and I would be slightly more left. And I’m not in any way comparing my career to Aaron Sorkin’s. He’s a brilliant, wildly accomplished writer. We’re very different animals.

I don’t know if you saw this, but there was an interview with Zack Snyder in The Times in which he was talking about adapting “The Fountainhead” into a movie, but he felt — Ugh. You can put that in the interview: “McKay makes a look like he just ate rancid bacon.”

He seemed to feel that contemporary politics had made the prospect of making that movie untenable. But that made me curious about how you think about a movie’s politics fitting the moment. Can you ever predict the response? I bet a Zack Snyder “Fountainhead” movie would be huge right now. I’ll tell you a movie I would definitely go see: a movie about Ayn Rand’s life. A friend of mine, Jill Sobule, the singer-songwriter, wanted to do a musical called “Aynie” that was like “Annie” only about Ayn Rand’s life. Every time I talk to her about it, I’m like, Jill, do that. Ayn Rand’s life is crazy. That would be an incredible movie to make. So I kind of agree with you. Personally, I think those Ayn Rand books, I’ve read a couple of them, they’re painful to read. They’re so clunky and didactic. So is there ever a good time to make a “Fountainhead” movie?

Gary Cooper thought so. I would still say that movie is a pretty hard watch.

You’re talking about Gary Cooper, American icon! Yeah, no. I am surprised someone’s not making a “Fountainhead” movie. You’re absolutely right. There’s 75 million people out there who would line up to watch it.

Have you had the experience of working on something and then thinking the cultural timing was wrong? I actually got a lot of “It’s the wrong time for it” on “Vice.” I felt like it was the perfect time. We had not had our reckoning: Cheney was sailing off into the sunset with a bust of himself in Congress, and with the way the country was steering we needed to tell the story. I don’t think something has to be directed toward this moment consciously. I’m choosing to do that a bit more, but a movie like “Minari” was a beautiful story that could have been made in 1980 or 2000 or 1951. I always think there’s room for beautiful stories. It’s just a tricky time to make movies or do shows or write books or do what you do. Man, our culture: It’s a lion and a baboon fighting each other. It’s kind of crazy.

Fairly or not, there’s a sense of aggrievement from the right that they’re not respected by Hollywood lefties. What effect might it have on the culture wars if there were more high-profile cultural output — I’m thinking of something like “Roseanne” — that depicted conservatives in a nonjudgmental light? [Expletive] it, we’re just shooting the [expletive], so this definitely goes under the heading of “theory”: There’s almost a complete and total lack of any public discourse, especially from our elected leaders, that represents working people and the poor in our country. In the absence of that discourse, you’re seeing things like QAnon or, a while back, the Tea Party. The Democrats, they’re so loath to speak to the working people. Biden, you could sense him peeking through the crack in the door and going, “We support the unionization effort at Amazon,” and then he closed the door really quickly. We’re not hearing a constructive discourse about one of the biggest stories of our times, which is the top 0.01 percent more than doubling the amount that they hold during the last 30 to 40 years. It’s remarkable and there’s no regular discourse about it.

You’re saying that, in the absence of that discourse, people respond to something like QAnon because it offers them a way of understanding where economic inequality comes from? If you look at the QAnon hook — one of the famous videos starts with: Have you ever wondered why there’s poverty? Have you ever wondered why there are people who are struggling? Why there’s debt? It’s really cynical, because it’s never going to address any of the real causes, but at least they’re smart enough to acknowledge it. Democrats won’t do that. They won’t acknowledge the destruction of unions. They won’t acknowledge working people. The stimulus bill that we just passed, everyone’s dancing around as if Eugene Debs were in the White House. It’s crazy, it’s insulting and people can feel it in their guts. So there’s this hole that hasn’t been filled, and it’s very dangerous.

But it’s one thing to say that there’s an absence of sincere discourse about working people and income inequality. It’s another to connect that to a belief in something that appears obviously lunatic like QAnon. Is it possible to make that leap without also being implicitly condescending or implying that people are just dupes? But I’m saying something different. A lot of the mainstream response to QAnon is: That’s lunatic! Look at these idiots! I’m saying there’s no other version of this discussion going on. People are in pain. They’re living paycheck to paycheck. Why wouldn’t they go toward the one source of information that’s acknowledging this? That’s way more than the corporate Dems are doing. That’s way more than you’re going to hear on CNN. I’m not saying people are suckers. I’m saying: What’s with ignoring this giant story of income inequality? That’s not acceptable. That’s not moral. And in my job, I’m going to try and address that story in creative ways.

Dale and Brennan from “Step Brothers” would definitely be into QAnon, right? No question about it. They’d be way into it, and they’d be torturing Jenkins and Steenburgen’s characters with it, and they would eventually be having meetings at the house and somehow QAnon would drift into Jenkins’s work life and the Q Shaman would show up at Jenkins’s workplace. They also would have loved Trump. I don’t want to speak for Ferrell and Reilly, but I think you could safely assume they would agree with that.

You’ve moved away from straight comedies like “Step Brothers.” Do you not see your comedic sensibility as fitting in anymore? I don’t think there’s any doubt that the comedies of the late ’90s and the 2000s were of a moment. It’s no mistake that a lot of those — and especially the ones that Will and I did — were about mediocre oafish white men who are entitled: news anchors who were giving us puff, racecar drivers who acted as if they were king of the world before getting their butts kicked, giant man-children consumers. It all can be summed up by George W. Bush. But comedy needs to have real teeth to work now. Comedy about relationships, careerism, your own self-image — it just doesn’t work. Comedy is in a weird spot. There’s no question about it.

There’s maybe a parallel between your moving away from making movies like “Step Brothers,” which really exists on its own terms, and toward things like “Vice” and “The Big Short” and “Succession” — the artistic success of which is more dependent on the strength of their arguments or ideas — and how people now often point to cultural products as being valuable insofar as they offer some sort of political or social utility. Do you think the culture’s estimation of what makes for “good” mainstream entertainment — the purpose of it — has changed? That’s something I’m constantly wrestling with. I don’t think there’s any question that something that’s just beautiful in its own right has a power that may be more powerful than directly addressing issues. Here’s the funny thing: Of everything you listed, “Succession,” “Big Short,” “Vice” or stuff we’d produce like “Q: Into the Storm” or “537,” the show that for me as a viewer may have meant the most was “Painting with John.” It’s a man in the jungle doing beautiful paintings and talking about his life. That might be the one that was the most powerful. So I think the answer I’ve come up with lately is that all of it’s great. All of it should exist.

What ideas are you trying to get across with “Don’t Look Up”? It’s not the most high-concept bizarre idea — the idea of a disaster movie in which people don’t necessarily believe that the disaster is coming. It goes back to the trope of the mayor from “Jaws”: “Love to prove that, wouldn’t you? Get your name into the National Geographic?” So it’s two midlevel, very sincere astronomers who make the discovery of a lifetime, which is a killer asteroid headed toward Earth. They have to warn everyone and have to go on a media tour. It’s them navigating our world. It’s them navigating their equivalent of Twitter. It’s them navigating the political landscape. It’s them navigating talk shows and how they’re perceived. It’s DiCaprio and Lawrence and Rob Morgan trying to warn the world. I call it a dark comedy.

It’s fundamentally a climate-change allegory? That is kind of how it started. But then the pandemic hit. What that did was bring out what the movie is really about, which is how we communicate with each other. We can’t even talk to each other anymore. We can’t even agree. So it’s about climate change, but at its root it’s about what has the internet, what have cellphones, what has the modern world done to the way we communicate.

This reminds me: I read that you and your mom have very different politics — she’s a Trump fan. How does she understand your political perspective? I honestly don’t know. There’s definitely some Fox News, OAN News talking points that get thrown around about Hollywood liberals. Here’s something funny that happened: I got an email from her husband, because we’re trying to find common ground. He sent me a video, and it was Michael Douglas talking about the corruption of our political process. He was like, “Is this something we can agree on?” And I’m like, “That video is from my group!” RepresentUs: Their singular mission is get big dirty money out of politics. They’re not a right- or left-wing group. It took him aback: He had sent me a video from my group. Then I tried to tell him: “I’m trying to explain to you: I don’t watch CNN. I don’t love Joe Biden. I’m not a fan of the D.N.C. I want money out of our politics. I want universal health care. I want fair wages.” They didn’t quite know what to make of that. I’m hoping that now that the orange turd is gone, things might settle down a little. But how would they describe my politics? They probably think I’m Karl Marx.

Opening illustration: Source photograph by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.