THE WHIPLASH DECADE
How Adam McKay Turned Post-Recession Anger Into Entertainment
The writer and director of goofball comedies took a serious turn over the past decade and hasn’t looked back
This piece is part of The Whiplash Decade, a package on the wild ride that was the 2010s.
Toward the end of Vice, Adam McKay’s 2018 biopic about the rise of Dick Cheney and his shadow presidency during the George W. Bush years, Christian Bale, nearly unrecognizable as the former vice president, sits for a television interview. “Don’t you care what the American people think?” the interviewer asks him. “No,” Cheney answers. Then, Bale-as-Cheney addresses the camera, breaking the fourth wall. “I can feel your recriminations, and your judgment, and I’m fine with it.” He’s filmed from below, looking like a villain as he delivers a soliloquy justifying his actions during war. “I refuse to kiss those monsters on the cheek… I will not apologize for keeping your families safe.” It’s clear McKay wanted this scene to be Shakespearean, an actual curse. Yet Cheney’s words almost sound reasonable to viewers in 2018 — McKay is using excerpts from an actual interview — as the veep makes explicitly clear this is exactly who he is and what he believes. Monsters are everywhere in the Trump era…
