Portrait of a powerful vice-president
Writer-director Adam Mckay shares insights into this year’s most Oscar-nominated film, ‘Vice’
VICE is one of the most fascinating movies on this year’s list of Oscar nominations. The biographical comedy-drama, which is the year’s most nominated film, places a microscope on the strangely understated influence vice-president Dick Cheney had on the ill-fated Bush administration.
I spoke with Vice writer-director Adam Mckay about how he came to discover the story and what inspired him to bring it to the big screen.
“There was a joke when George W Bush was elected president,” he said over the phone from Los Angeles.
“The joke was that Dick Cheney was the one really making the decisions. But I always assumed that there was maybe some truth to it.
“For some reason, a couple of years ago, I got curious and started reading all these books written about Dick Cheney and George W Bush and I was surprised by just how much power he had in that White House.”
What fuelled Mckay’s interest even further was when Bush said he regretted recommending Cheney as vice-president because he didn’t anticipate Cheney would run a shadow empire out of the White people within that circle. He quickly discovered that although Bush was involved in many of the decisions, it was Cheney who in many ways steered the ship.
“By some estimates we killed a million people in Iraq… and the world economy collapsed. I mean, it’s so bad I almost have to laugh. It was such a disastrous eight years and so polarising. And it was just a strange moment where it felt like we’re moving on, we’re never really going to deal with those eight years, or at least not in the foreseeable future.”
Mckay saw a gap in that there had never been a movie made about reclusive, quiet and mysterious Cheney.
Given the current volatile political climate in America, I asked him if he felt anxious about how people would receive the movie.
“Yes, for sure. Because everything in the US is divided into one side or the other. It’s almost like you can’t just look at reality as reality or evidence as evidence… So I knew when we were making it there was gonna be a portion of the country that would just immediately say it was all lies and dismiss it.
“You never want that to happen when you’re making a movie, you wanna have as wide an audience as you can. But I felt like we just had to do the best research we could for this movie, make it as true as we could and go in with the best intentions.”
Interestingly, since the movie came out, many people on the left have said it goes too easy on Dick Cheney, and some people on the right have viewed it as quite fair.
“We’ve had all these different responses. That’s kind of where our country is at, everything that happens gets many, many responses. It’s not exactly a time of unity in the US.”
Christian Bale’s portrayal of Cheney’s posture, voice and mannerisms are faultless.
“I just knew there’s no one who has a process like Christian Bale. He goes so deep into any character he plays, so I knew it had to be him, that there was no one else out there who would really embrace the mystery of Dick Cheney and dig and dig to find out what was going on. I also knew the physical side of it wasn’t going to be a problem. It’s Christian Bale, he will do whatever it takes.”
It’s Bale’s masterful performance which drives this entertaining, enlightening and hugely important film that sheds light on the story behind the vice-president described by many as the most powerful in history.
“Ultimately, it’s really just a story of a man and a family that really got addicted to power and it changed them.
“They went from pretty regular people to very different people by the end, and I think that’s a very old story we all know.”
“‘If you have power, people will always try to take it from you. Always.” – LYNNE CHENEY (VICE)