DEEP INTO ‘VICE’
The Envelope welcomes a select audience of Hollywood guild members and awards voters to consider some of the season’s most talked about films and television with The Envelope Live. Each screening is followed by a Q&A with the cast and filmmakers moderated by an L.A. Times journalist. For those unable to attend, The Envelope brings you highlights right here. And for videos of these sessions, go to latimes.com/screen ings.
Most recently, The Envelope welcomed “Vice” writer-director Adam McKay and film editor Hank Corwin, who joined The Times’ Glenn Whipp at the Montalbán in Hollywood to discuss the film’s portrayal of former Vice President Dick Cheney and what can only be described as his quest for power.
“Ultimately, I think it’s a movie about addiction. It’s a love story wrapped in addiction” to power, McKay said. “We did a lot of research, and we read a lot of interviews and had our own journalists go around — I could find no operating ideology. It shifted constantly….
“I think this addiction to power cracks open really animalistic, dark, dark stuff.”
“In a test screening, you don’t need to see the scores, you just need to experience the film the way an audience is experiencing it. Adam is remarkable in that he can see it through other people’s eyes.” — HANK CORWIN “If you were on the Titanic, and the ship was about to sink, and you had just heard for three or four months how it’s the most unsinkable ship ever built, do you laugh or cry? ... I’d laugh. I’d just go, ‘This is crazy, this is happening.’ ” —ADAM MCKAY, on finding humor in such a serious subject “The way Christian approaches any character is that he becomes that character, and he really felt like Cheney needed to have his say. What would he say in that moment?” —ADAM MCKAY, on expanding on a real-life blunt Dick Cheney interview response