Hanging by a chad
Filmmaker AdamMcKay talks ‘537 Votes’ documentary, lessons of the 2000 Florida recount
AdamMcKaywas head writer at “SaturdayNight Live” during the 2000 election— a heady era for the sketch showthat saw the phrase “strategery” become lodged in the nation’s consciousness, DarrellHammond’s Al Gore explain his “lockbox” and a blue-suit cladWill Ferrell dance as Janet Reno.
But one ofMcKay’s most vivid memories fromthat timewas seeing a colleague from Florida filling out his absentee ballot. “I just jokingly said, ‘You better hurry up and get that out,’ ” McKay recalls. “It’s going to determine the election.”
Two decades later, McKay has produced the HBOdocumentary “537 Votes,” a rollicking but precise account of the voter recount in Florida by director Billy Corben and his producing partner Alfred Spellman. The film, which debutsWednesday onHBO andHBOMax, is a timely reminder of howvaluable every vote can be, and the legal battles that can ensue. Corben, the filmmaker of “Cocaine Cowboys” and “The U” and a Florida native, recounts the events froma Miami perspective, opening with the saga of Elian Gonzalez and tracing howthe federal government’s handling of that crisis had enormous ramifications for the vital CubanAmerican vote in Florida. All politics, as they say, is local.
It’s also a lively film that resurrects 2000 not just via hanging chads but by following the cultural atmosphere. Alongside interviews with backroom players such as Roger Stone, “SNL” sketches make frequent cameos— including someMcKay wrote.
In an interview, McKay spoke through a mask by
phone fromhis office in Los Angeles where he’s prepping a comedy forNetflix titled “Don’t LookUp,” starring Jennifer Lawrence as an astronomer who with her partner discovers that a giant asteroid is heading toward Earth. The scientists embark on a media tour towarn a disbelieving population about the planet’s imminent doom.
It’s a return to comedy forMcKay, who as a filmmaker has tried out varied degrees of satire, veering from broader comedies such as “Step Brothers” and “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” to, more recently, increasingly pointed and darker films such as “The Big Short” and the 2018 Dick Cheney biopic “Vice.” His projects right nowencompass climate change, the pandemic and economic inequality. “Butwe laugh a lot,” he says. “It seems towork.”
This interview with McKay has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: What relevance for thisNovember do you see in “537Votes”?
A: The obvious part of themovie is that every vote counts. Vote. Vote. Vote. But I think there are other layers. It’s a reminder that we’re living in a fairly long story arc that’s more like 30,
40 years long. When you look at what happened in Miami with that recount, it all feels very familiar just based in a state. You see howthe Republican Party became activist and now fully radicalized party. You really see it happening at that point, and also with theW. Bush administration. And not to let the Democrats off the hook, you also see theDNC become ineffective andwatery and— howI jokingly refer to them— become theWashington Generals.
Q: There are sketches glimpsed in “537Votes” that you wrote. Could you imagine doing that on “SNL” this election?
A: (Laughs) I’m laughing because I occasionally still havework dreams where somehowI’m back there writing. And I’m like, ‘How did I get back here?’ That’s a hard, hard deal. Everyone’s struggling with these timeswe’re living through as far as comedy goes. So much of the reality became larger than the comedy.
Q: The stakes of this election seem so high, I wonder what role the usual “SNL”-style parody has.
A: Themoviewe’re making right nowis about a comet that’s going to hit
Earth. It’s 40 kilometers wide, and it’s a planet killer. Two midlevel scientists have to go on a media tour towarn everybody about this. The entire joke is: Howdo you go on “Morning Joe” and on Twitter and on Colbert when the stakes are the planet really is going to die? I feel like, without exaggeration, that’s a real through line to everything that’s happening right now, with California on fire, democracy toppling, the pandemic. Howdo you rise to those stakes? I think you’re going to see a little bit of what happened withWorldWar I in culture and art and comedy and music.
Q: Is it strange to be working on a film about people denying science when many are rejecting the advice of health officials?
A: I think it’s the strangest
thing I’ve ever experienced inmy life. I wrote it before this all happened. I wrote it obviously very pointedly toward global warming. It’s not the most clever analogy, but I felt like itwas a metaphor that could contain a lot. It’s crazy. There are jokes in the script that are exactly happening almost every day. One joke I’ll give away is that they’re passing a funding bill to create the ships to send up to deflect the comet. The president is explaining howthey have to play a little bit of politics and there’s a tax cut for the 1%. Sure enough, the first pandemic bill therewas a tax cut for the 1%.
Q: You’re currently in preproduction on that after shootingwas delayed byCOVID-19. How’s it going?
A: So farwe’re clean. We had 180 tests lastweek,
zero positives. I thinkwe’re getting new results today, fingers crossed another week of no positives. I don’t knowifwe’ll be able to do it butwe’re going for it. Netflix has been incredible. They’re willing to spend as much as possible to make sure it’s safe, sowe’re charging forward.
Q: You’re also developing a series forHBO about the race for a COVID-19 vaccine. It must be difficult when you don’t knowhowthe story ends.
A: Exactly. We, (producer) Todd Schulman and I, felt likewe needed something to focus on that’s like potentially a positive, that goes back to those stories of mankindworking together as a whole to do great good — the polio vaccine, the mobilization to fight the Nazis. A lot about it is playing out thatway.