“I tried on many different emotional costumes and tried the horrible-I can not sleep-night. But, in the end, the survivors retain their sense of humor. I do not think this should be separate from being serious and emotional and profound. “I think you can laugh at something while still acknowledging that it’s serious,” said Adam McKay, who did just that in his 2021 Netflix Oscar satire on planetary catastrophe. Do not look up.
He is now working on a new feature film, he told a Q&A for the Tribeca Festival.
“If the last film was about the outcome of what has broken for us, that we are looking at the collapse of a sustainable climate, this is more about the real arterial barriers in our hearts, what causes it, which is, of course, big, dirty money. And it’s also a comedy… mixed with drama, but in general I would call it a comedy “, is all he would say, rather cryptically. He also writes the HBO Max anthology series The uninhabited land based on the best-selling book by David Wallace-Wells.
“We have less than eight years to go through the turning point of a sustainable planet. No one even disagrees with that and yet we are all like “Johnny Depp, Amber Heard”. “So you have to laugh at it, but you also have to deal with it.”
McKay came from SNL, sketch comedy, co-founded Funny or Die and did Ankorman and a handful of comedies with Will Ferrell, whom he called “the least neurotic creative person I’ve ever met.” He said that with each of the comedies we made, we would discuss the political, social and economic center of the film and say “Let’s never tell anyone that we had this discussion”. In He leaves brothers, is consumerism – “that the customer is always right, which I think is the tombstone of America. “I think that killed us.”
“At some point, I started to get really upset about where the country was headed,” he said. Then he came The Big Short and Vice. He also really wanted to make Garth Ennis’s comic book series, The Boys, but everyone was saying that an R-rated superhero movie was banned. (Later adapted into a successful TV series by Amazon Studios.) “No complaints. There are 10,000 other filmmakers who can complain more than me. “But it would be a nice movie. I’m dying to make this movie.”
McKay also directed the pilot for Jesse Armstrong’s HBO Succession, based on the Murdoch family. “It was the best pilot script I have ever read. This is exactly where we are. “What I liked about the show is that it did not glorify wealth.”
Do not look up – nominated for Oscars for Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Film Editing and Original Music – “Just Spilled”. The movie about an asteroid preparing to destroy the earth amid the uncontrollable denial of conspiracy theories on social media was at least polarizing. “It was the craziest experience I’ve ever had,” he said.
Since its last, HBO Winning Time: The Rise Of the Lakers Dynasty, he said: “It’s supposed to be my fun project to finish Do not look up. It’s supposed to be a good time. We had just dealt with the fact that maybe our culture kills us, even though it was a comedy. And then it was like being a hoops fan for 40 years, let’s go do it Time to win. And it also led to a lot of controversy around this show. “
The series has been criticized for historical inaccuracies. And for depicting African American culture, racism and sexism. Addressing these issues “is of course the reason we succeeded,” he said.
“I like this show. We always try to make things where … I just play the game “I just closed the channel and what would I say about it”. And with Time to win it was like trying to make a show where, at the end, when the first episode was over, I would say “Shit, I was expecting this”.
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