Storyteller Sessions: Adam McKay (Anchorman, Don't Look Up)

Script Apart

Welcome to the Script Apart Storyteller Sessions – three days of career-spanning conversations with truly game-changing storytellers, talking about their relationship with the page. 100% of proceeds are going to the Entertainment Community Fund, a brilliant charity doing hugely important work – so if you enjoy this episode or any of the episodes across this weekend, please do consider hitting the link below and donating to that wonderful cause:
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Today, we’re kicking off with what is basically the Catalina Wine Mixer of podcast interviews. Our guest today is a filmmaker responsible for some of the great comedies of our time, and someone whose storytelling has undergone a fascinating transformation as the world has slipped into climate emergency, economic emergency and political disrepair. Somehow, in a time with dwindling things to laugh about, this writer-director has found a way to engage with those crises in ludicrously entertaining ways. He's the filmmaker behind Anchorman, Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, The Other Guys, The Big Short, Vice and Don’t Look Up – it's Adam McKay!
Adam got his break on Saturday Night Live, becoming the show’s head writer in 1996. His collaborations on SNL with another emerging comic, Will Ferrell, immediately caught the eye and simply could not be contained to the small screen for long. By the early ‘00s, the pair had turned their anarchic chemistry into a wave of outrageously quotable comedies that fast found themselves woven into our shared pop culture landscape. “It escalated quickly,” as Ron Burgundy might say.
Then came a change of pace. In 2015, after his father lost his home as part of a devastating economic downturn, Adam released The Big Short – a white collar crime comedy about the 2007 financial crash. It won him and his co-writer Charles Randolph the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar at that year’s Academy Awards, and signalled a sea change not just in the content of Adam’s movies going forward, but also in the cinematic language he was using to tell his stories. His films since then – and to a lesser degree, titles he’s worked on as a producer, such as the smash hit Succession – have doubled down on that new storytelling style, full of frantic edits and experimental flourishes.
Adam’s monumental success has come in the face of a couple of challenging moments medically across his life. In 2000, he was diagnosed with a condition known as essential tremor, and in 2017, he suffered a heart attack on the set of Vice. In the conversation you’re about to hear, we discuss how that heart attack sharpened his resolve to make 2021’s bracing Don’t Look Up. We get into why Step Brothers is a film that “tells you all you need to know about America” – a nation in which “consumer culture has turned us into children,” Adam insists. You’ll hear why he decided to abandon the three-act structure of his old films in part as a response to the rise of Donald Trump and what he’s learned about to fix the world from his recent string of movies grappling with its many problems.
The Entertainment Community Fund do extraordinary work lifting up storytellers of all descriptions, and have been a vital support for entertainment industry workers affected by this summer’s strike action. So if you enjoy this episode, please do consider donating below.
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