Maureen Dowd Sees Adam McKay’s Vice Ahead of Press Screenings This Week

Maureen Dowd has a few things to say about Adam McKay’s Vice. I’ll skip over the parts of her column where she calls out the democrats for appreciating “normal” republicans in the era of Trump – I have words but I will restrain myself. Here are the Vice parts:

When McKay was home with the flu three years ago, he grabbed a book and began reading up on Cheney. He ended up writing and directing “Vice,” a film that uses real-life imagery, witty cinematic asides and cultural touchstones to explore the irreparable damage Cheney did to the planet, and how his blunders and plunders led to many of our current crises.

With an echo of his Batman growl, Christian Bale brilliantly shape-shifts into another American psycho, the lumbering, scheming vice president who easily manipulates the naïve and insecure W., deliciously played by Sam Rockwell. While W. strives to impress his father, Cheney strives to impress his wife, Lynne, commandingly portrayed by Amy Adams.

And then here, where Adam McKay says something he probably shouldn’t:

The movie opens at Christmas, but it’s no sugary Hallmark fable. It’s a harrowing cautionary tale showing that democracy can be sabotaged even more diabolically by a trusted insider, respected by most of the press, than by a clownish outsider, disdained by most of the press.

After a screening of “Vice” Thursday, I asked McKay which of our two right-wing Dementors was worse, Cheney or Trump.

“Here’s the question,” he said. “Would you rather have a professional assassin after you or a frothing maniac with a meat cleaver? I’d rather have a maniac with a meat cleaver after me, so I think Cheney is way worse. And also, if you look at the body count, more than 600,000 people died in Iraq. It’s not even close, right?”

I figure those words will come back to haunt Adam McKay. The story of Trump is not yet fully told. He’s only been in office two years.

The insidiousness of people who were Team Bernie in 2016 because they really hated the democrats really cut Trump a break, again and again, by making him seem more like the devil they know than the devil they don’t know. I did not know, when I heard about this movie, that it would indirectly be a movie that is supposed to be about someone much worse than Trump.  I’d rather have seen Vice not knowing that. But will try to see it with as open a mind as possible, in hopes that it doesn’t narratively try to make us forgive Trump for JUST being a maniac chasing us with a meat cleaver.