The Ever Controversial Adam McKay

Good morning Consumers. This is Please Consume, the film newsletter that double butters your popcorn.

This is what we’ve got for today 👇️

• Tyler gives us his pick for Disruptor Week!

• It’s Trailer Time! We have 2 new trailers for you.

• All the news and notes from the last few days.

Let’s get rolling…

This week we’re focusing on Disruption Docudramas.

What does that mean exactly?

Well, we’re going to discuss movies that tell the true story of massive shake ups in certain fields.

This has been a big year for this type of movie with the release of films like Tetris, Flaming Hot, Blackberry, Air, and the impending Dumb Money.

So, we thought we’d take the opportunity to discuss just a couple of our favorites.

The Big Short (2015)

Written by Tyler Clark

Today, we're going to talk about a story that’s as disruptive as it gets and a film that ends up feeling even more impressively prescient than ever - depressingly so, but impressive nonetheless.

So, let's talk about the subtle genius of a movie that is frustratingly disrespected by much of the critical community and talk about stocks with The Big Short.

The Ever Controversial Adam McKay

To understand how this film ended up the way it did, first, you have to understand where the film's director comes from and where he would go from here.

The film comes from the mind of Adam McKay. In case you're unaware, that's the Anchorman guy, which, on the surface, sounds insane.

McKay's filmography heavily leans into "dumb" comedies like Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys. Basically, if you like a Will Ferrell movie, there is a strong chance McKay directed it.

But when you delve into his work, you realize it's not much of a leap for him to jump into this type of film. All his movies have a political edge to them. It doesn't start with The Big Short, it goes all the way back to the beginning.

Anchorman is his commentary on women in the workplace, Talladega Nights is his mocking of Bush voters, and The Other Guys is his first time dipping into the housing crisis. He literally ends the last film with what is essentially a PowerPoint presentation on Ponzi schemes and then transitions into explaining the 2008 TARP bailout for Wall Street all set to Rage Against the Machine's cover of Bob Dylan's song Maggie's Farm, a song about workers' wages, and the opening lyric of each verse is "I ain't gonna work..."

So, to say McKay became political is not the case; he just got angrier and more overt.

Disruption 

McKay is honestly the perfect person to talk about this week; his work is all about disruption in one way or another. They are all films with a set ecosystem that is rocked to its core when someone or something new enters the film.

Whether it's a queer French driver played by Sacha Baron Cohen in Talladega Nights entering white-trash NASCAR, or it's Christina Applegate breaking the glass ceiling and entering the boys' club in Anchorman. Even his latest and most controversial film, Don't Look Up, uses a meteor barreling towards Earth as a way to test the world McKay believes we currently live in at this very moment.

But after those early comedies and before the (what I believe to be) underrated Don't Look Up, he had his transition point of turning that subtext into text. So how did he do that?

Consummate Entertainer

So often the complaint I hear about "late-stage McKay films" is that they aren't fun, which I don't understand. Didactic? Sure. Self-righteous? Definitely! But not fun?

Personally, I think this movie is a blast! He gets compelling movie stars and flashy visual tricks and sharp editing to keep you engaged in what would otherwise be an incredibly boring subject. We're discussing a movie about banking, and when you watch it, it's like you’re watching "Ocean's 11."

It's fun, exciting, and has an incredible power to take these complicated subjects that I am far too dumb to understand and put them into layman's terms to help it go down smoothly while also getting its point across. Scenes like Margot Robbie in the bathtub, Selena Gomez playing poker, or today's clip, the late, great Anthony Bourdain explaining CDOs illustrate this point very well.

I don't want to speculate on what Adam McKay thinks of our world right now (for that, just go to his crotchety old man tweets), but he is a real Debbie Downer with an NPR-type of brain. More importantly, he is an entertainer with something to say, and I'm here, ready to listen.

Today’s Scene

Let’s take a look at this week’s new trailers…

Dream Scenario

The Wonderful Story

Here are a few things that we found interesting over the last few days…