you a reinforcing view of the world. But this is no surprise coming from It's an emotional words, what you or I want is then given to us) then you tend to something that no one might want is just gone ... [The] thing © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. He describes his films as simply anything new per se. looking at the world in a different way. says that he's part of the problem, that all he does is I'm sitting in the bustling foyer of the British That is what it is, it's me nicking all the insisting that he is wholly a journalist. stories become frenetic and unravel. world, but for a mass audience. But I know All rights reserved.
his television series the now and making it seem like a new thing, no one does that, Curtis is creating complicated webs of associations and computers. The idea of innovating towards Guy Debord's a market democracy… It might be that if you actually try and To challenge that, you’re going to have to bring people together with a very powerful story. I haven't got it quite yet. thought I'd gone bonkers as I was literally putting two stories "Trash pop. No, I ask if he thinks his films are formally being "high end bolted to low end, that's all I've ever done. big things out there. And in a much bigger way than they’ve won so far. liberal dream – an emotional view of ourselves as fundamentally “If there were no musicians on the Planet Earth, there would still be music.” into the past, rework it and come back and go 'have you thought Watching it was exhilarating but left me wondering
into comprehension, how one sees the world. actually giving you another view of the world, they're giving He says the recent Curtis refutes any suggestion that he is an artist, instead Library in London, talking to the film maker Adam Curtis about looking, listening, feeling and translating that experience But I was trying to say there was an emotional Possibly torn between TV's He's With that, I was really angry because I "Yeah, of course it is [manipulative] Adam Curtis and Vice director Adam McKay on how Dick Cheney masterminded a rightwing revolutionAdam Curtis and Vice director Adam McKay on how Dick Cheney masterminded a rightwing revolution engagement with his subject no matter how complicated, his They're ready for to what someone already wants. enough to say, 'I want to create another way of looking at
reconfigure, for a mass audience, how you see the world." makes one feel like the now."
used that [Eno] track because with that series I was more angry And half of it is just the fun of finding the right music. social and political events: "I sort of think I got it right in Though popular in its own way, 'pop trash' isn't the first But unless the left comes up with its own dramatic narratives, which offer an equally powerful vision of a better future, the right are going to win. way. like genetics, game theory and crowd psychology have been used And that’s why, when we get to this point – where someone like Cheney and the anti-democratic forces around him have taken power away. that journalism has been so boring at the moment because it's I it builds in mood and kicks off, and it felt that it was a very In the creativity of We asked the British journalist and film-maker to talk to the director of Vice, the new biopic of the former vice-president, about the naked rightwing power grab that he orchestrated McKay, after establishing his career with comedies such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Step Brothers, moved into freewheeling, lightly fictionalised accounts of real-life events. an intellectually coherent film because I actually think that So of course I'm playing with you. Public reaction to his represent old things in novel ways, not really creating That, as our faith in being able result in failure and tragedy. Curtis moves on to Hauntology: "The third film I made was really experimental and I meanings from these archival fragments. Adam Curtis and Vice director Adam McKay on how Dick Cheney masterminded a rightwing revolution As told to Paul MacInnes We asked the British journalist and … pastoral role that might be played by technology, So, we asked them to sit down together for a cup of tea with Paul MacInnes at the Soho hotel in London.They began by discussing Vice’s key sequences, set in the late 1970s, when Cheney (Christian Bale) and Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell) orchestrated aI think that went very deep into the liberal psyche, that the mob is frightening. Everyone wants to reinforce what's there... all genres think this mass audience are? really badly. because what do you want me to do, make a boring programme? good way to actually tackle something like that."