‘Don’t Look Up’ Nails the Media Apocalypse

Back at The Herald, a social media specialist delivers a slick PowerPoint presentation to show that the story isn’t driving much traffic. The news cycle moves on.

I’m a little hesitant to praise a political movie, because Hollywood’s political statements tend to be vapid. Talk is cheap, and an impassioned outburst at an awards show is free. True spontaneous passion is usually reserved for, say, defending the method acting involved in the show “Succession.” What makes “Don’t Look Up” interesting is that its writer and director, Adam McKay, is putting his money, and his career, where his mouth is.

Since breaking out with “Anchorman,” a broad parody of local TV news, he has made a pair of films with a political edge, “The Big Short,” a gonzo take on the financial crisis, and “Vice,” the bitterly comic story of Vice President Dick Cheney. “Don’t Look Up” has a raft of stars — the president is played by Meryl Streep — and the familiar arc of big-budget disaster flicks like “Armageddon” or “The Day After Tomorrow.” But while all of Mr. McKay’s films have been attuned to the intertwined roles of media and politics, this is his first movie since “Anchorman” to put the news media squarely in its sights.

The new opus shows Mr. McKay as “one of America’s most incisive media critics, even if he’s not necessarily recognized that way,” said David Sirota, a co-producer of the film, who is better known as a combative journalist who advised Senator Bernie Sanders during his 2020 presidential campaign and now runs The Daily Poster, an investigative news site.

Mr. McKay said he tried five different ideas that would allow him to make a movie about the climate crisis, but nothing worked. “How do you tell this story, the biggest story in 66 million years, without exaggeration, since the Chicxulub comet, bigger than the Black Plague, bigger than Krakatoa?” he said in an interview, describing the question that kept him up at night.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/12/business/media/dont-look-up-news-media.html