The new film "Don't Look Up" is about two astronomer who leak a comet discovery to a New York newspaper known for its Gothic banner.
The journalists are passionate and sober as they work in a conference room. They publish the blockbuster, then send the pair of scientists off to promote the news on the morning news show, "The Daily Rip." Things start to go wrong when that happens. One producer tells the scientists that they should keep it light. The Joe Scarborough proxy, played by Tyler Perry, leans in to ask if there is life on other planets, as soon as they sit down.
After putting up with the morning-show-style banter for much of the segment, the character has had enough. She thinks the destruction of the planet isn't supposed to be fun. You should stay up all night, crying, because it is supposed to be terrifying and frightening.
The clip of her losing it on the air is a meme that gets likes and laughs on social media. Her boyfriend, a reporter for a sardonic news site called Autopsy, moves fast to make the most of her outburst under a two-sentence headline that is its own kind of internet cliché. I was unfaithful with her.
A social media specialist at The Herald gives a presentation to show that the story isn't driving much traffic. The news cycle continues.
Hollywood tends to make political statements that are vapid, so I am hesitant to praise a political movie. Talk is cheap, and an angry rant at an awards show is free. Defending the method acting involved in the show "Succession" is usually where the true passion lies. Adam McKay is putting his money and his career at stake in the film "Don't Look Up."
He made a pair of films with a political edge, "The Big Short" and "Vice", and they were both political satires. The president in the movie is played by a woman, and there are other stars in the movie, including a man. The news media is the focus of the movie, which is McKay's first movie since "Anchorman"
David Sirota, a co-producer of the film, said that Mr. McKay is one of America's most accurate media critics, even if he is not necessarily recognized that way.
Mr. McKay said he tried five different ideas to make a movie about the climate crisis, but nothing worked. He said in an interview that the story was the biggest in 66 million years and that it was bigger than the Black Plague.
He asked, "How can we be looking at the greatest story in human history, when most nights I'm not hearing it talked about?"
The image is.
Adam McKay struggled when he started to plan a film about the climate crisis.
He hit on the solution after talking with Mr. Sirota, who was angry about the news media's passive reaction to climate change. The two were texting plot points.
Politicians and Silicon Valley madmen deny reality for their own reasons, in ways that are recognizably self-interested and delusional. A news media that is constantly chasing after a distracted audience is the real villain.
When the two scientists emphasize the reality of the coming apocalypse during their appearance on "The Daily Rip," the host played by Mr. Perry is focused on one thing: whether the meteorite will take out his ex-wife's house in Florida. The other host, played by Cate Blanchett, is more interested in the character of the actor than the host.
I asked Mr. McKay if we could have a moratorium on fictional female journalists sleeping with their subjects. He said that the funnest characters are the ones who are sleeping with people.
One of the charms of the movie is that the characters are not immune to the pressures of this media age. At one point, a high-minded NASA official who is trying to save the planet is pictured rejoicing that a pop star, played by Ariana Grande, has reconciled with her boyfriend.
Mr McKay said that he was calling himself out. I am not above this. I want Ben and J. lo to find happiness together, and I'm excited about what the next thing is from taco bell.
Much of the publicity for Don't Look Up has been focused on Hollywood gossip. Mr. McKay told Vanity Fair that he hadn't spoken with Will Ferrell since he cast a different actor to play the lead in the film.
Mr. McKay said that seeing a Hollywood spat push aside an earnest message on climate change was almost hilarious. He talked about how the chatter about him and Mr. Ferrell wasn't quite accurate. Will and I split up because we had been separated for three months. That made us stop talking. OK!
Mr. McKay is also an executive producer of the show.
Good journalism has a balance between telling people what they want to hear and what they need to know. Mr. McKay believes that decades of a media market that has grown larger and larger have thrown things out of whack.
I was reminded of that when I watched the introduction of a new journalism program named in honor of Harry Evans, the Times of London editor who came to New York after refusing to do the bidding of Murdoch. Mr. Evans was a journalist who had overcome British legal restrictions to expose the ravages of the drug thalidomide in the 1970s. Corporate malfeasance was his great subject.
He would say that the slow death of the earth isn't a big deal if he were here now.
In the world of a Adam McKay satire, we don't live. Dennis Overbye wrote last week that when he brought a dangerous asteroid to a New York Times news meeting in 1998, the reaction was "purposeful pandemonium." "Morning Joe" is criticized more for its doom-sayers about American democracy than it is for frivolity.
The media has a lot to answer for when it comes to the climate story. Over the last few years, the journalism on the topic has grown more urgent in tone. It is more closely connected to the floods, fires and December tornadoes that have killed millions of people.
There are moments of recognition in the satire, "Don't Look Up." The author of the clean energy newsletter called it the first good movie about climate change.
The failure to slow carbon emissions is a story about hard science. The news media had played a large role in turning away from a difficult truth, and it was more about society's ability or inability to take action. A Fox News-style host whistles past the grave before the end of "Don't Look Up", but before it does. We will be moving on, he tells his viewers, to the story that everyone is talking about tonight, the topless urgent care centers.
