Adam McKay turns his lens on Dick Cheney and the ugly twists of power in 'Vice'

Adam McKay has a copy of Jill Lepore's acclaimed, 960-page American history volume, "These Truths: A History of the United States," sitting on the corner of his desk. I have a copy too, lying on my nightstand, silently judging me the past couple of weeks for barely reading it. And because McKay's new movie, "Vice," suggests that American indifference helps politicians like Dick Cheney get away with torture and murder, I'm feeling doubly implicated by my failure to feed my mind and burrow into Lepore's book.

"I haven't opened it either," McKay says, laughing, adding that, by way of contrast, he could tell me all about the Milwaukee Bucks' season, down to the fact that, apparently, Khris Middleton isn't playing enough defense lately for the basketball team. "It shows you how tired I've been. When I get home, I just want to watch basketball or 'Antiques Roadshow.'"

McKay's exhaustion comes from the years he spent making "Vice," an ambitious movie about the life of Dick Cheney and the corrupting power of politics. Like "The Big Short," a freewheeling and scorching look at the 2008 financial crisis