No One Knows Dick Cheney Like Christian Bale

Brut America

Who is the real Dick Cheney? Actor Christian Bale sits down with Brut to discuss his latest movie Vice — the Oscar nominated film about the life of the former Vice President.

Transcript

00:00I couldn't resist trying it, you know, and you always want to do something,

00:03you're always more interested in something where there's the possibility of

00:08terrible failure as well. It's always nice.

00:14What does that say on the back of the phone?

00:17Brit.

00:26He was an unknown man who ruled the world for a while.

00:30He is a portrait of many contradictions, you know, in that he's someone who

00:37is a zealot in terms of the unitary executive power for the president,

00:43but it's not for acquiring it for himself, you know, he prefers to be, you know, the man in the

00:50shadows. He's kind of the ultimate servant, you know, he serves his master and there is

00:57no limit to how far he will go for that. These policies led to hundreds of thousands of deaths

01:07in what is seen now and really was seen then, but just people were misled into a very unethical war,

01:21for reasons that even his best of friends, you know, were very disillusioned that he

01:29willfully misled them, you know, about that. I think it's a real tribute to very much the

01:35ideals, the best ideals that America aspires to, but then this constant sort of dark underbelly

01:43that's been there since, you know, America began, but that constant battle between

01:53holding on to our ideals and losing them for the sake of short-term gain.

02:06You know, every set is dictated by a director's personality and he has such a great

02:12magnetism and, you know, you learn so much. He's so curious, he's so funny and then

02:18he uses that comedy as a way of being able to impart, you know, these facts that usually would

02:26be part of a documentary or would not be entertaining, but he knows how to use that

02:30to keep it entertaining and then to really surprisingly smack you over the head with

02:37emotion as well, which is what I find with watching Vice. I mean, you know, I was there

02:42every second of the shoot and playing Cheney, for God's sake, and then still,

02:47first time I saw the film, I was stunned at how moved I was by it.

Category

Transcript

Recommended