Adam McKay is a big fan of Climate Defiance’s no holds barred approach to shaming fossil fuel companies and the corporations and politicians who support them. The non-profit is known for its provocative protests, which include everything from unfurling a banner stating “Eat Shit, Darren” at an event honoring Exxon CEO Darren Woods to disrupting the White House Correspondents Dinner to protest the Biden administration’s approval of oil and gas leases.
“People tend to want to use the rules of advertising and marketing in their activism, and the truth of the matter is advertising, propaganda, misinformation is what caused this problem,” says McKay, the director of “Step Brothers” and “Anchorman.” “This is the only time in the four and a half billion year history of Earth that we have seen this rate of warming. It’s a bomb going off. The idea of using manipulative marketing language to describe something so threatening is insane. It would be like having a Heimlich maneuver poster in a restaurant, but having the person showing you how to do it be a sexy lady in a bikini.”
McKay decided to lend his name to “Just Look Up,” a new vérité documentary about the work of Climate Defiance and its founder Michael Greenberg after its co-director Emma Wall asked him to view an early cut of the film. Wall is married to Jeremy Strong, who appeared in McKay’s “The Big Short,” and the director agreed to become a producer on the film. “Just Look Up,” which is co-directed by Betsy Hershey and follows the activists over the course of several months, opened at the Tribeca Festival. McKay admired how Greenberg, who has devoted his life to drawing attention to the climate crisis, has used every platform at his disposal to magnify the stakes of global warming.
