That Lawyer Dick Cheney Shot in the Face Is Planning to See Vice

That Lawyer Dick Cheney Shot in the Face Is Planning to See Vice

What must it be like to be famous for having a vice president shoot you in the face? Thats life for ..

What must it be like to be famous for having a vice president shoot you in the face? Thats life for Harry Whittington, the 91-year-old former lawyer whom Dick Cheney infamously shot by accident during a hunting expedition on a Texas ranch in 2006. One would think that Whittington would not want to relive the day he got hit by a flurry of bird-shot pellets—but apparently, that is not the case. Because despite whatever memories he has of the event, it turns out that Whittington plans to go see Vice, Adam McKays Cheney biopic.

Speaking with the Daily Mail, Whittington said that after seeing the trailer, some of his daughters wanted to watch the film. “I told them I would go with them,” he said.

“We dont know much about the film, and have not been contacted by the producers,” he added. “The trailer is not exactly what happened, and there was no automobile involved.” The way Whittington tells it, he and Cheney were walking behind some bird dogs, when he saw Cheney swing his gun toward a bird that was flying up. He remembers smelling gunpowder; next thing he knew, “I woke up, and I was in an ambulance on the way to [the] hospital.”

Cheney also described the incident in his 2011 memoir, In My Time, where he wrote, “The sun was just starting to set on the horizon, and I did not know Harry had come up on my right. I didnt see him until it was too late. I will never, as long as I live, forget the sight of Harry falling to the ground after I fired.”

Whittington said that despite having to undergo surgery, suffering a minor heart attack, and still carrying a few pellets within his body from the accident, he has “no hard feelings toward the vice president.” Still, in his book, Cheney described the incident as “one of the saddest days of my life.”

Vice has won both praise and criticism; V.F.s Richard Lawson fell into the latter camp. In his review, he noted that McKays use of narrative digressions does not work as well in this film as it did in the Oscar-winning The Big Short, which he premiered in 2015. And though a huskier-than-usual Christian Bale turns in a disturbingly good impersonation, he writes, “successfully telling Cheneys story—particularly how he was uniquely suited to leveraging loopholes in executive power to reorder U.S. security policy toward disaster—requires more legwork than merely a good impersonation.”

Vice premieres in theaters December 25.

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Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Laura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.

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