NEW YORK – Adam McKay was head writer at “Saturday Night Live” during the 2000 election — a heady era for the sketch show that saw the phrase “strategery” become lodged in the nation’s consciousness, Darrell Hammond’s Al Gore explain his “lockbox” and a blue-suit clad Will Ferrell dance as Janet Reno.
But one of McKay’s most vivid memories from that time was seeing a colleague from Florida filling out his absentee ballot. “I just jokingly said, ’You better hurry up and get that out,” McKay recalls. “It’s going to determine the election.”Two decades later, McKay has produced the HBO documentary “537 Votes,” a rollicking but precise account of the voter recount in Florida by director Billy Corben and his producing partner Alfred Spellman.