Armando Iannucci on Why Politics Are Still Funny

The "In the Loop" director on why there's still a place for political satire.

Peter Capaldi’s character had some of the most unique dialogue, without a doubt, at Sundance — [laughter] an amazing mix of profanity and unexpected cultural references. How did his style of speech evolve?

His character is based on certain [people] in the actual government in the U.K., the spin doctors who spend a lot of their time coming up with more and more extravagant threats to journalists about what will happen to them if they publish something. It’s just taking it to that extra degree. Once we’ve done the script, we then have fun going back and looking at Malcolm again and beefing up his swearing. One of the writers, Ian Martin, has become known as…I think he’s beginning to hate it… the swearing adviser, simply because he seems to come up with the funniest, most extravagant, burlesque Malcolm moments.

Given the lingering optimism about the direction in which politics are going, there’s been speculation that it’s going to hurt political comedy. Do you feel like that’s the case?

I can remember when Blair got in in ’97, there was a general feeling then that oh, what are the comedians going to do, because this is what we wanted, the bright dawn of a new tomorrow for our children and our children’s children. And it became apparent within four months what their flaws and failings were.

That’s not to say that comedy about politics has to be destructive and negative. What you might find happening is actually that comedy becomes a lot about the ideas, rather than about the people. Bush and Cheney were such gifts in terms of their personalities and all that that implied. It may be a little bit more difficult to find that quirk in Obama… His rhetoric is, I find, always amusing, but it may well then be about the actual issues that are being discussed. And I think there’s also something useful in making fun of the process, which is what we do in “In The Loop,” because you want people to become aware of what that process is, if nothing else.

The film is careful not to be tied down to specific real-world incidents.

Yes, absolutely. What we’re not doing is saying this is what happened five years ago. I’d rather people felt, “God, it could all happen again!” [laughs] There are things that were inspired by the Iraq invasion, but I want people to feel that it’s a more universal story. So we never say who the president is, we never say who the prime minister is. We never say whose parties they’re in, we don’t name the country that has been talked about in the Middle East. What’s essential is that you know that these people are quibbling over what to do and what they should say about it, whether they should stand up and be counted or whether they should just go with the flow.

What struck me in the film is, as you mentioned before, that it’s as much about a workplace as it is about a working government. Characters are very concerned about their place in the office, being included, and that whatever grand gestures they make, they also want to keep working.

On the outside of these big important buildings, you think, oh, there’s really serious stuff going on in there, people are making major decisions. The disarming thing is when you talk to these people and realize they’re just like you and me. They’re all fallible, and, in fact, what drives their day are these petty little worries and stresses. Talking to all the Washington insiders, I got a real sense of all the office politics that got played there. There are those who really do hang around outside the offices of the most important people so that when they come out, they might go, “Hey, hi! I was just going into a meeting…do you want to come?” And they’ll do all their actual work in the evening.

That’s why we kept it at the lower levels. It’s all the undersecretaries and assistant secretaries and the ministers, because I wanted people to think, that must be what it’s like and also, if I were in that situation, what would I do? I’d probably do the same.

“In the Loop” opens in limited release on July 24th.

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