Fans of
The Thick of It, rejoice!
In The Loop, the new film from the team behind 91Èȱ¬ Four's awesome political satire, goes on general release next month. It details the lives of UK and US politicians who find themselves embroiled in the lead-up to a possible war - particularly Malcolm Tucker, the sweary 'Director of Communications' who finds the situation increasingly difficult to control.
Last week 91Èȱ¬ staff were treated to a preview screening by director/co-writer Armando Iannucci (last seen on this blog grilling
Stewart Lee), and he stuck around afterwards to answer questions about how it was made.
Here's what Armando said about various things:
The Real Washington"I've seen Washington depicted as sinister and conspiratorial, or noble and
virtuous, but I haven't seen it shown as rubbish - and my experience of going
there is that it is a bit rubbish, but on a grand scale.
It emerged that Washington is run by 23 year-olds who have unbelievably
awesome
powers if they're in the right place and the right time. We met a 22
year-old that was sent to Baghdad to help set up the constitution, and a 23
year-old who was given the Central American budget to look after."
The Golden Rule"The golden rule in Washington is 'never leave a meeting'. If you leave a meeting,
you leave power. If you go for a toilet break, something might be decided that
has massive implications and if you're not involved in that decision-making
process, you won't be allowed to carry it out.Ìý
Ìý
When she was US
Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright taught her staff what she called 'bladder
diplomacy': how to last in a meeting for up to six hours without having to go to
the toilet.
Ìý
It's basically like the British Government, only bigger. I
came back thinking it was both quite amusing and quite scary that that is really
how the world is run."
Moving to the Big Screen"Because it was a film I had to keep telling myself not to take on the
traditional tricks, (or)Ìýfeel tempted to open with a beautiful sunset, swooping
music and an overhead shot of London. I didn't want to do that because I wanted
to cram in as many funny moments as possible and not have the comedy dampened by
being too ponderous with the technique.
I deliberately wanted to pace things differently while trying to keep the
spontaneity of the TV show, where we try to shoot in order, so that the cast are
suffering the story as it goes along - so that by the end of it if they look
exhausted, it's because they actually are.
I don't want the audience to feel there is a film in the way of what they're
watching. I want them to feel they're eavesdropping on a parallel world that
we're not really meant to beÌýseeing."
Improvisation"At the end of every scene I'd ask the cast to put the scripts to one side and to
improvise. Inevitably you end up shooting a lot of stuff that never quite makes
it because it's a bit shapeless, but every now and then, things pop out that you
just couldn't plan.
As with The Thick of It, fundamentally 80 - 85% ofÌý[In The Loop]Ìýis
script -Ìýand the script is massive. I was told after I started filming that a
film script is normally about 90 - 100 pages long. This was 245."
'Little people' can make a difference
"After reading a lot of the diaries and biographies of those involved [in the war
in Iraq] on this side and in Washington, it struck me that the whole thing was
either horrendously awful or highly amusing, or probably both, in terms of the
farcical nature of it.
The film isn't saying it's all going to happen again, but the
reason we kept it unspecific, not mentioning the country [to be invaded] was
Iraq, is that we wanted it to feel very much of today - really try and
demonstrate, hopefully in an amusing way, how these things just sort of happen;
it's the cumulative effect of all the little people who can make a difference
but who don't think they can, so they don't say anything."
Political reaction
"The number of politicians who have said to me publicly that 'it's shows like The
Thick of It that put people offÌýpolitics is massively outweighed by the number
of politicians who have said to me in private 'in real life it's a lot
worse.
I imagine the main critique [from politicians] will be 'oh, it wasn't like
that' and 'there are lots of good people in Westminster' and both of those are
true because this isn't a documentary, nor is it purporting to be fact. It's an
entertainment and politicians must never confuse fact with fiction."
Thanks to Ananda Pellerin for the transcript.
But now, just in time for April 1st, there's a way for you to trick your own friends - and you won't have to pretend you can talk to a dead dog. Pop over to the 91Èȱ¬ Three site where you can conduct an 'ESP' test on a gullible mate via a mysterious old video clip. Just make sure you watch the explanation first so you can see how it's done - you need to be in on the trick for it to work effectively. 
