Armando Iannucci's fantastic satirical comedy In the Loop is released in cinemas on April 17. Watch our exclusive interview with him and cast members Peter Capaldi and Chris Addison at their European premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival.
The Thick of It was first aired on BBC Four in 2005 and told the story of the staff working at the fictitious Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship. Foul-mouthed, incompetent, backstabbing spin-doctors, they nosedived the nation into crisis with each ill-advised decision they made.
Now writer Armando Iannucci has translated the hit television show into a motion picture, In the Loop, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, receiving a standing ovation. The film, despite the larger budget and wider scope, is very much the spiritual successor to its small screen counterpart; both capturing perfectly the insanity of modern bureaucracy.
With a cast of actors familiar to fans of the show, including Peter Capaldi, who reprises his role as the acerbic Malcolm Tucker, the action now focuses on the internal politics of the Whitehouse and Westminster as the two prepare to go to war.
On the red carpet at the Glasgow Film Theatre, stv.tv spoke to writer and director Iannucci and two of the film’s stars Peter Capaldi and Chris Addison who appear in the movie alongside heavyweight British comic Steve Coogan and heavyweight Sopranos star James Gandolfini.
“You don’t need to have seen the series or even have heard of the series to get the film.”
“It’s very big and also it has got James Gandolfini in it. And it’s got some helicopters and a limo…no explosions mind you” quipped Capaldi, keeping a rein on his on screen persona’s foul mouth.
The film and indeed the series have both been praised for their razor sharp conversational dialogue that appears wholly unrehearsed and real, capturing a frenetic comic energy in a way that many, more stilted scripts fail to realise.
“I want the script to sound like it is being spontaneous and that people are coming up with these lines on the spur of the moment. We’re trying to capture a sort of feverish atmosphere in Washington and Whitehall, where people are genuinely making things up because they don’t quite know what’s going on” explained Iannucci.
Watch the trailer for In the Loop now.
Find out when In The Loop is showing in a cinema near you.
