profoundly moving

In cinemas tomorrow is In the Loop, more or less the best British comedy I’ve ever seen. The dialogue in the film is incredible and includes some simply breathtaking bits of swearing. They’ve effectively elevated saying the word “fuck” into an art-form in its own right – up there with poetry and opera.

This is an interview I’ve done with writers Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell and Tony Roche, who are also variously responsible for Peep Show, The Thick of It, The Old Guys and Broken News. Basically, I emailed them six trite, poorly worded questions and they responded with 1500 words of absolute genius.

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There are so many really amazing bits of swearing in the film. Which line is your favourite?

JA: My favourite thing is when Jamie turns ‘Love Actually’ into a term of savage personal abuse.

SB: I like ‘Fuckity bye’ from Malcolm. Sometimes the simple, less baroque bits of swearing from him work just as well as the longer curse-a-thons.

TR: One of the most memorable bits of swearing for me was in the rehearsals. It was the first day that James Gandolfini had come in and he wasn’t at all starry and there was a very normal chat about the script and I was taking some notes and then I looked up at one point and he turned to me and yelled ‘I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU SUCK-ASS BAG OF FUCK’. If I hadn’t been so shocked I would have shat myself. He’d started improvising and I knew he was only acting but he looked so like he meant it. It was terrifying. I was genuinely scared. I said to Adam (one of the producers) afterwards, ‘I was really scared’. And he grinned and said, ‘I know. I could tell’. I think he thought it was a good thing.

One of the things I love about the film – and I think this comes out of the fact that it’s such a team effort – is that different lines grab me each time I see it. I don’t want to give the lines away but at the moment I’m quite fond of Jamie’s sweary arrival in the film and Malcolm’s sweary goodbye to the Americans.

I understand that in The Thick Of It, Armando Iannucci used improvisation a lot when he was working with the cast. Was the writing of the film similarly collaborative?

SB: Yes. It’s a constant rewriting process between Jesse, Tony, Armando and me. Then Ian Martin does a pass and adds in his great bits. Then whatever we like that comes out of the rehearsal improvisations gets incorporated as well, then more rewriting and cutting happens. And happens, and happens, and happens. And then, at the shooting stage, a loose version of a scene will be shot along with the scripted version, so that adds another layer. Armando likens it to making a chicken stock — you add loads of stuff, reduce it, add more, reduce that and so on.

JA: Yes – the writing and the improvising and the collaboration are a complicated interlinked process which is all highly managed and interlocking at the time – but looking back seems like a big mess of drafts and scenes and bits and ideas and revisions and new scenes flying everywhere with Armando and his assistant Dan in the middle making sure nothing is lost and Armando picking what he wanted for the final script .

TR: Yes. It’s fantastic. You write something, then the other guys have a go at it. Then it gets rewritten another twelve times very quickly until you can’t remember who wrote what or when you last slept. Then they shoot the film it as it’s written but also do looser versions where they wander off script and come out with great ad libs. It’s a brilliant way to work because nothing gets boring, it’s constantly being reinvented. But it is mad. Some days you could walk on set and you’d be handed a scene to rewrite and you’d look at it and think, ‘I have no idea what’s going on in this scene. I’ve never seen it before and I don’t know where it goes in the film. Oh well. I’ll give it a go.’ That’s why half-way through the film a one-eyed gangster pirate called Jimmy Sawdust turns up and plays the piccolo and then is never referred to again.

I read somewhere that they tried to make a clean version of The Thick Of It in America and it didn’t really work. Do you think swearing was essential to the success of this film?

SB: I know people like the swearing, but hopefully they like it not just because it’s rude words, but because of what it represents, which is the incredible pressure these people are under and the chaos in which they often have to operate. The swearing is the verbal representation of that. If you stub your toe, or you miss the bus, or the boiler explodes, you swear. And every minute of these people’s lives is at that pitch.

JA: I hope not. The Thick of It is well known for it’s swearing but I don’t think I or the other writers especially think of two categories of stuff – swearing and non swearing – it’s all just words and dialogue and we try to pick the most funny, dramatic, characterful words and phrases available. It just so happens that we’re in a world where people are under pressure and maybe somewhat brutalised and brutalising of each other.

TR: I’d like to think we could do it without the swearing and it’d still work. I think the reason we get away with the swearing is because people believe that’s how those people really talk. And they’re right. But if people like the swearing – great. Armando told us when we were doing The Thick of It he’d got a letter from a librarian who was quite elderly and she said, ‘I just wanted to tell you I’ve watched your programme and I’ve never sworn in my life and I find the swearing quite poetic’. I thought that was really lovely. Really fucking sweet and cuntingly wonderful. I don’t know, I think in a weird way there’s so much swearing it almost becomes like music. There are some lovely rhythms to it.

Do you think any of the classic British comedies like Faulty Towers or Reggie Perin would have even better if the writers had have had more freedom with the language they used?

SB: Absolutely not. Porridge was set in a Category A men’s prison and the strongest word they used was ‘naff’. And it’s, in my view, the best sitcom ever made.

JA: Yes, definitely. The lack of profanity is the reason Perrin and Fawlty Towers are not as well loved and widely praised as they would otherwise be.

TR: I don’t know. Maybe we should try it. Like when they released old black and white movies colourised. We could go back and add random swearing to sit coms and see what it’s like. Maybe we should overdub Sybil from Faulty Towers with Joan Rivers? Or Margot from The Good Life voiced by Richard Pryor? ‘Jerry. Don’t be such a motherfucker. Give Tom some crack.’ It’s hard to imagine it would have gone over big in the mid 1970s.

Apparently The Daily Express is running a campaign stop swearing on TV. What the fuck do you think about that?

JA: Good luck.

SB: Well, if Philip Schofield said “Good fucking morning you massive bunch of shits” I wouldn’t like it.

TR: Maybe The Daily Express are just jealous they’re not allowed to run sweary headlines. Like ‘THEY FUCKING KILLED DIANA – YOU KNOW IT AND WE KNOW IT EVEN THOUGH THEY FUCKING SAY THEY DIDN’T THEY FUCKING DID MOTHERFUCKER. FUCKING TOO RIGHT’. Or ‘FUCKING HELL! THE ECONOMY IS FUCKED! FUUUUCK!’ Of course, they wouldn’t want to run a headline like that. It’s too long.

There are many, many shows on TV that should not contain swearing. I’m thinking Lazytown, Diagnosis Murder, anything involving Eamonn Holmes. But wouldn’t it be really strange if no one swore on TV? I swear at the TV a lot, it’s only fair TV gets to have a go back.

Are there any circumstances where you think profanity isn’t a good idea? (I’m mainly thinking Jamie Oliver..)

JA: I wouldn’t personally want to offend anyone as an end in itself, that holds no appeal for me.

SB: It can sometimes seem forced, with Gordon Ramsey for instance, you can almost hear him think “Swearing’s my USP, I should swear now, I should tell this timid hotelier to get some fucking balls.” If you’re swearing purely in order to shock, you shouldn’t. In that regard it really isn’t big or clever. In a way, because the language is so constant in The Thick Of It and In The Loop, it ceases to shock – you stop noticing it and get used to it. It’s like watching Finding Nemo, you don’t constantly think ‘Wow! A talking fish! The fish can speak! He spoke again! This is amazing!” That’s just the world you’re in.

TR: On TV? Sweary chefs are a bit silly aren’t they? To paraphrase Simon or Jesse’s line from the film, no one should get that aggressive about carrots.

In general, there are of course many situations when swearing isn’t a good idea. When someone takes you hostage. When someone proposes to you. When you find yourself in an environment where there is very little oxygen and talking uses up what’s left of the air supply. Whilst being evaluated for teacher training. First holy communion. I could go on …

I accidentally said the word ‘cunt’ the first time I met my girlfriend’s mother. We were talking about novels and I meant to say something like, ‘What do you think of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale?’ But for some reason it came out as, ‘cunt’. True story.

(And no, I don’t have Turettes. Even though you might think that from watching the film. Or reading this interview.)