In the Loop
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Josh, thanks for letting me lure you into the studio. I'm excited. Thanks for having me. I was thinking about how it's your birthday coming up. Oh, no. And for once, we're not going to get to spend it together. That's true. We generally do. Yeah, but you're going to be in London. I will indeed. Well, I was thinking about one of my favorite stories that you've told, which is the season six premiere of The West Wing. Sure. When you all went to Camp David.

in the show. And you had Marine One. And on the side of it, they made a typo. Untied. States of America. Untied States of America. And so I thought...

in honor of your birthday. I made this last night. Oh, oh, God, you're good. Oh, it's so good. I love it. Will you describe it? Yeah. Is it going to be a piece of new merch? It's a new t-shirt. It's not available only to me. I won't have the only one. All right, I'm going to measure my excitement. Well, I'm seeing the front and the back. Yeah, the front is our pin, which actually looks amazing on a shirt. This is very exciting. Of course, what's next? Flentil A Veritas. It looks fantastic. It's

And on the back, "Untied States of America." Brilliant! We're gonna offer it in a couple of different colorways. One, just a stark black and white, the way it appears on Marine One, black with white type. But then, I also thought... Oh, my God, that's such a good idea. ...in honor of another moment from this episode that I love, which is when you are running through the woods...

and you rolled up your sleeves against Alex Graves' wishes to show your massive guns on screen in that Carnegie Mellon sort of like athletic shirt. We're also going to do a tri-blend black, sort of like the shirt you're wearing in that episode, so that people who get the shirt can roll up their sleeves and show off their biceps. Yes, maybe we can all show up at Alex Graves' house. So this is going to be a new piece of merch that's going to come out, and we're going to have all of our stuff

for sale at thewestwingweekly.com slash merch. But check out the new Untied States of America t-shirt

in two different ways. And then there's going to be a premium version because you know how whenever the president is on Marine One, he's got the cool windbreaker? Oh yeah, exactly. We're also going to do this as a windbreaker. Are we really? We can do that? We're going to do a black windbreaker. Same thing, the Westman Weekly Seal on the front, Untied States of America on the back. Can't wait to get one. And

And I could just see people all across the country putting it on as Martin Sheen would put it on over his head. Amazing. Oh my God, this is fantastic. And so many people are going to be approached and asked, you know, there's a typo on the back of your shirt. Oh, exactly. It'll just be endless. And that's how you know they are the enemy. They're not in the club. Anybody who points at it, maybe enemy is strong. Yeah.

I want to give a shout out to Chuck Gibbons who sent me an image on Instagram that I think is relevant for anybody who gets this shirt. It's a tweet from Dropped Mike. It says, interviewer, quote, can I get your references? Me, probably not. No one else does. Oh, that's good. That's really good.

I'm also excited at the prospect of, for the next four years, wearing something that says "Untied States of America." I didn't want to get too dark, but this might be a good reflection of how people are feeling at the moment. And then, lastly, in my small contribution to the overall campaign, Josh Molina is Nice.

I'm going to donate proceeds of this piece of merch to the American Red Cross. Wow. That is awesome. Oh, what a gift. Oh, I'm excited. If you want to support the American Red Cross, who's been doing amazing work here in LA as the wildfires have been just... I'm giving on Monday before I fly to London. Ravaging stuff. And yeah, Josh, if people want to join the Josh Molina is nice...

blood donation team, do they give blood or platelets or both? It all counts if you give through the American Red Cross and you join our team through the app. Of course, I'm also just here to generally encourage giving blood, whether you do it through the Red Cross or not. But if you do through the Red Cross, please join our team. Yeah. And if you get the Untied States of America shirt, that's another way you'll be supporting the Red Cross. Yay. I'm going to wear it to platelet donation, not Monday. Yeah.

But as soon as it's available and I can donate again.

And if you have no idea what we're talking about, it might be time to visit or revisit our episode on Season 6, Episode 1, NSF Thurmont. Right. Very good. Not suitable for work, Thurmont. You'll see. That's a joke you made on that episode as well. Of course I did. What do you think? I got a new joke for this? There's a picture of the untied States of America that Josh took before the art department went and fixed it on Marine One.

One of the great photos of all time from the West Wing. By the way, I also, since you mentioned my guns, I occasionally I search my name on Reddit and Reddit is where you get the real honest people who really tell you what they think of you. And there's always something horrible. This comes to us from Cavewoman22. She says, Josh Molina has always had a face made for radio and a body made for late night cinemas. Yeah.

The sad part is I read that and I'm like, oh, it's just saying I'm ugly. But oh, net gain. I was like, for me, that's a rave for Reddit. Amazing. So go to thewestwingweekly.com slash merch to get your Untied States of America shirt or windbreaker. And now, on to the episode.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Hi, everybody. A little word of warning before we get into In The Loop.

As you may know, we normally bleep out swears and other potentially offensive language on our show. Yeah, we do. Why do we do that? We do that for a few different reasons. One, because we know that families listen to our show and we just want to make sure that everything's in the clear for anybody who wants to listen in whatever context. That's right. It's good old family fair we put out. Yeah. Yeah.

And the second is at a practical level, some podcast apps in some countries will actually block content that's marked explicit. And we wanted to reach as many people as possible. We want to also be able to travel the world without being imprisoned. Right.

Right. And the third reason is a lot of times we think it's just funnier when a word is bleeped. Yeah. And we leave it up to your filthy minds to fill it in. I mean, yeah, normally we always bleep it whenever we say things like or or sucker bag. I say that often. Sucker mother. Yeah. There's one word, especially Josh, we can never let them hear you say. Wait, what's that? Oh, right.

Should we bleep February? Yeah. So anyway, all of that is to say this episode. We're discussing in the loop. Yeah. There's just no way to fully do the language justice, the poetry of the dialogue justice while bleeping all of the explicit language because it is exquisite.

Yeah. So I say still listen to it with your kids, but warn them. Warn them as we have warned you. Yeah. Your children and perhaps you yourself will learn something new about the art of swearing. That's right. Okay. Enjoy the show. We can leave that, right? No, that one had to be bleeped. Oh. You're listening to the West Wing Weekly Political Film Fest. I'm Rishi Kesherway. And I'm Joshua Molina, Political Film Fest.

I thought we were just adding it to everything. I'm just desperately trying to start a new running joke. I'm already afraid it's going to get me every time. Today we're talking about the movie In The Loop.

Yeah, it's a Rishi choice. Screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, who created Succession, among other things. Simon Blackwell, who wrote for Veep and created Breeders, the Martin Freeman dark sitcom that I love. Tony Roach, who also wrote for Veep and for Thick of It. And the man himself, Armando Iannucci, who created The Thick of It and Veep and not only co-wrote but directed today's fine film, In the Loop.

Great, great, great writers. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22nd, 2009. And it was released theatrically in July of 2009. Here's a synopsis.

Peter Capaldi stars as a foul-mouthed British government spokesman who must act quickly when a mid-level minister, played by Tom Hollander, tells an interviewer that U.S. war in the Middle East is, quote, unforeseeable. But when they're both summoned to Washington, D.C., the hapless politico quickly becomes a pawn of bureaucrats, spin doctors, and military advisors, including a hard-nosed general, played by James Gandolfini.

Gina McKee, Anna Klumski, and Steve Coogan co-star in this hilarious satire from director-co-writer Armando Iannucci. And I will just add, this is a brilliant, hilarious, darkly funny satire of the events leading up to the Iraq War. Yes, yes. And is Gandolfini's general hard-nosed? He's kind of soft-nosed. He's a dove. Ha ha ha!

He seems like an idealist, but then by the end of the movie, I think he's revealed not to be. Josh, have you seen this movie before? I have seen this movie multiple times, but I was delighted to watch it again. My guess is this would be one of the movies that I have seen the most times.

This and Three Amigos. I love it. Not that I've curated a top ten list, but I decided after this watching, it's in my top ten list. Do you feel like I snaked your choice by nominating this before you could? A little bit. I mean, it's definitely a gimme that I would have chosen it, but I'm comfortable with that. This movie is kind of a hybrid of shows that came before it and after it. The way we talked about the American president being a kind of bizarro world version of the West Wing, In the Loop is...

sort of a combination of the thick of it, which preceded it and Veep, which came after it. And a lot of the same players in both, also some players from succession too, because as you said, Jesse Armstrong's DNA is here as well. And so it's really confusing actually, I think if you're familiar with the thick of it,

to watch In the Loop because some characters from The Thick of It are in the movie In the Loop. Right. Same universe, technically, right? Well, that's the confusing thing is some of the actors... But a bunch of actors that played other characters on The Thick of It. That's true. I actually had to text you while I was re-watching In the Loop to say that I'm actually laughing out loud. The Tiffel Man himself...

I laughed out loud watching it alone multiple, multiple times. And having seen it before. The dialogue is just so brilliant and so great. I also thought this conversation could devolve just into pulling quotations. I know. I started writing down lines...

that were making me laugh out loud really hard just by quoting them and then putting a crying, laughing emoji next to them. And then I was like, this is a fool's errand. And you were writing by hand. Oh, yeah, exactly. I kept on having to pause the movie to draw the emoji.

I did have to keep pausing the movie to write my notes because the jokes and the dialogue are so fast. It's incredible. Yeah. Let me ask you this. Have you watched The Thick of It in its entirety? I have watched The Thick of It. Yeah, it was a great...

salve for me in, I guess it was the winter of 2005 and 2006 when I was by myself in Massachusetts working on a one-aim radio record in my childhood home on my own. It was kind of a bleak time, but I got through it by watching a lot of TV and movies, and The Thick of It was one of the things that I watched.

Strangely, even though I'm a huge fan of this movie, I've not watched the entirety of The Thick of It. I'm excited to do that. Maybe we should give a little bit of a history for people who aren't familiar with the Armando Iannucci extended universe. The Thick of It was a British political comedy that started...

on the BBC in 2005. And it was really inspired by the Tony Blair government's response to the BBC's coverage of the invasion of Iraq. And so, in the loop, even though it came after the start of The Thick of It, it's about the events that inspired The Thick of It. Peter Capaldi, who features as Malcolm Tucker in this film, I first became aware of his brilliance playing the same character in The Thick of It.

He's just fantastic. And for role models, apparently the character was based at least in part on Alistair Campbell, who was a press secretary for Blair. One of the things I love about

in the loop, and the thick of it, and to some extent Veep, is that you never actually meet the higher ups, you know, the president, the prime minister, these are people who never appear on screen. All the characters in this are the sort of underlings who actually do the work and also make the mistakes and end up being incredibly consequential through just the

stupid things they say or do, mindless decisions that are motivated by really petty bits of ego, and then they end up having enormous global effect. And in not showing the top dog, one could argue that it is the ultimate realization of Aaron Sorkin's original plan for the West Wing, which was really not to involve the president much, if at all. Yeah, exactly.

So the movie starts in the UK, in London, and we have our introduction to Malcolm Tucker, who's the prime minister's director of communications. And he has to start his day going through sort of what the press appearances were like by the other ministers of parliament who were sort of under his watch as the prime minister's main guy. What was the first thing that you wrote down? Mine was, he should be talking about food parcels, not fucking arse-spraying man. Yeah.

This is the Minister for International Development. Should we be talking about food parcels, not fucking ass-brain mayhem? And so if we can tackle the easy things like diarrhea, then we can... Oh, say it again. Yes, very good. What is this, the shitting forecast? Yeah, this is our introduction to Simon Foster, who's one of the main characters. It's just his appearance on the radio, and he keeps saying the word diarrhea.

I love that even he says, what is this? The shitting forecast, which is a reference to the shipping forecast.

Do you know about the shipping forecast? No, I think that's a whole layer of comedy I miss. The shipping forecast is this wonderful and to me very mysterious program that's on the BBC that presents the maritime weather around the British Isles. Northerly or northwesterly four or five becoming cyclonic five or six in west.

It's very popular. It's almost like this daily national poem. Yeah, that I actually listen to when I can't sleep.

It's like listening to a bedtime story that has absolutely no plot. It's just the sound of words. That's soothing. And don't you sort of assume it means very little to most people who listen? I think so, yeah. By the way, Simon Foster played by Tom Hollander, whom I love and people probably know. Well, he's had a storied career, but perhaps from The Night Manager or season two of The White Lotus.

Do you know that I shot a pilot with Tom Hollander? No. I shot an unsuccessful, which is to say it was not picked up, pilot created by David E. Kelly. Oh, wow. Yeah. That co-starred Kristen Chenoweth, Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey, Kurt Fuller. It was a legal show, and I think it was called Legally Blind, and it also had musical numbers in it.

Hard to believe that didn't go. And did everybody sing in it? I did not. Kristen did. I think the British boys did. Yeah, it was an odd but kind of cool, fun piece. Legally mad. Legally mad. Okay. Legally blonde was making me think of legally blind. This is how my brain works. Welcome to it. Legally mad. So in this radio appearance that Simon Foster is doing,

He gets asked a question that's kind of outside of the scope of what he's been talking about. He's been talking about humanitarian aid and he keeps talking about diarrhea. And then the interviewer asks him about the possibility of a U.S. intervention in the Middle East. And he's caught off guard a little bit. And he says, Personally, I think that war is unforeseeable.

I like that it's also not even immediately clear, first of all, who's a hawk, who's a dove, and what they think that comment implies. It's just, don't talk about it altogether because this is going to be taken a multitude of ways. Yeah, I feel like we get through the entire first act of the movie not knowing who stands for what.

Right. And it's also clear that nobody really stands for anything. People have different agendas. But what I love about Iannucci's vision of politics is that it's just filled with paranoiacs and sycophants and idiots and social climbers and scammers. So nobody really, unlike our dear the West Wing, nobody really gives a shit or actually is trying to accomplish anything meaningful or important. Yeah.

Simon has a line where he says, I might be forced to the verge of making a stand. And then when he gets called on that line, he says, I mean, in a sense, I'm on the verge, but I'm not in any way decided. I'm standing my ground on the verge.

Nobody wants to take a stand just in case it ends up being the wrong thing. Because somebody with more power than them decides to go the other way. So nobody wants to be caught out of line by saying anything in any direction. And nobody is-- In a sea of wafflers, nobody is more waffly than Simon Foster as played by Tom Hollander. Everybody, all of the sort of elected officials are just pawns to be moved around the board.

at the behest of the higher ups. And because that's their purpose, if anybody actually moves of their own accord, they're screwing things up. They're in life's danger. Yeah. Yeah. They might be compromising a future move that someone wants to use them for. That's absolutely right.

I have to shout out Ian Martin, who is another writer on the film. He's not credited as one of the main screenwriters, but he has one of the best titles, I think, in TVdom. And what is that? His title on The Thick of It is Swearing Consultant. That's very funny. The next thing that I wrote in my notes is just one of the all-time greats. Yeah, maybe it's better to spike it. Yeah, okay, fuckity-bye.

Fuckity bye. As said by Malcolm Tucker. Yeah, that's how he gets off the phone. And Peter Capaldi, as Malcolm Tucker, elevates the F-bomb into poetry. Indeed he does. I'm not a Doctor Who watcher. Peter Capaldi is one of the former Doctors Who, yes? Witch doctor? Not a witch doctor. I'm not going to set you up for some really bad joke. I'll have no part of it. I made my own joke. Witch doctor. You did. You did.

Yeah, I also haven't seen any Doctor Who. I watched one episode where Jodie Whittaker, who was the first female Doctor Who, I think. So Rishi, that's the one you watch. That's right, folks. Write in and complain.

There's Toby Wright. It's his first day working for Simon Foster. He's a new staffer. This is a character who's played by Chris Addison, who, again, it was in the thick of it as a different character called Oliver Reeder.

Different but similar, I think, yes? Very similar, yeah. I mean, pretty much everybody who's appearing in both of these things are playing similar characters, which is what makes it confusing. He would go on later to direct several episodes of Veep. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So it's Toby's first day, and so he's going in. Yeah, it's too much to track all of the hilarious jokes, but his girlfriend, she's like...

He was absolutely crap on the radio last night. He sounded like a chicken with a wasp up its ass. You give me a week, I'll have him sounding like a chicken without wasp up its ass. That made me laugh at that. He gets to the office and Judy says, oh, Dan, right? And he's like, no, Toby. And she's like, sorry, it's just you guys are often called Dan, which is great, especially when you think about how there's a Dan in Veep. And then at the very end of this movie,

in the end credits when Simon and Toby are ultimately replaced and a new minister shows up with their aid. That guy's name is Dan. It is by someone named Dan. That's great. I like the credits. Credits feel like stuff they shot and didn't use. So like, let's throw it into the credits. Yeah, I love that. And they would carry that over into Veep as well. Often some of the best stuff in Veep

would be, you know, with the screen squeezed into this weird aspect ratio and the credits rolling. But there's...

Incredible jokes, not a filler at all. It's just as good as anything that appeared earlier. I like Iannucci's Sorkin-like, or maybe it's Sorkin's Iannucci-like, dedication and loyalty to a band of actors and writers. And I like people who dip into the same well again and again. Yeah. It's nice to feel like there's a fabric to everything they make, both in terms of the subject matter and then the language, and then also even the faces that you see.

By the way, I'm in London as we speak. You knew that. Now everyone does, because I'm going to be doing a play. And one of the theatrical offerings that I'm hoping I will be able to attend, although I'm not sure whether my performance schedule will allow, is the Armando Iannucci written and directed Dr. Strangelove stage version starring Steve Coogan, who appears really in a cameo in this film as the constituent who wants the wall fixed at his mom's place. That seems like the kind of project where...

Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan have gotten to a point in their career where they're like, we can do whatever we want. Someone's like, you have carte blanche, what do you want to do? And they say, we'll do this. But how great could that be? I'm fairly really excited to see, because...

Peter Sellers is brilliant, brilliant in that role. And like, if anybody were to attempt it, I think Steve Coogan is a very good choice. There are two great forms of insult that I think also make up the fabric of Armando Iannucci joints. - Yes. - And also Jesse Armstrong joints, because they do this in succession as well. One is, you just seize on a single word or phrase that somebody has said, and then just destroy them for it.

Something that wasn't necessarily said with great forethought, and then you just go to town on it. Like when Judy says to Malcolm that if there's going to be changes to the minister, Simon Foster's public media appearances, it needs to go through her or she should be aware of them because it falls under her purview. And then his whole jag. You just get multiple attacks. Yeah.

Yeah, for using the word purview. You should tell me about it because it's a scheduled media appearance by this department's secretary of state, so therefore it falls well within my purview. Within your purview? Yes. Where do you think you are in some fucking Regency costume drama? This is a government department, not a fucking Jane fucking Austen novel. He mentions, I think, Charlotte Bronte. He mentions Cranford. It's fantastic. Exactly.

He doubles and triples down and just destroys her. And it's great because it also underscores

what so much of the plot hinges on in this movie, which is where somebody says something, specifically Simon Foster, keeps saying these things without thinking about them, and they end up having these huge ramifications because people seize on that little phrase. At first, you know, him saying, "War is unforeseeable," and then later when he gets ambushed by some reporters, he's just sort of rambling, and then he says... Sometimes we need to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict.

And they take that climb the mountain of conflict and turn it into a soundbite and a headline. And it ends up being echoed by all of the hawks, just as the doves were taking his war is unforeseeable line. Everybody's taking this random muttering city thing just to say something and picking it up and being like, hey, look, this guy agrees with us.

Yeah, I love how you can say that the universes of the West Wing and In the Loop are antithetical to each other, but they both delight in language and the importance of language. And I love that shared DNA.

There's also attacks on each other's appearance, like just the lowest form of-- I know Zach Woods at one point is referred to as "Young Lankenstein." Which made me laugh really hard. Roasting them for their appearance with a pop culture reference as part of it. Like you said, yeah, Young Lankenstein. Or when they're talking about Zach Woods, he says... Talk to that Chad boy, the boy from The Shining.

I don't even remember that. That's funny. Toby gets called Ron Weasley. He gets called Love Actually. And my absolute favorite, he says, Was it you, the baby from a razor head? No, no, no. The baby from a razor head. Yeah, that killed me. It's amazing. He gets called Frodo. Sir Justin, who's the British ambassador to the UN, and he calls him Baldemort.

Yeah, I particularly enjoy those because there's the extra element of like knowing that the actor had to be okay with it. It just makes me laugh thinking about... Wait, do I look like the baby from Razorhead? Yeah.

There's a document that I found on the BBC website, which is a script for In the Loop. And reading it, it has all the sort of major plot points and the major building blocks of the dialogue. But it really lets you understand how much of the film matters.

has been improvised because there's so much that you see on screen that isn't in there. And some of these things are especially like the baby from Eraserhead is not...

Oh, it's not in there? Oh, that's fantastic. I think that's Peter Capaldi improvising right there. It's incredible. Oh, that's so great. It makes me want to watch a gag reel, outtakes. Oh, yeah. They must have just cracked each other up so much. It must have been such a joy to make this film. Simon, because of his war's unforeseeable comment, somehow manages to get into a meeting with Karen Clark, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, who's coming to London today.

And he gets the instruction that he gets to be in the meeting, but he's just meat in the room. Room meat. And this amazing line. The Americans don't feel like they're getting a proper meeting unless there's 30 people on each side. Fantastic. It makes me think of the West Wing. Good morning, Mr. President. Please allow me to introduce Bob Simon, Peter Rathman. Mac, I don't need to know all the names. It's okay. Please sit down. All right, then. Room meat is brilliant.

I wrote down that everybody wants the credit, but no one wants the blame. And I think that first manifests in Liza Weld, who's played by Anna Klumsky, who would later be in Veep, trying to dodge getting the credit for writing this paper that's called Post-War Planning, Parameters, Implications, and Possibilities, which then gets an acronym, also Sorkin-like, but not Sorkin-like. It's called PIP.

Which Linton has played by, is it David Rashy? He says, what is it, a report on bird calls? Short for David Rashy-Cache. Very nice. And whom does he play on the West Wing? On the West Wing? I was thinking about who he plays in Succession. He is very good in Succession, too. Well, he plays Carl in Succession. Do I get partial credit for that? Who does he play on the West Wing? Well, I'll give you a hint. Also named Carl.

Really? It's not much of a hint, though. He plays Carl Everett in The State Dinner. Oh, that's right! Oh, you do know. Look at that. I stumped the Rishi. Oh, my God. Yeah, he's in the actual State Dinner scene. Yes, great. He's such a tremendous actor. He's fantastic.

Chad, Zach Woods' character, tells Liza Weld that you couldn't write a paper that clashes more violently with the current climate. And Liza seems to be well aware that that's the case. And that's why she keeps trying to dodge getting credit for it. Yeah, she doesn't want the credit for it. Exactly. Yeah. She was tasked with coming up with the pros and cons of...

an invasion. And the problem is she came up with too many cons, which is why the Doves all want to rally around this paper because it gives them proof for why it's a bad idea. And it ends up becoming this threat to most of the people and especially the higher-ups who are all in favor of invasion. And who decide to make use of the report later by simply eliding all the cons. It's incredible. Do you want to just jump to the end?

No, I just wanted to throw that in there. I mean, I guess we could. Also, prior to that, I thought this struck me as brilliant. The scene between Gandolfini and Mimi Kennedy in which he sort of is trying to make his military points using a kid's toy. Yeah, yeah. With all these ridiculous sound effects. This is the number of combat troops available for an invasion according to these figures.

I love that. I thought that was just so inspired. Like, somebody-- how did-- somebody conceptualize that? Or did they come to the set and go, "I think I have a funny idea for this scene," because they saw something that was a set decoration? Like, how on earth did somebody think about that? It's brilliant.

comic imagination. I feel like we must have talked about this before in the West Wing Weekly, but the way that Game of Thrones would use sex scenes as the setting for a lot of exposition and just called it sex position. I don't think I noticed that. There'd be all these long stretches of expository dialogue, but they'd be happening during a sex scene. So you

That's an incredible way to keep people engaged during the teaspoon of sugar that helps the medicine go down. They kind of did their own version of that here because James Gandolfini's character, who is a general who works at the Pentagon, who is against the war because they don't have enough troops. They're not prepared. It's kind of a serious plot point.

And the way I feel like they make it fit with everything else is, yeah, they make him have to do it on this kid's calculator, and so it's making these ridiculous sounds. Yeah, it's a great way to deflate the gravity. It's a wonderful Gandolfini performance, too. I think he has a particularly, through much of the movie, such a light touch playing the role. I really, really liked it. Yeah, he's incredible. And the dynamics between him and Gandolfini

Mimi Kennedy and between him and especially Malcolm Tucker at the end, their showdown is incredible as well. They have a great confrontation scene. Fantastic. Oh, I love when Simon has said the climb the mountain of conflict line, how upset he is at

toby and judy for not having stopped him even though they had desperately tried to stop him from making the appearance beforehand absolutely why didn't we nail the line simon i did try to warn you yes yes you tried to warn me but you didn't actually stop me shouting some train at somebody as they get hit by a train

This movie has one of my favorite couplets of dialogue in all of moviedom. Simon is trying to get Toby to pump Chad for information, and he says, "Come on, it'll be easy peasy lemon squeezy."

And Toby says, no, it won't. It will be difficult, difficult, lemon difficult. That is what it will be. I love those two lines. And then Simon actually calls back to it and suggests that we have a saying in Britain. And I actually reached out to Simon Blackwell. I think that's how we became friends on Twitter to say this is one of my favorite couplets of movie dialogue ever. I quote it all the time. I think you've quoted it to me before. Yeah.

After this disastrous meeting in London, we move to D.C., and the next part of the movie takes place over there, mainly around the State Department. And we actually meet Linton, who is another Assistant Secretary of State, but he represents the Hawks. Karen has felt like there's a secret war committee, and it seems a little bit, when she first makes the accusation that there might be a secret war committee, that she seems a little bit paranoid. But then it turns out there is, in fact, a secret war committee, which is great. Yeah.

And she tells Liza that she has to find it by looking for the most boringly named. And then she comes back to her later with something that she named. She takes offense at it, which I thought was really funny. How far are you with the committees? I've got it down to two, actually. One is the aims and policy alignment committee. And the other one is the future planning committee. It's not the first one because I set that up.

Does it really sound dull to you? I thought it was a good name. They're also just incredible, silly visual gags in the movie. There's this thing of Karen having some like dental issue. Oh my God. And then eventually just starts bleeding from her teeth. And then when they're in the bathroom, she and Liza, they're trying to fix it. She's got all this like tissue paper shoved in her mouth. Yeah.

horrifying. She says, I'm not a monster, Liza, okay? Will you stop implying that I'm some kind of monster? But like, the picture of her is actually monstrous. It's such a horrific visual. It's fantastic. It's brilliant. And I think that's what's so great is that there is this really clever, highbrow, sharp,

dialogue-based humor, and then there's also just like real silly gags like that. You never know what kind of joke you're gonna get. And you become so attuned, or I found watching it so attuned to the language and reveling in the language that sometimes things popped out at me watching it this time that I think hadn't in the past. Some of the sight stuff is, or visual stuff, is subtle.

There's a moment where Toby and Simon check into their hotel or motel or whatever, and they look at their view, which is awful and basically largely like a construction site, but you can kind of see a little bit of the Capitol. And then a few scenes later, a

scene begins and Simon is sitting in a chair just gazing out the window. It really, really made me laugh as if he has a fantastic view. It's like the Brits are sort of so awed by the trappings of U.S. government that it's just a great moment. I don't think I'd never ever noticed before that he's just staring at it in awe.

I love that nobody's spared in this, that the entire British government is shown to be kowtowing to the U.S. They're so psyched, Simon and Toby, to be in D.C. Like, it feels like they're in a movie to them. And on the other side, the U.S. are just absolutely willing to use the U.K. however they want. And they have no idea about anything when Simon gets picked up from the airport. Yeah.

The sign says, Simon Forrester, England government. We don't have either his name or even the correct adjective. On that note, let's take a quick break. And now back to the show.

I was thinking about Stephen Colbert around this era. The Colbert Report came out and Stephen Colbert's idea of truthiness, that like something doesn't actually have to be true as long as it feels true to him. Truthiness is anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.

That's brilliant. That spirit is really encapsulated in this movie, especially in the character of Linton Barak and also in some of the stuff that Malcolm says, particularly at the end. But Linton has this line. "We don't need any more facts. In the land of truth, my friend, the man with one fact is the king."

With one fact. That killed me. That is so clever. And also this slide. Those men are an aid memoir for us. They should not be a reductive record of what happened to have been said, but they should be a more full record of what was intended to have been said. I was pondering Iannucci comic influences. I have the feeling he must be a huge Marx Brothers fan.

the chaos and the playfulness and inventiveness with language of, say, a Groucho Marx. But then also, there is, I think, a direct correlation between all the people in the-- You know, when the leak about the war committee gets out and everybody wants in on it, there's just a ridiculous number of people in the room. And do you know the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera? Yes. I feel like it's a direct nod to that insane, insane, fabulous, classic, iconic,

comic scene where they're just a ridiculous number of people in a cabin. It's hard to watch this movie without a level of Trump-ay-ay-ay throughout all of those subjective truth moments. That idea of let's just change things to reflect what we think it should be. By the end, just an absolute obliteration

obliteration of anything that was real to just be like, well, that's not what's going to fit our purposes, so we're just going to change things and say this is what happened. Yeah, he picks up the guy's finger and hits delete. And that way, he still gets to say he's the one who did it. That's right, exactly. And also, that guy is played by Paul Higgins, also from The Thick of It, playing Jamie McDonald. And I always thought, like, I love that there are two Scottish guys that are both just...

insane acerbic like you would think you would never create a second character who's essentially like another overlay of the same thing but it's incredibly funny and somehow exponentially funny that there are two of these psychopaths out there

Yeah, I love that both of them overlap between both shows. It's not just that both actors are in there, they're playing the same characters. And yeah, their relationship is so great because as brutal as Malcolm is to everybody, the only person he's nice to is Jamie. And he's so nice to me. Actually, he says, "I love you to him over the phone."

I feel like they really do love each other and somehow that in the contrast with how horrible they are just makes their characters have so much depth. I just have random things written down now like it's just vowels. Turn that fucking racket off! Turn it off. It's just vowels! Subsidized foreign fucking vowels!

The greatest description of opera ever. Fantastic. It's so funny. It's so perfect. Did you catch that when Malcolm shows up in the U.S. and Simon sees him in the hotel, he's really surprised that he's in the U.S. at all. And Malcolm says, I'm here. I'm there. I'm fucking everywhere. No, I didn't remember that. Are you a Ted Lasso fan? I do like Ted Lasso. You know, this is the Roy Kent chant. Roy Kent! Roy Kent!

Oh no, I didn't realize that. That's funny. I learned that chant, you know, from Ted Lasso. I was like, oh, this is the great Roy Kent chant. But then I heard it here and I was like, wait, this is years before Ted Lasso. This precedes it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, already exists. And so I looked it up and it does. It's been used by a bunch of different teams for a bunch of different players. But one notable one was for Frank LaBeouf when he was at Chelsea.

And I went, like the Roy Kent one, it said, he's here, he's there, he's every fucking where, Frank LaBeouf, Frank LaBeouf. But LaBeouf wrote in a match day program that while he appreciated it, he didn't like for his kids to hear his name associated with a swear word.

And so in the next match, the crowd went, "He's here, he's there, we're not allowed to swear. Frank LeBeouf." Oh, that's fantastic. That's a great story. And that makes me think, too, like, it's Linton. I think the character is Linton who doesn't like swearing in the loop. And at one point, Malcolm says to him, "You are nothing but a useless piece of S**t."

I love the scene where Malcolm goes to meet with what he thinks is an aide at the White House. And then it turns out it's the person he's actually having the meeting with when he meets with AJ, who's played by Johnny Pemberton. This is me about having tripped over his umbilical cord. So many great lines about how young he is.

Johnny Pemberton, who most recently, he's been in a lot of great things, but most recently I saw him in Fallout. My friend Dave Register, who was in Leopoldstadt with me, plays Chet on Fallout and is fantastic. Oh yeah, he is really good at that. Yeah. Okay, then in the next part of the movie, they go back to the UK, but instead of going to London, they go to Northamptonshire, which is where Simon has his constituency. And this is when we get Steve Coogan. For me, I feel like

while I am a huge Steve Coogan fan, and it's how I got to be a fan of Armando Iannucci was because of Alan Partridge. This stuff actually is the only part of the movie where I went from crying with laughter to being like, huh, that's funny. It wasn't as riotously funny to me. But it does set up a

very late in the game political cartoon written in the newspaper that has Simon Foster sitting on the Great Wall of China and allows Malcolm to say, The Telegraph has a cartoon of you teetering on the Great Wall of China, suggesting that you are the only political fuck-up visible from space. I thought it was a fantastic line. Yeah, it serves an important plot function in that towards the end of the movie, Simon is talking about

using the tool of resignation, which is kind of the last resort to give some kind of weight to your objection to what's happening. He's got that one last tool at his disposal, but because of the Steve Coogan problem with the wall falling down, Malcolm is able to actually take that away from Simon as well. Simon's entire arc throughout the whole movie is just one of impotence. Yes. It's completely hapless. He can't even control his own blinds.

He complains about that at one point. And the scene is incredible when Simon is in the car with Judy and Toby, and he's floating the idea of whether or not he should resign. I mean, do you think, is it braver to just resign and say, no, no war? Yes. Or is it braver to say, I don't agree, no.

and just grit my teeth and get on with it. Is the really brave thing actually doing what you don't believe?

I also have to shout out the way Sir Jonathan says this one particular word has just lived in as part of my life forever since seeing this movie for the first time when he says hope there's some nibbles nibbles me and yeah several of my friends can't say that word without saying it in that exact voice that's fantastic

But in the middle of all of this, there are just like these couple of moments of real drama, and I think they're so good. Like this showdown between James Gandolfini and Peter Capaldi. That's great. Yeah, it cuts close to the bone. It's real. Yeah, it feels so tense between them. It's kind of macho, and James Gandolfini is talking about how he's gonna shoot Malcolm and...

Somehow, I think despite that, despite his military experience and the fact that he's got, you know, 100 pounds on Malcolm, he still ends up losing that confrontation. Yeah, for sure. And I think that like after that, that character is completely defanged. Neutered. Yeah, I agree.

But then we see Malcolm go through the same thing with Linton, where Linton is kind of calling the shots and he's saying, "Look, you have to do this. You have to get me this intel that's going to validate the invasion, and you have to do this and do that." And Malcolm is so infuriated. He's like, "I don't work for you. You don't fucking tell me what to do." "Okay, firstly, don't raise your voice. This is a sacred place.

Now you may not believe that, and I may not believe that, but by God it's a useful hypocrisy. And secondarily,

I believe your prime minister has instructed you to work for me. You put your finger on exactly what the power dynamics in every scene between every two characters and among multiple characters is what drives the drama and the comedy of the piece in every instance. And the way that everybody's aware of it. Not everybody understands it correctly, but everybody's thinking about it in every instance as well. For sure. Certainly, yeah.

And I think that's what makes this such a great entry for our film festival because so much about politics is about power. It's kind of like the ugly side of it when you talk about power just in and of itself as opposed to power being used for some kind of greater purpose. And this movie is really taking just the power part of it and saying like,

what happens when that's the only thing you're focused on. - Yeah, that's exactly right. - And then in the end, they take "Pwip Pwip," which has been leaked to the BBC and is gonna come out and they just, before it can be revealed to the public, they completely rewrite it with "Abandoned."

to make it say whatever they needed to say so that they can get the UN resolution passed. It's not like the West Wing where they go into the explicit details of what they're asking for, but presumably some kind of resolution to authorize the use of force and justify this military invasion. I mean, we can deduce that because we know what actually happened.

in the real world. I'm curious to hear what our audience thinks of this movie. Like, the idealists who love "The West Wing" so much, whether they have any trouble embracing the other side of the coin with something like "In the Loop." Well, you know, in my heart, obviously there's room for both because I love this movie so much.

I love the thick of it so much. I love Veep so much. They're all so great. And, you know, we even did an episode about Veep on the West Wing Weekly. True. So I think that hardcore West Wing fans have to be able to have room for both. Yeah, let us know, though. Let us know what you think, folks. I guess that does it for another installment of the West Wing Weekly Political Film Fest. I'm Rishi K. Shirwe, Political Film Fest. And I'm Joshua Molina, Political Film Fest. Thanks.

Thanks so much for listening. Josh, what are we going to watch next time? It's your pick. Well, segueing from the Armando Iannucci of it all and his stage version of Strange Love, I think we ought to see the underlying property. We're going to watch Stanley Kubrick's classic, Dr. Strange Love, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

One of my all-time favorites. I've watched it many times. Not in a while. It has, look for it people, one of the weirdest, I would say improv, but just happy accidents that turns into a cheap thrill by George C. Scott.

Yeah. In the war room. Yeah, I'm very, very excited. I'm excited to watch this too. Is it a favorite of yours? I love this movie, but I'm well due a rewatch, so. Yeah, it's exciting. It's fun to revisit pieces of art as one ages and realize the art stays the same, but the person sometimes changes. I mean, sometimes it's very disappointing and you go back to something that you loved and you're like, eh.

I thought I loved this. Sometimes one's love deepens. I'm excited to revisit. And if you're getting caught up in the political film fest of it all, check out our newest shirt, which is the Here We Are Melina campaign shirt. Thank you for your support of this Patreon joint and in purchasing merchandise over at thewestwingweekly.com forward slash merch.

Check it out. Forward slash. A lot of that. Wow. You know, you could backslash and then we would get no money. This episode was made possible with help from Margaret Miller and Zach McNeese. Political Film Fest. Okay. Okay. What's next? Political Film Fest. Political Film Fest. Radiotopia from PRX.