From the inner monologues of ‘Peep Show’ to the comic incompetence of the suicide bombers in ‘Four Lions’, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong have made a career of speaking the unspeakable
WHEN PAT McCABE ( The Butcher Boy), Lenny Abrahamson ( Adam and Paul) and Sharon Horgan (the hit BBC comedy Pulling) – three of the brightest Irish sparks around – put their heads together to curate a screenwriting conference, it's probably best to investigate in detail. Today and tomorrow, the trio will be presenting "Give Me Direction", a mixed format of panel talks, screenings and interviews.
Of all the events taking place, the one with arguably the most contemporary resonance is the "Taboo-Busting Semi-Incomprehensible Pep-Talk" discussion, which is introduced by Sharon Horgan and features the Peep Showwriters Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong.
From the unstoppable rise of the “offensive” comedian Frankie Boyle to how best to tackle taboo subjects in the realm of comedy writing or simply “speaking the unspeakable”, transgressive comedy is a hot topic.
With their comedy film about British-born and raised Jihadi Islamist Terrorists, Four Lions, winning acclaim for how it comedically handles such a sensitive subject, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong are looking forward to talking about the "particular challenges that writing a comedy film about suicide bombers entails".
Four Lionswas the noted satirist Chris Morris's idea. Morris spent years doing research – interviewing terrorism experts, Imams and ordinary British muslims (both radicalised and not) – in order to get the tone of the film right. He drafted in Bain and Armstrong to help write the script.
Four Lionswas always going to be a controversial film and the idea was rejected by both the BBC and Channel 4 as a TV sitcom for being too controversial before Morris, Bain and Armstrong decided to bypass TV networks and bring it straight to the big screen.
“There’s a very good line-up for this conference, so of course I was interested in participating. I underlined this invitation when it came in because of the great bill,” says Armstrong. “As always, I’ll be scared of making a complete ass of myself. I get a bit shaky when you’re taking questions from the floor and people are asking “What is comedy?”, “What is satire?”. I’m on much stronger ground when I’m asked what type of pen I write with. But I figure if I know anything at all, I know something about comedy and satire and taboos.”
He’s particularly pleased Sharon Horgan is introducing the panel he’s talking on.
"I know her and I admire her," he says. "I loved what she did on Pullingand that was a taboo-busting TV comedy in the sense that it showed women getting drunk and having casual sex – the way only men are usually portrayed in sitcoms. I think though Sam and myself are in Dublin more to talk about Four Lionsthan Peep Show, because while Peep Showcan make for uncomfortable viewing and has unusual juxtapositions and is quite rude and not really for anyone under 15, it's not taboo-breaking as such."
"We've been accused of being offensive," says his writing partner Sam Bain. "But maybe that's just because on Peep Showwe show these private, intimate thoughts that are never really uttered. When people seemed to get what it was about it was very reassuring for us – in that we realised that our own private, intimate thoughts aren't completely mental. It was like coming across a disused goldmine when we went with that interior monologue approach – and a lot of it works because we put it in the heads of these repressed English characters."
Both were adamant that the script for Four Lionswould "not set out to be controversial just for the sake of being controversial".
“It was a very attractive idea from the start because the subject matter of Islamic fundamentalism, while being covered in dramas, had never been done in a comedy format,” says Armstrong. “A lot could have gone wrong and we were anxious not to create a portrayal of the Islamic faith which could cause offence. The motivating factor wasn’t to be mocking people’s beliefs and in a sense it’s not about the Islamic faith at all, it’s about the group dynamics of these Jihadis who decide to become suicide bombers – and the weird events that went on in their gang.”
“There were worries at the beginning about the possibility of getting a fatwah put on us,” says Bain, “but because the research had been so thorough on Chris Morris’s part, we realised that fatwahs only get put on you for a clear reason. This isn’t like the Danish cartoons incident – nowhere in the film is there an attack on any article of faith of the Islamic religion. But we were never going to do anything like that anyway. We never set out to shock.”
“But you can’t censor yourself either,” says Armstrong. “There was never a moment where we went ‘That line would be hilarious but I don’t think we can use it in case it causes offence.’ We didn’t compromise anything in that respect. But then again, I wasn’t unconcerned about the reaction to the film – and so far it has been very positive and nobody appears to have taken any form of offence from it. It was important from the outset not to make the mistake of conflating violent extremists within the Muslim world with the vast majority of non-violent extremist Muslims.
“The point is, though, that you can make a funny joke about subjects such as suicide bombers – you just have to get the tone right, otherwise it comes off as attention-grabbing and provocative. And you really can’t do too much explaining of what you’re trying to do with a piece. It’s supposed to be art, not propaganda. You can’t include footnotes explaining your intentions as you’re going along.”
Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain will be talking more about "Taboo-busting" tomorrow from 3.15 to 4.30pm at Cineworld, Parnell Street, Dublin 1. Other attractions at the "Give Me Direction" screenwriting conference include Lenny Abrahamson interviewing Bobby Farrelly, one half of the Farrelly Brothers team behind Dumb and Dumberand There's Something About Mary, at Cineworld today at 2.15pm; an interview with Stephen Woolley, the producer and director whose credits include The Crying Gameand Perrier's Bounty, at the Morrison Hotel, Dublin tomorrow at 11.30am; and a special premiere screening of Please Giveintroduced by its director Nicole Holofcener, who has worked on Six Feet Underand Sex and the City.
For more detail of the line-up and ticket information, see jdiff.com
