Nancy Updike
Appearances
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
I mean, was it a way for you to channel, to sort of organize or contain your own dread as a project?
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Once I got an answer to why make Strange Love now, we moved into a meandery but very enjoyable conversation about how to confront your dread these days. Because I am taking suggestions. And Armando's work is something I've returned to again and again. And what I'm thinking now is that, especially with his movies and with Strange Love, I come for the comedy, but maybe stay for the dread.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
So we talked about how do you go about making comedy out of catastrophe and fear? You've said that people underestimate comedy, which I agree, especially about things that are sort of big and terrifying. But make the case. What do people underestimate its ability to do that you feel like, no, no, it's best. It's best at that.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
The Great Dictator is a movie about Hitler that Charlie Chaplin put out, incredibly, in 1940.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Armando pulls it off because he doesn't skimp on either the bad in The Death of Stalin or the comedy. The bad is quite bad, and the funny is really funny. And one way I've noticed that he keeps those two moods aloft at the same time in many of his projects. He often focuses on people who work together.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
In The Death of Stalin, there's this intense rivalry among the men around Stalin, all jockeying for power after he dies, scheming and whinging and flailing. That workplace power struggle is what made Veep so funny, too. In the Strangelove play, the president and his advisors are in the war room, gathered around a ludicrously large circular table, mostly arguing.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
And one guy, a guy you may know from your own job, keeps throwing out bad ideas in a loud voice, in a sort of Roman Roy, I'm the only one being real here, way. For instance, he argues that maybe the thing to do is to lean into this attack the U.S. has launched, not bring back the bombers that are on their way, but send more planes with more bombs, try to win this war rather than try to stop it.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Pre-talliate isn't in the Strangelove movie, but it was built out of logic that is in there and that Armando and the director and co-adapter, Sean Foley, expanded and riffed on.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
But Armando says sometimes you really don't need to riff or invent. Sometimes comedy is just sitting there, waiting to be picked up, like a $100 bill on the sidewalk.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Yeah, Pieces Are Profession shows up a bunch of times in the movie, along with other sort of funny sight gags of just the way things are labeled. And I thought Pieces Are Profession was over the top. I thought, oh, it's too much.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Like a scene that ended up in the movie about Stalin's son, Vasily.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
I've now seen Dr. Strangelove a bunch of times, the movie and then the play, and every time I think, so no one wins in the end. The bad ideas don't prevail. Nothingness prevails. It's shocking. Many times in my life, I've looked back at a specific moment and thought, oh, right, that was before, before I knew that, before this happened.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
But it's much more unsettling to experience now, the moment you are currently in, as that before time. To look around and feel that you will look back on this moment as one that came before so many losses or changes or hardships. Dr. Strangelove, the play, gave the audience a chance to, sure, laugh, but also to feel that dread, to see ourselves as living in a time before, before something.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
It's not clear what. Nuclear bombs have a narrative advantage that way. They have one iconic image associated with them, a recognizable brand of destruction. What is the right image for what's on our horizon? Or mine, I'll just speak for myself, my dread. I rewatched the movie and saw the play during the hottest year on record, in the summer before the U.S. presidential election.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
I'm writing this story, wondering how much of Los Angeles is going to burn, and whether there's going to be a nationwide ban on abortion, mass deportations. I don't have a picture in my head to focus on. It feels more like a play, a lot of dialogue, and I'm experiencing it live.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Got a question for you out there listening. Have you ever had a bloody nose? I ask because I got a bloody nose recently when I went to do an interview with a British comedy writer and director named Armando Iannucci. He made the TV show Veep for HBO, now Max, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus playing the vice president.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
He made a movie called The Death of Stalin, a comedy somehow, about the battle for succession in the Soviet Union after Stalin died. And he made a movie that I especially love called In the Loop, about the lead-up to a war that isn't identified as the Iraq War but seems a lot like the Iraq War. Also a comedy.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Armando Iannucci gets called prescient a lot, but I think of him not so much as prescient as in tune. He follows the news. He is paying attention to now. Veep got into aspects of the political culture in Washington in a way no other show did. The epic pettiness, the unglamorous maneuvering.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
I'm always interested to see through his work what he finds funny and relevant and sometimes frightening in the world. So I went to London to interview him about one of his new projects, a new play, which I will get to. But right now, all you need to know is that I came to the interview as a fan, straight up. I didn't hide it, but I didn't lead with it either. We were both there to do our jobs.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
I was told I would get an hour with him. To be safe, I was 15 minutes early. And while I was waiting, I got a bloody nose. I got the bloody nose while I was standing in the living room type room somewhere upstairs at the Noel Coward Theatre in London. A room that has a white carpet and white upholstered chairs and a silver upholstered couch. I pulled a bunch of tissues from my bag.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Pretty much always have tissues. And I was holding a pile of them to my bloody nose. Normal. It happens. I get bloody noses sometimes. Then I ran out of tissues. So I started using paper towels from the kitchenette that was attached to the living room. And it was a lot of blood.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
So I had a big wad of paper towels pressed to my nose, trying not to drip on the white rug, when Armando Iannucci walked through the kitchenette and into the living room. He and the publicist were concerned. He said, do you need a few minutes? He understood about bloody noses. The publicist said, would you like to use the toilet? I said, yes, that would be great. Thank you so much.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
I am so sorry about this. Where is that toilet? And I went to the bathroom to wrap this mess up. And I had what seemed to be a rolling series of bloody noses or one big one that had many phases. I don't know. But what I do know from sad, gross experience is that a bloody nose means there's a clot somewhere high up in my nose that needs to come out for the bloody nose to stop.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
So, I was trying to blow my nose and blow the clot out, and it took me some time to realize that as I was doing that, unsuccessfully, I was spraying tiny droplets of blood all over. The sink, the toilet seat, the floor, the mirror, the wallpaper, the wallpaper. I started wiping everywhere, like it was a crime scene.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
And I rolled up a tight little roll of toilet paper and stuck it up my right nostril to catch the blood. That's what I do at home when I have a bloody nose and no one's looking. And the little roll of toilet paper filled with blood and fell on the floor as I was wiping the floor. Had to roll up another one. That filled with blood. Roll up a new one. Take out the old one. Repeat. Repeat.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
I went through an entire roll of toilet paper and had to start a new one. So I was pacing around this little bathroom with toilet paper in my nose, looking for tiny blood drops and muttering to myself, you gotta wrap this up. Wrap it up. Wrap this up. And time was passing. So I started thinking, maybe I could interview Armando Iannucci with rolled up toilet paper sticking out of my nose.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Or, or maybe I could stick a really tiny bit of toilet paper far enough up my nose that he wouldn't see it, but it would still block the blood. This nosebleed went on for half an hour. It was a full-on anxiety dream come to life. And Armando Iannucci's movies and TV shows are full of awkward scenes that happen on the job.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
A person trying to do a serious thing and getting thwarted by something dumb and embarrassing, like a pair of squeaky shoes. In one of his movies, an assistant secretary of state starts bleeding from her teeth in the middle of a meeting. And what usually happens in these scenes is the person just gets pounced on, mocked without mercy by their colleagues or rivals or the press.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Any vulnerability or misstep is noticed and weaponized. But Armando Iannucci, the real person in real life, did something completely different. I walked out of the bathroom, not even sure the interview was still possible. So much time had been lost. And he said, with perfect grace, I'm not in a rush. He and the publicist, Nada, simply put the whole thing behind us.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Nada said, look, he's got a photo shoot in half an hour, but he can come back after that. Armando said, we'll talk for a while, and then I'll go and come back, and we'll talk more. It was like he waved a wand over me and said, you had a nightmare and now it's over, which is the opposite of what happens in his new play.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
I wanted to interview Armando because his work is so good at capturing things about now, about the present. And I saw that he was doing a stage version of an old Cold War film, Dr. Strangelove, by Stanley Kubrick. And I found it alarming that this was his next project. I mean, it's a comedy, but the last scene is nuclear Armageddon and the end of the world.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
So what did he see in it that spoke to him about now? Why choose that particular story out of all possible stories at this moment? Well, part of the answer to why now is someone asked.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Ladies and gentlemen, Armando Iannucci. He got a call from the director and co-adapter of the play, Sean Foley, who asked Armando, did he want to work on it with him? And Armando quickly said, yes.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
Us as a species being unable to save ourselves from our own behavior. is the plot of Dr. Strangelove. The entire story lives in the minutes right before the world pivots from a planet full of life to a deathscape of ashes and poison. The story is an American general goes quietly nuts. He's a conspiracy theorist who believes commies are poisoning America through fluoridation.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
To stop that, he sends U.S. bombers off to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. When reasonable people on both sides realize what's happening, they try to stop it. The U.S. president gets so desperate that he gives the Soviets the information they need to shoot down the planes.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
But one bomber gets through anyway, triggering a cascade of nuclear bombs to fire automatically, destroying the world.
This American Life
852: Pivot Point
More than any one-to-one correspondence with the news now, there's a feeling to Strange Love that I found familiar. A sense that enormous danger is looming, but we're also wading through a sludge of ridiculousness. I feel some level of dread all the time, for a while now. And I had a hunch, based on Armando's work, that he might have a similar feeling.