Chris Morris

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www.boingboing.net/2010/11/04/fourlions.html

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Interview: Chris Morris, British Comedian and Writer-Director of Four Lions
Billy Soistmann
Nov 12, 2010
atomicpopcorn.net

This week, I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to Chris Morris over the phone and discuss his film Four Lions, why terrorists are funny, the themes behind the movie, as well as the reaction he has seen towards it. See the full transcript below the jump.

So I’d like to start with your inspiration for the film. I read that you did a lot of research following the 7/7 bombings. Could you just talk about your process writing the script?
“I was actually reading the subject before the July 7th bombings in London, but those certainly didn’t deter me. I suppose they actually threw up quite a lot more detail on the subject. But I was just reading into it, and kept being surprised, finding things that were funny when they shouldn’t be. I wasn’t looking for humor, I was looking for information. And the first one that hit me, and you’ve probably seen me refer to this before, but I can’t change the fact that it was the first one that struck me, was the story about some Yemeni jihadists who were going to blow up an American warship by ramming it with an exploding boat. They ended up putting the boat in the water and they filled it with explosives and it sank. And I thought, ‘That’s just slightly ridiculous.’ They all would’ve had a pretty strong view on that and I don’t think they would’ve agreed on whose fault it was. And that seemed like the origin of a funny scene in a film. I didn’t really think anymore about it.

And then, by-and-by, funny incidents would just keep suggesting themselves as part of a pattern. Be it Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the guy who planned the 9/11 attack, wasting two hours before a TV interview trying to select costumes that didn’t make him look fat, trying to get Koranic quotes out when he was actually being interviewed and messing them all up time and again and having to re-tape them, a Canadian cell who wanted to assassinate the Canadian Prime Minister then forgot who he was, a group designed a remote-control detonator to protect themselves from the effects of their own bomb but it had a range of ten feet.

These things just started to form a pattern, and by the time I was looking at the surveillance transcripts of a cell that was related to the ones that had successfully bombed London (but this lot failed and were arrested before they did anything) the evidence became a cascade. It was just example after example of people being, at best, average. And in those circumstances, you’re only gonna get a few through. And the more people I spoke to, whether it was people who had friends or cousins who’d been to training camp, or whether it was people who worked in the emergency services, or assorted police, or kind-of terrorism advisors, they said the same thing. This is what they see and this is what they hear on intercept. It’s called by intelligence people the bunch-of-guys theory, which says that you’re gonna have an average bunch of guys involved in this and that’s exactly how it manifests itself, with mistakes and arguments. A kind of bond between them all, but like a squabbling group of friends or a stag party or a five-side football team or something, you know the kind of unity and sort of division.

That is confirmed in books, too. Marc Sageman wrote a book called Understanding Terror Networks, in which he describes precisely this. Anytime we screened for police counter-terrorism departments or people involved in similar sorts of facilities, they just nodded in recognition and started adding to the stories themselves. So that seems to me to be a pretty good basis for actually making a film of this sort–which didn’t ignore the seriousness of what these guys were doing but showed different aspects of how they do it than the one you would get in the news.”

Yeah, and when you watch the film, it seems like, “Oh, these are the outliers. These are terrorists, but they’re bumbling fools.” But in reality, that’s probably closer to the truth than these suave super-spies from action movies.
“Yeah, they don’t work like they do in action movies but they aren’t all sort of running around falling over. It’s somewhere in between. There was a guy recently whose job it was to assassinate a Saudi prince by blowing himself up with a suppository bomb. He duly stuffed the bomb up his orifice and went to see the Saudi prince, and he said, ‘Hello, Prince,’ and pulled out his detonator and hit the button, firing himself straight through the ceiling of the tent, without harming the prince at all. So, he kind of turned into a human bottle rocket.

And that, to me, is every bit as stupid as Faisal jumping over a wall and blowing up a sheep. I mean, it’s like something out of the bloody Marx brothers. So it just seems to be a good side of this process to show. Much as you get films like Dog Day Afternoon, showing a kind of plotsy siege, and what happens when that goes wrong. You do sometimes get films about soldiers getting things wrong, so right across the board you will have people not doing things perfectly. That’s all it is.”

Now, when you had the idea for this “terrorist comedy”, you had worked a lot on the radio and TV. Why did this stick out to you as a film, and not, for example, a TV special?
“Well, I suppose it could be a TV special, to be perfectly honest. I mean, the dynamics wouldn’t have been that different. I think it was inevitably going to be a three-act structure, so it was going to be film length but the difference between it being a TV special and being a film is very slight. It’s merely a case of certain things you do will be enhanced by the fact that it is on the big screen. I think that allows you a different rhythmic space sometimes–you can travel in a different way in the cinema as compared to how you do when you’re watching the television. But with something like this, which is dialogue heavy, the differences are not as dramatic as they would be if you were doing a visual poem.”

So you have this idea and you’ve written it and you’re trying to get funding, and I know that several distributors turned you down, because they just didn’t think the controversy was worth it–
“You mean in the States?”

Yes.
“Look, people know absolutely nothing about this subject, other than that they think it’s trouble. So they have very, very little to go on and they make very little effort to change that. So you’re dealing with a massive amount of ignorance. And that’s across the globe, that’s in Britain, too. People are staggeringly ignorant about something which is, apart from anything else, commanding rather a lot of their own money, by all the tax that they pay into the coffers that their governments spend. So I wasn’t that surprised because I knew that to be the case anyway but that’s really what, I think, produced reticence on the whole. And when people came forward, it was either because they had a bolder imagination, or they knew a little bit more. Wild Bunch (they were the overseas sales agent) got involved in funding the film because of the first two people I spoke to, one of them came from Lebanon and the other one was a quarter Pakistani who’d grown up in Britain. So they knew the landscape a lot better and they didn’t have this sort of neurotic convulsion about it. But as soon as you don’t know anything, the chances are you’re gonna make a bit of a burke of yourself.”

So, people really found you–you didn’t have to sell any distributor that didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
“Well, no. I had to pitch to people and just hope that a certain number of them would stick with it. You know, we ended up getting our money from Film4 who partly fund films, we got some money up front from our own distributors in Britain, we got some money from private individuals, a sort of consortium of private individuals who wanted to invest in the film for various reasons, and we sort of hammered it together that way. And then, in terms of American distribution, I think it was just that Tom Quinn from Magnolia and Tim League from Drafthouse Alamo found themselves having a conversation about the film in which they basically agreed about it and decided to go into partnership to distribute it. Maybe they were already talking about going into partnership and they just thought, ‘This is the one.’ So, they were from two different companies and they agreed to go forward together. Sometimes we’d have a multitude of people within one distribution company and they couldn’t get their heads around it collectively. Some people would go one way and some people would go another way.”

As you know, the main focus of the media is over the controversy of laughing at something that’s really a serious subject, but I think we’ve covered that time and time again with every controversial comedy. Did you have any worries that you wouldn’t get any support for the film, or people would just be offended, or did you just not care?
“Well, funny enough, I didn’t care very much about whether people would be offended. I never do, but I did know that this would be unlikely to be offensive in the same way that other things I’ve done have been. Because it’s taking a very different approach, I mean, I think the film is more subtly offensive to someone whose opinions are very hardwired and crystallized but it’s not offensive to the sensibilities of people who mind about bombs. I think it does take the effects of those seriously. What it’s undermining are preconceptions. After all, a subject like terrorism which involves a shocking manifestation in its primary form is hardly worth trying to shock people about. You know what I mean? You try to shock people when they’re smug about something.”

Well, especially towards the end, people start blowing up left and right so it definitely takes the bombs themselves seriously. How did you get an audience to go along with main characters exploding themselves?
“Well, I think they’re buying into the fact that some of these people behave more reasonably than others. And so you gravitate towards people who feel more reasonable. And why wouldn’t you? I mean, that happens in real life. The people who get involved with these plots are not all insanely unreasonable. Sometimes they’re very reasonable people. And although the film is not a polemical film, (I don’t really think polemic film is really the place for polemic, I think it tends to kill us all) the implication from the behavior of these people is that, worryingly, some of them get to their decision through reasonable means. And I think that is a challenge. It’s much easier to say they’re all brainwashed and they’re all extreme, sort of, I don’t know, monochromatically evil people whose moral compass lies completely outside our own. But that isn’t true.”

Yeah. It’s always easier to blame all these attacks on just one crazy individual. When you realize there’s an entire group, no matter how small it may be, of people who have reasons for why they’re doing what they’re doing, that’s much more of a serious threat.
“Yeah I mean, the reasons vary. And I think, in ourselves, the reasons vary. You know, Barry is an out-and-out nihilist and I don’t think his position demands to be taken very seriously. Omar, on the other hand, thinks he’s doing the right thing and I think that does demand to be taken seriously. “

Now, after you released the movie, did you have any groups who were openly hostile to it or any censorship problems?
“We did have a couple of funders who wanted to change the ending but we didn’t have any censorship problems as such. And, in terms of people being angry, I mean, no. We had a pretty broad church of nodded approval. People really enjoyed the film. Right from, sort of, soldiers who lost friends in suicide bombings and military campaigns through police (We were invited to screen for the Anti-Terror Police in the States and they all were laughing their heads off.) right through to people, Muslims and, indeed, radicals. I spoke to a guy during the research who actually fought alongside Osama Bin Laden against the Russians, in what you might call the good old days in the Mujahideen, and he subsequently distanced himself from Bin Laden when he said that it was a good idea to start blowing up civilians and this guy profoundly disagreed. He loved the film and thought it perfectly portrayed the sort of the abstract extrapolation that these lads sitting in British cities can try to achieve in order to carry out their insanely destructive acts. Right across the board, there were people laughing but I read a review from a guy in South Africa who gave it naught out of ten and said, ‘I hated every second,’ so there must be people who feel like that. I think the people who find it hardest are those people who come to the film requiring it to be something of their own devising and then find out that it’s something of somebody else’s devising. In some way they’re not prepared to cross the gap. I heard one guy on a review show saying, ‘Well, it’s all very well, of course, but what happens in the film is essentially nothing like what happens in real life.’ He was a sort of blustering politician. Next to him was sitting a terrorism expert who said, ‘Well, if I can say one thing about the film, it is that it entirely reflects what happens in real life.’ But not everybody has the luxury of sitting next to somebody in the cinema who might say that to them. But then at our screenings in the States nobody came up and said, ‘That was rubbish.’”

Obviously because it’s a comedy I think a lot of people will walk away thinking, ‘Oh, that was a great twist on real terrorists, but they’re completely different from that.’ I think it’s closer to real life than people think and I guess that’s to your credit for doing all the research that you did.
“Well look, you know, if you don’t know this subject particularly well, then you could be forgiven for wondering how true this stuff was, but you have to wait until you know before you decide. So, if you find it extraordinary to behold, you might go away and find out a bit. If you sort of think, ‘That couldn’t be true, that kind of stuff, that couldn’t be-”

And then they find out that it actually is.
“Yeah, but also don’t forget that the film isn’t showing them as one hundred percent incompetent. I mean, they get into trouble, and there’s internal strife, but there’s also a striving to try and do the right thing. There’s even the operation of a kind of conscience at play, which is certainly demonstrated by Omar and Wyatt right at the start. They think they’re going off to Pakistan to learn to do the right thing and there’s that scene where Omar says, ‘You do the right thing. When God asks you bro, you do the right thing. If you’d have to kill, you’d have to kill me. I’d have to kill you, You know, this is real.’ And they have that ridiculous conversation in the back of the shop with the chickens. But they’re forging a head on a sort of a blood bond, which is lethal and moral and that comes into play later in the film. And if somebody thinks, ‘Well, it can’t be anything like this,’ they should have a look at the record.”

With the film, would you say you’re primary goal, first of all, is just for it to be funny?
“Well I wouldn’t have done it if the incidents in real life hadn’t suggested a funny film. That seemed to me to be the interesting thing about it, was that you‘ve got funny incidents in a context where there really shouldn’t be. So in other words, real life was saying, ‘Look, there it is, right in front of you.’ The court case I was at was referred to by journalists and police alike. Almost to the end of every day, it was like being the Keystone Cops. The stories that were coming out in court were like something from the Keystone Cops and yet, the next day, in the media the only thing that would be reported would be something which endangered the British public. So, you were missing a great deal. It’s not that that wasn’t the case–it’s not that these bombs weren’t discussed, it’s just that there was all this other stuff going on which was keeping everyone in the court amused, but which wasn’t being reported. So, that’s why it felt like it had to come out. I think what I’m trying to do is get that out there. And it’s because it was funny that it struck everyone. So, it had to carry on being funny as it came through the film. That’s the way ‘round it works. And I think, it’s interesting to do, rather than something that’s just sort of a ‘Guess what happened to me today,’ because it undermines preconceptions and I think by undermining preconceptions, it pushes towards, rather than away from, knowledge.”

But then there’s also the scene where Omar’s brother, who is the peaceful one, ends up getting arrested, while meanwhile the main characters go and try to bomb the London Marathon. That was the only really overt message that I saw. The rest, like you said, really just undermines preconceptions and makes you think, and of course laugh a lot.
“Yeah, I mean, look. You would call that scene where Omar’s brother is being interrogated route one satire. And I felt that as a detail in the film that was fine but I didn’t want the whole film to be a route one satire. It’d be predictable. I thought it was more undermining and more interesting to play it this way with satirical elements where required. But, you know, there’s not the space to accurately reflect the book-bending and the verse selection from holy texts which provides the body of underpinning for this kind of behavior so that had to be intuited by the characters and that their faith in doing the right thing on God’s behalf is exactly what all of that ideology says, but in a word. We don’t want to hear a transcript of Abdullah Azzam’s In Defense of Muslim Lands in a film. Well at least I don’t. Similarly, you don’t want to get a whole list of recognizably right-angle satire jokes. But the one where the brother is interrogated in a container, I felt, is pretty indicative of what goes on. You know, after all lot of kids were arrested in Afghanistan and taken to Guantanamo Bay because there was a premium on their heads. People do get arrested and interrogated in a pretty rough way without there being the slightest bit of evidence against them so don’t leave that out. But that’s not the main point of the film.”

Would you consider the movie more a farce, or more a satire?
“Well, I don’t know. Is it a farce? Is it a caper? I mean, it gets to the point where those kind of categorizations are only partial descriptions of what the film is, because it’s–“

It is what it is.
“Well, yeah. Those kind of labels don’t make any sense to me. What exactly is a satire? A satire is something that is humor with a purpose. Do you know what I mean? You could end up fishing for labels for the rest of you life. I didn’t work it that way ‘round, and I wouldn’t define it backwards either. I think you could just kinda say it’s a tragic comedy. I think I’d accept that.”

That makes sense. I thought it was hilarious and I can’t really think of a more accurate definition than that.
“I’m glad! It’s funny, you can get into some fairly stiff conversations about it but I think the experience of people going to see it is in general good. I think their jaw opens and some noise comes out.”

No matter how many people say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t laugh at something like that,’ they’re gonna laugh.
“Yeah, let’s hope so.”

Thank you for your time, it was great talking to you.
“Not at all. Thanks very much for your interest. And, who knows, we might hang around for a few weeks.”

[luke]

'There was a guy recently whose job it was to assassinate a Saudi prince by blowing himself up with a suppository bomb. He duly stuffed the bomb up his orifice and went to see the Saudi prince, and he said, ‘Hello, Prince,’ and pulled out his detonator and hit the button, firing himself straight through the ceiling of the tent, without harming the prince at all. So, he kind of turned into a human bottle rocket.'

how come i never heard about this?!

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I hadn't heard that whole story, but it was mentioned in the 'printer cartridge' bomb thing last week - it was to do with the same people.