How do you make 'The Death of Stalin' funny? Filmmaker Armando Iannucci explains

Armando Iannucci’s comedy, often political in nature, can fairly be described as “scathing."

In fact, we say that about a lot of people’s work, but man, does Iannucci’s earn it. He created “Veep” and ran the show for four years. “In the Loop” and “The Thick of It” are even darker and maybe funnier.

RELATED: 'The Death of Stalin' is brilliant madness

His latest film is “The Death of Stalin,” which is about just that — the Soviet Union leader’s death and the almost unimaginable absurdity that followed.

Naturally, Iannucci has made it a comedy.

The writer and director talked about the film, as well as his take on current events in the world, and the fodder they might make for future dismantling.

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Question: Is Donald Trump bad for your business? It’s like there’s nothing left to satirize.

Answer: (Laughs) I agree. I’m kind of relieved I’m not doing “Veep” (anymore). I wouldn’t try to attempt a fictional version of what’s happening now, because it can never be as mad as what’s happening now.

I don’t think it’s bad for business, in that there’s always stuff I can do. Interestingly, I think the comedians who are a little more successful are not the ones doing a fictional version, but the ones who look at the facts, like John Oliver or Samantha Bee or Seth Meyers. They do research and they explore. They just lay out the facts… And the way they lay the facts out (they) become funny in themselves. They’re kind of like journalists now. That seems to be the more-successful approach at the moment.

Q: It really does feel sometimes like, well, this thing couldn’t possibly happen. And then it’s like, oh, well, yeah it did.

A: It did, yes. And you see that EVERY DAY (laughs). Where else can it go? We’ve only been doing it for a year. Three more years to go. Where are we going to be in three years’ time?

Q: Exhausted?

A: I don’t know. And I think the creative approach to Trump won’t actually come for another eight or nine years, because there’s so much to process and so much to interpret.

Q: Will you do anything?

A: I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no. At the moment I’m not planning to immediately do anything but hold my head in my hands (laughs). But it’s interesting. I’ve just finished, obviously, “The Death of Stalin,” that’s set in 1953. The next film I’m doing is Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield,” which is set in 1840. And then the next show I’m doing for HBO (“Avenue 5”) is set in the future, set in 40 years’ time. So I appear to be getting as far away from the present as possible.

Q: There’s a lot of absurdist humor in "The Death of Stalin," but a lot of it based on the truth.

A: Oh, you’d be surprised at how much is true… An awful lot of it’s true. And that’s really what appealed to me about the story. Given that I knew, yes, it was going to be a comedy, and it was going to center on, really, rather grim events, the only way we can do that is if both the comedy and tragedy are derived from the same source, which is the truth. So we spent as much time as possible actually researching that time and exploring what happens, and getting the visuals right. One of the nicest compliments I’ve had is from Russian members of the audience who say, “Where in Moscow did you film this?” To which I say, “London.” We’ve done enough to make it look genuinely like it’s Russia in 1953.

Q: How do you find the comedy in such grim things?

A: As much as possible I felt if we keep it attached to reality, and even when we were rehearsing — and it helps, we got the cast in early, and the thing I said is don’t play it as a comedy, don’t be looking for the laughs and the joke, because the laughs will come from the absurdity of the situation you’re in. Take everything deadly seriously. I sort of knew that the cast would do that anyway, but that was the notes. That was also partly why I said let’s just do it in your own voices, and not put on Russian accents. I didn’t want it to feel like this was a special performance. It should feel like no, this is real.

Q: It really is fall-down funny, but there’s real drama underneath.

A: Well yeah. I wanted the audience to laugh, but I also wanted them to feel anxious, feel uneasy, because I was trying to recreate what it must have felt like to have that low-level anxiety that people must have had on a daily basis in the Soviet Union at the time, people not knowing who’s going to disappear next. Is it going to be you? Are you going to get through the next night?

Somebody told me their parents lived through that. You would go to bed at night putting lots of layers of clothes on, so that if in the middle of the night you were pulled out of your bed and taken off to Siberia, you would at least have lots of clothes with you. And that’s how they got through it. They just had to kind of factor it in as a possibility every night. So I wanted the audience, not as a kind of foregrounded thing, but just something that is constantly ticking in the background, this level of anxiety.

Q: Obviously that can be scary.

A: It’s a little bit like watching a horror movie. And it struck me, there are often similarities between comedy and horror. They have kind of the same rhythm. Because comedy is all about building up expectations, and anticipation of the joke, but not knowing when the joke is going to come, and then being surprised when the joke comes. There’s elements of that in horror, too — about suspense, and keeping the audience on their toes and restless. I think that something like “Get Out” works so well and it’s made by someone, a director and writer (Jordan Peele) who worked prior to that, predominantly in comedy. It’s interesting.

Q: The intensity increases the humor. You almost have to laugh.

A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s that thing of laughter in stressful situations. You know people talk about going to funerals and having to strangely suppress the need to laugh. When we were researching this film we found that people used to circulate joke books, containing a lot of jokes about Stalin and the secret police and torture and everything. They could be sent to prison or worse if they were found with one of these joke books on them. And yet they felt the need to make fun of it. It’s almost like saying, look, no matter what you do to me, as long as I can make fun of you, you haven’t really got me. It’s the last weapon that I have.

Q: Everyone in the film plays everything so deadpan — it’s easy to imagine you just saying, “Do less, do less.”

A: Yes, what I’m saying is just play it straight. Just say it as if you mean it. Don’t be conscious of the comedy of it. But all these guys, all the cast, they know that anyway. I wouldn’t have had them in the film if I thought they would do anything differently.

Q: Your work is funny but so dark. Are you optimistic about the world?

A: (Laughs) I’m naturally an optimist. I always am. But I think my levels of optimism are now lower than they’ve ever been (laughs), put it like that. If you get below 50 percent, then you’re pessimistic. I think I’m at 53 percent at the moment.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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