Q&A: Taking Cheney/Rumsfeld to Task, Actor David Rasche Steps In the Loop

Interview by Brad Balfour

When actor David Rasche came into the room, I knew this was going to be a different kind of interview session just as In The Loop is a different kind of political comedy. The 65-year-old Rasche was supposed to be joined by director Armando Ianucci and fellow thesp Zach Woods to conduct an intimate roundtable with four of us--but because Rasche was early--or on time--for us, our conversation was transformed, much like the shambolic supposedly "secret" committee meeting organized by Rasche's character, the gung-ho American warmonger Linton Barwick (a cross between Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld) got transformed and provided a sort of pivotal moment to the film. In a similarly chaotic fashion, Rasche alone spoke with a couple of us before settling down with his fellow Loop-ers and provided some pivotal moments of his own.

Now distributed in the States, the British-produced film debuted at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and, in New York City, at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Based on--or rather, taking its cue from Ianucci's smart and snarky look at the inner workings of British politics The Thick of It (kind of like The Office for politicos)--In The Loop follows Cabinet minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) through a series slip-ups that gets him involved in the ever-twisting gyre of intrigue that's leads to getting a war started in the Middle East. Sounds familiar...

The film starred some of the series' regulars such as Peter Capaldi (reprising his foul-mouthed communication chief Malcolm Tucker) and American additions such as former Soprano James Gandolfini as a war-reticent General Miller. Within this context, bumbling assistants and loose-tongued associates screw up and screw each other to a dry, droll, parodic effect. The film certainly doesn't view previous British and American administrations as the pinnacle of political achievement.

In light of this summer's health care debate with the right stirring the pot, the film serves as a reminder that the politics of diversion, derision and destruction as expressed by the opposition party goes on. So when a film like In The Loop offers this refreshing and engaging alternative take on the inner workings of the political universe, it becomes a must-see to add perspective.

Though Ianucci (also the primary writer and producer) with Woods (who plays Chad, a very funny American adjunct) finally arrived, what was supposed to be more of a roundtable, turned into a unusual back-and-forth of banter.

Q: Was that just the roll of the dice that you ended up playing the bad guy, Linton Barwick?

DR:Well you know, they made it a little bit harder in this movie [from the television show]. But that's for Armando [to explain].

Q: How did you see it?

DR:I had a few rejoinders that were excised.

Q: You did it so well. You have this way of doing it so that you don’t come off as just mean.

DR:That sinister thing is there [though].

Q: Is that you or in the script? I can’t believe all the things that Armando threw in there.

DR:It’s terrific eh? Funny as hell. The timing was great; it's global politics. As a matter of fact, I had a friend, Mike Reiss, who was one of the producers of The Simpsons, who said that he thought there are arguably more funny lines in this movie than in any movie he can remember.

Q: But is it too complicated for Americans to get?

DR:I’ve been in tons of audiences like in Seattle [at the film festival]; there were 3,000 people, all Americans, and they just were howling with laughter.

Q: I saw it with critics and they didn’t laugh as much as I imagine an audience would. I was angry at them in a way but I thought it was astounding.

DR:Really? I’m surprised because I have not seen that audience. The only audiences I’ve seen, big or small, have [been with the public].

Q: You don’t even realize some of the lines are really funny until it hits you later; it's so deadpan, and you’re so perfectly deadpan.

DR:It’s really funny, I have to tell you, I’ve been involved in two international projects in the last little bit and it’s absolutely remarkable what we bring to it. Like I did this Brazilian film and people are all saying “Oh, we don’t like you because you did so and so and so and so,” and I said, “What are you talking about?” And the same thing with this; with the British press, the Americans were almost completely ignored and all they could see is the Brits, and now here you’re asking me [about my character]; we see the Americans. It’s funny, what we bring.

Q: Who were you a blend of?

DR:I was going for was a combination of John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove and Condoleezza Rice. All those imperious, belittling, condescending, right? Remember all those press conferences? It was like, "Do you really have to act like that? Do you really have to be so belittling and condescending?"

Q: You added the imperiousness brilliantly.

DR:I mean all of them, like David Addington [Cheney's legal counsel and chief of staff]--do you remember him?--they were all so unpleasant.

Q: Evil, evil people.

DR:No, but as unpleasant as a person [can be]. In the hearings, talking over you, not listening, belittling your point of view, remember Condoleezza Rice? “Uh Senator.” Relax, Condi. Anyway.

Q: I was at a Times Square New Year’s Eve with a press pass and John Bolton came to there. No one else had a problem talking to me, Regis, Chris Rock… But Bolton had a phalanx of security; you couldn’t even get 20 feet near him, and it was like, “What the fuck?” And he did not crack a smile the whole time.

DR:They’re so self-important. Same thing with Cheney; he’s doing something that no American politician in the history of the union has ever done, that is breaking the silence [after a new administration has taken over] and starts screaming about you know… And the reason is, “Oh well what’s happening is so important, and I’m so important, I just have to.” Well you know, Dick, I don’t know if you’re that important.

Q: It’s interesting seeing us filtered through a British cultural lens so that you see Americans in a whole different light.

DR:Oh yes you do. It’s a British film, from a British point of view. Don’t tell Armando I said that. But I think clearly it swung that way… I don’t think he knows it, maybe he does or not.

Q: The most disappointing thing for you about it was that you didn’t get to be in every scene with everybody else, because there are so many good people there.

DR:They had to cut a lot. I used to be but... You’ll have to ask Armando, and I don’t mean to misquote him, but I think he said that he got to the end of editing and knew stuff had to go so he cut his four favorite scenes and then all of a sudden the movie worked. I’m afraid I was in a couple of those scenes. His first cut was four hours.

Q: Did this film feel like it had almost theatrical quality?

DR:I never thought of that.

Q: Without all the locations, it would have been interesting to see it with everything else taken away, and on a stage. Because there’s such smart, snappy dialogue, it reminds me of a lot of those British playwrights, you know [like Alan Ayckbourn] or somebody like that--it does kind of have this beautifully fluid language…

DR:Well the story goes, as Armando will tell you, there was a special guy. No not Tony [Roche, one of the screenwriters]. I’m pretty sure is the guy was Ian Martin who provided, oh, additional dialogue. He specialized in swearing; you know all the crazy [British] swearing? I’m serious, they call this guy up; that was his specialty. When he would say “I’m going to rake your bone and I’m going to stab you in the heart” and all that stuff. “I will hound you to an assisted suicide,” I mean I don’t know which ones. “What are you in a Jane Austen novel?” and all that, a lot of that stuff--specifically that was what he was good at.

Q: Do you see a difference between British and American humor? Is there something that doesn’t translate well?

DR:Except for people like [play/film writer-director-producer] David Mamet, who I think is the exception that covers both bases--Armando is funny as hell but a lot of his humor is really verbal--it’s in the words, really it’s not that it’s a joke but it’s the combination of words. They’re a little more verbal than us, don’t you think? We’re more situations, sight gags, stuff like that. Well the nice thing about this too is there really aren’t any jokes. There are no like, jokes.

It’s behavior and situation. Although I don’t want to misquote Armando, but I think he said that when he went through the film while was editing and any line, no matter how good it was, if it sounded written, he cut it, because he wanted it to sound like you really were overhearing [them talking].

Q: You can’t lay it on the director, it’s all your fault. There are so many places where you are silent, so it’s all in your look, gesture, the walk forward, or walk over here, or look at this.

DR:Tell him about how wonderful that is.

Q: You got it down with just enough of the restraint--as everybody did in this film.

DR:I’ve been watching those [Bush administration] guys on television for eight years. I mean, just it's appalling, appalling, appalling behavior. And it’s obvious that now that we’ve had six months where we’ve learned you don’t have to do that. We have Joe Biden, we have Barack Obama, and I don’t see it. We have all the cabinet officers, you know, like Leon Panetta [current CIA Director], they’re not insulting.

Q: The Republicans seem like whiny children now...

DR:Absolutely. I think it was the fact that we ended up with the opposite of what they claimed. It seems to me that what we’re learning is that rather than strong men, they were very weak, and when 9/11 happened they all went [weird noise] and they started doing all this kind of extreme stuff because, unlike Roosevelt and those guys who said… "Hi."

They were really weak little boys and they did all kinds of bad things. It didn’t help anything, right? We’re finding out about all this eavesdropping, the effect of this was like, not much.

Q: To what degree do you think we’re living in a democracy?

DR:It’s pretty hard to say that we are anymore. It’s not that, it’s when we find out the influence of the banks and corporate America; we see now that when the banks can throw $25 billion in propaganda you can’t fight it. I was reading there’s a new organization that’s trying to counteract it, but it’s really hard. When they have everybody on TV, the only news stations, it’s like how can you fight it?

It's the same thing with the government; how can government regulators, when Goldman Sachs and all these people hire hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of the finest MBAs from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to find out how to get around the laws, we don’t have the money to hire people who are smarter than them to keep them from screwing us.

Q: Did you need to read a lot of stuff?

DR:I told you already; I’ve been watching these bastards for eight years on television, shaking my head, thinking, “Oh my god. Despicable.”

Q: Whenever you see politicians they always seem so dry and boring.

DR:Well they all aren’t. Rumsfeld wasn’t; he was a performer, the ultimate performer, who really enjoyed getting up there in front of people. Which was part of his problem that he got carried away and was under the mistaken impression that everything that came out of his mouth was a gold nugget and in fact, I think that was not the case.

Q: I’ve heard of the analogy of politics to wrestling. When you watch wrestling on TV there’s so much tension and conflict but outside of that…

DR:That’s why President Obama, when he frames the argument of abortion as to let us respect each other’s opinions and then go from there, then the whole thing starts from a new spot. It doesn’t start from I hate you and you hate me.

Q: You grew up in Chicago right?

DR:Well I never really grew up; I "enlarged" in Chicago.

Q: Where are you from originally?

DR:It was a joke; you didn’t get it. I said I never really grew up but I enlarged. I was in Belleville, Illinois which is down-state but I spent a lot of time in Chicago.

Q: You’ve got roots on the Obama side, but there’s also classic Chicago politics.

DR:Not only that but Rumsfeld is from Chicago. Oh yeah. I know this personality type. My father was a little like that. Seriously. There’s this kind of stubborn, like that last line where he says “Well there were some pretty scary moments at some point right?” and I said “No there weren’t.” remember that? That could be my father, “No. No. No.”

Q: How would you describe or define patriotism at its core?

DR:The last refuge of scoundrels. Who said that?Jefferson or... I can’t remember. Benjamin Franklin? [Samuel Johnson: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”]

Clint Eastwood Becomes A Changeling

Feature Story by Brad Balfour

An avowed Republican in Hollywood is nearly as rare as as the giant Komodo Dragon—and they've had the spiteful bite of one as well. But with Barack Obama's victory, they've made themselves pretty scarce since election day.

Hell, even a straight-shooting, no bullshitter like Clint Eastwood—long known as a registered Republican who supported Richard Nixon's campaign in 1968, who has since made forays into politics (he won a term as mayor of Carmel in 1986 and has been on the the California State Park and Recreation Commission from 2001 to 2008 and the California Film Commission)—distanced himself from the Republicans before the election. At a recent press conference that Clint Eastwood gave at this year's New York Film Festival—where Changeling, his latest directorial effort, premiered as the centerpiece—it was uncanny how even he wanted to emphatically clarify his position away from them.

Of course, that wasn't the only interesting thing he had to say about himself and his film. So with a little juggling and a few delays, here are the comments from this 78-year-old grand master of directing and acting—the man who defined so many cinematic archetypes from the hard-boiled, hardened cop (Dirty Harry) to the laconic gunslinger with a heart (the Man With No Name from Sergio Leone westerns). This Oscar-winning director (Unforgiven) and longtime actor is also a jazz musician and composer as well.

Given that Changeling deals with out-of-control authorities drunk on their own power, the film has a very current political tenor. Starring Angelina Jolie as a mother searching for her nine-year son, she is given the wrong kid when he is returned by corrupt L.A. police officials; she's then carted off to the looney bin when she protests. Once freed by a crusading minister after it's revealed that a serial killer may have abducted her son, she succeeds in bringing down the authorities who have done her wrong. So Eastwood's remarks remain particularly telling.

Q: As a noted Republican, former elected official, and supporter of John McCain, what are your thoughts on the election?

CE: My mortgage just went down the tube [laughs]. I haven't been very active in politics. Yes, I started out as a Republican in 1951, when I was a young 21-year-old in the army, and I wanted to vote for Dwight Eisenhower, because he, like all politicians, was promising something, and he promised to go to Korea and end the Korean War.

But the Republican Party, as [with] the Democratic Party, have changed dramatically since the 1950s, and so I've drifted towards a more libertarian point of view. It never really got going as a party, but just the idea of, "Let's leave everybody alone, and not over-regulate," was very appealing to a guy like myself who came up in the 1930s and watched my parents struggle through the Depression. And nowadays of course, everybody's promising everything because that's the only way you can get elected. It's kind of perverted politics, as far as I'm concerned.

Whether Mr. McCain or Mr. Obama... what ever happens there, who knows... there are promises going on there too of what people will do and what people won't do, and it's very confusing. But yeah, my wife and I are both Libertarian; she was a Democrat and I was a Republican, and we both met in the middle somewhere.

Q: Both this film and Million Dollar Baby deal with female protagonists rebelling against a very male-dominated society. Prior to this, your earlier films were involved with very male-centric cinematic universes. So what triggered this change in adopting the female perspective?

CE: It just got very feminine in here [laughs]. I know I've done a lot of action films in my early days, but I've always been curious about these stories. I remember doing Bridges of Madison County some years back, and that was a story written from a man's point of view. The book was a story of a guy who's a photographer, and he drifts across the country, and he meets a war-bride, and the writer in that case took the woman's point of view, so the screenwriter actually had a better take on it than the novelist.

But I don't know, every story has its demands, and I think women have had a much more uphill battle than men had, so it becomes a more dramatic situation. It's like Million Dollar Baby, with a woman who's destitute, and broke, and wants to make something of herself in the world.

Q: There are moments in the film that have a very powerful, contemporary resonance, almost as if, while you're talking about a specific case from 1928, these issues and themes have a very strong pertinence today, especially concerning corruption, and the way the powerful justify the use of corruption.

CE: Yeah, well there's definitely a correlation to corruption of today, as it was then. And it's the egos of the police department, and they can't be wrong, and we see that happen nowadays very often, and if you can make that connection to what's happening today, then that's a good thing. At the same time, you don't want to leave the vernacular and the character of that time.

Q: Why did you want to turn the actual historical incident into a film?

CE: I didn't know too much about the incident, and was surprised that I hadn't heard about it because it was such an unusual event. Historically, Los Angeles has had some crazy situations, but this one was very unusual.

I didn't know anything about it until I read the script, but the writer [J. Michael Straczynski] did a very interesting thing: he took all of the clips from the Los Angeles Times and The Herald -- newspapers of that day -- and pinned them on the back of every page [of the script]. It came to life as a very horrible time, and he did a very interesting thing by taking the story of a woman, as opposed to the story of a crime.

Q: The period detail was very impressive in Changeling -- in particular, the use of vernacular which captured the feel of the way people lived in the 1920s. How did you accomplish this?

CE: The writer had a pretty good take on it. I was born in 1930, and since I was raised through the '30s, the vernacular is still fresh in my brain... somewhat [laughs]. But anyway, I guess I can remember my parents were very young when I was growing up, and you listen to it, and you know what people said then, and how they were much different from what they are now.

To do a 1928 film in Los Angeles, or any city really, but especially Los Angeles because it's changed so much over the years and wasn't a very centralized or big city, compared to New York... Things have changed a lot. So to go back and do that is very difficult, and it takes a lot of scouting around, and good art direction.

Q: Did you shoot all of the exteriors in Los Angeles?

CE: Yeah, we shot everything there. And we found neighborhoods that were still antique, and we antiqued them some more. We'd go into a neighborhood that's rundown and we'd ask people if we could use their neighborhood, and then we'd fix their house, and make it look like a new house that's from 1928.

Q: The character played by John Malkovich -- the crusading, muckraking preacher -- was intriguing. Was he based on an actual historical figure or is he an amalgamation of several people?

CE: These figures all existed. It's actually a true story. Detective Ybarra [Michael Kelly], he existed; Malkovich was a Presbyterian minister [Rev. Gustav Briegleb] who had a church down by the Coliseum in Los Angeles -- that church is no longer there -- but he was very much of an activist, and he had a radio show that he broadcast. He loved high-profile cases, and he had a big deal against the LAPD, so he had quite a few cases that he did this with.

And when the Christine Collins case became very high-profile he jumped in, and became very helpful in encouraging her, because women at that particular time -- they were much more reticent about being outspoken, so you can imagine how uphill it was against a predominantly male police department and political establishment.

Q: Because of the sensational aspects of the story, how did you avoid melodrama?

CE: Los Angeles was sort of glamorized years ago in film noir, but sometimes reality is much more interesting than fiction, and the melodrama just comes out of the reality of the situation. It sort of harkens back to films that we grew up with -- films like Gaslight where people are trying to bend your [woman's] mind, and tell you things that aren't really as they are.

And that's exactly what the LAPD tried to do with Christine Collins. They convinced her to the point where they had pictures of her sitting there smiling with this young child that doesn't look anything like her child. And then they put her in the psychopathic ward just because they figured they'd get her out of the way. They didn't have the information age that we do now with TV and the Internet, so one can't imagine how many cases were swept under the table.

Q: What were some of the major changes between the story we see onscreen and the real story?

CE: The story you see onscreen is the real story, but the writer J. Michael Straczynski took it and concentrated on the woman's point of view, and what happened to her. There's a few things left out. If you read the material on [the serial killer] Gordon Stuart Northcott [Jason Butler Harner], it's just horrendous. It's very hard stuff to read, because the guy was such a deviant, and the whole family was rather inbred -- or they seemed that.

It's kind of a tough story to get a line on. I was surprised [that Straczynski] took the line he did, but it was great that he did that, because then the detective story and the unraveling of the mystery all comes later on. [Collins] gets all the way up to where she's put into a psychiatric ward before we even start on the story of what happened to the child.

Q: And what was it like working with Angelina Jolie?

CE: [Grimaces] I forgot... [laughs]. Very good. I didn't know Angelina very well before doing this. I had met her on a few occasions, but I always thought of her as a very interesting actress, a very good actress. And in recent years of course she's had so much publicity, being on the cover of every possible publication in the world here, and you start taking it for granted. A lot of people get on the cover of magazines and it doesn't necessarily mean they're talented but in her case, she is really talented. And she's the most prepared actress -- or certainly as prepared -- as any actress I've ever worked with.

She came in with the material in her mind, with an attack on the character, was very amenable, and you could shoot almost immediately, which was something I like to do. I like to catch somebody before they have a chance to think about it too much; like they haven't spoken the words so many times that it's flat, and there's a subliminal thing where you look in their eyes, and it's the 10th or 20th time they've done it... you try for it in the early moments when they're still reaching for it and still trying to figure it out, but she's very amenable to that. And she does have the most striking face that one could imagine.

Q: You got some great performances from the actors you cast as the cops, the serial killer and the kids; how was it working with such fine young actors?

CE: Well, it's a great thing. That's one of the reasons in my senior years I stay behind the camera, and let the younger people out there take the ball and run with it. It's a great pleasure these days to watch the talent come along. I'm always amazed at how good some of them are at such young ages, because it took me forever to say my own name [laughs].

Q: And then there's your role as composer of the film...

CE: Well, he does exactly what the director wants [laughs]. When you're making a film you start living with it, and I find myself sitting down and figuring out a sound or melody that would go with a film, or a particular period. It's not brain surgery, you just kind of feel it along.

I wrote a theme for Unforgiven years ago, and I wrote that long before I made the film. I just sort of felt like a guy would be playing a guitar somewhere with a very lonely feel, and I wrote that, and developed it later on. This one I wrote a lot of times as we were editing the film.

Q: Do you contemplate giving up your own acting career in favor of directing?

CE: Well I thought about it after watching all those young actors, but since this picture was completed this year, I've done another film in which I performed in, even though I said I wasn't going to do that anymore.

I started saying that a few years ago: "I don't think I'll act anymore and stay behind the camera," and then Million Dollar Baby came along, and I liked that role. And I said, "Well I'll do this role, because I think I'm right for it." And then I did another one which is called Gran Torino [Eastwood plays a disgruntled Korean War vet] which we just finished and is in post-production now. It's with Warner Brothers, and it comes out in December.