Ellen E Jones: Welcome to the Barbican ScreenTalks Archive podcast. Every episode we bring you fascinating conversations for nearly 40 years of Q&As, handpicked from our vast archives. This time we turned to a comparatively recent release, as director Armando Iannucci and producer Kevin Loader discussed their 2020 film The Personal History of David Copperfield. While not exactly a double act, Loader and Iannucci have collaborated as director and producer on three films to date. First was 2009 'In The Loop', a big screen outing for Ianucci's era-defining political satire 'The Thick Of It'. Next came dark historical farce, 'The Death of Stalin' in 2017. And most recently, they brought us this superb adaptation of every wise person's favourite Dickens novel, David Copperfield, starring Dev Patel. Prior to joining forces, each man had an impressive career in his own niche.
Loader is a stalwart of the British film and TV industry, who's helped make such memorable films as Andrea Arnold, Wuthering Heights, and The History Boys. Meanwhile, Iannucci is widely regarded as the godfather of contemporary British TV comedy, having a hand in the careers of such luminaries as director Ben Wheatley, succession creator Jesse Armstrong, and his old The Day Today collaborator Chris Morris.
In this conversation, led by film critic Catherine Bray, you'll hear about making an optimistic British film in a post Brexit Britain, and about why Iannucci considers young Copperfield to be suffering from a very modern kind of status anxiety. Individual cast members come up, including living legend Tilda Swinton as Betsey Trotwood, and Morfydd Clarke, who plays a dual role in the film, but is now perhaps better known for the cult horror Saint Maulde. And some plot points are discussed in detail. So I should add a spoiler warning here for anyone who hasn't read Dickens' novel, although you have had over 170 years to catch up. There's also an extra special treat in the form of Iannucci providing his very own telephone hold music. Lots to enjoy then.
I'm Ellen E. Jones, and this is Barbican ScreenTalks with Armando Iannucci and Kevin Loader.
Armando Iannucci: Thank you. Who's the whistler? That was a really good whistle. Thank you very much. I can't whistle. So thank you. Yeah.
Catherine Bray: So we're very lucky, Armando has come straight from an edit. So a real gear change. I wanted to start by asking, you've said, directing is an astonishing ego trip, in the past. Still till true on this?
AI: Oh, yeah. I mean, you can turn into a dictator, suddenly, it's like, suddenly, you're telling everyone what to do. And they follow your instructions. And it's very easy. I'm not saying I have slipped into this, but I can see how you might, if you were doing it all non stop all the time. I can see how you can go completely mad. And my wife teases me after I finish directing. There's about a week and a half when I stay in directing mode at home. So I'm going, 'Shall we go for a walk, okay, you two, if you just get the dog, and we're going to start over there, and then we're gonna walk through that', you know, and you just, it takes me a while to kind of wind down and just realise that that's actually...
Kevin Loader: And then you have start cooking your own food!
AI: That's right. Yes, yes. Instead of food of all the nations being brought to you and going, 'I don't want this. It's too many bubbles in the water. I don't like it, take it away'. You know, all that kind of, it's very, very easy to fall into that. And it's good to not be like that.
CB: And Kevin, obviously, most writer directors of the line share of them are simply writer directors. With Armando, you've got somebody who's also a producer and executive, he's on TV, radio, he's almost an empire.
KL: Yeah, there's not much he doesn't know about how the business works.
CB: So does that make it easier or more difficult?
KL: It makes it keeps me on my toes, as they say.
AI: We've not had this discussion before. This is kind of
KL: We've never had that
AI: Bit weird talking about each other
KL: I mean, we've done three movies together now and now a big TV series which is on Wednesdays and, always a pleasure. I mean, he's not at all a dictator. As a director, he is incredibly collaborative. But you know, one of the things is that the exploration of the material does develop during rehearsal. It develops throughout the shoot, and some crews are not quite used to that. So they take an early conversation with the director and then go running off in a direction that then changes two weeks later. So that's what you have to kind of guard against, really.
CB: And coming on to the film. I feel like with a big adaptation that's been done a few times before, almost the first thing that people have latched on to is the cast. Who is playing Uriah Heep? Who's playing David Copperfield? Who's playing Mr. Micawber? I mean, did you have some of those roles in mind from the get go? Or was it all a case of sort of finding it as that process?
AI: Well, I knew when we finished doing The Death of Stalin, I knew I wanted to do David Copperfield as the next one, and I asked, actually, Peter Capaldi straight off, when I come to do it, can you be Mr. Miwcawber? He said, definitely. So that was banked. You're safe. You can take that home with you. You've got that.
But then when it actually came to okay, we're going to make this, the only person I can think of to play David was Dev, was Dev Patel. I've never met him, but just watching him and watching him grow from a kind of gawky, kind of awkward teenager in Skins to this very charismatic, strong, still force in Lion. I just knew he was, he was David. So I, you know, we got in touch and we met up and I said, I want you to be David Copperfield. And it was kind of 'okay'. And he said yes! I'd sent him the script, and he was aware of others stuff I'd done, and so he was very much up for it. And I'm grateful that he said, because I didn't have an alternative in mind, perhaps Robert De Niro de-aged and you know, or, or just everyone in cat fur and just doing that, just scaring everyone. With Jip just being played by Judi Dench's hand, just kind of
KL: We did, we took the CGI tails off everyone.
AI: That's right. Yes, they arrived. We docked our actor. Generally that was it. There was no, we didn't have a kind of plan, really. And then once you've made that decision, I then thought, you know, there was a brief discussion, so therefore, what are we saying? Are we saying so, David's father? Was he Indian? We never meet David's father because he's dead by the time the films starts. And I just thought no, I chose Dev because I thought he was the best person for the part. And that's how I'm going to choose every other member of the cast, I'm going to go for the person who I think best embodies the spirit of that character.
KL: It was interesting, because when I remember explaining it to a few colleagues, then, that you know, for example, Mrs Steerforth would be played by an actor of different skin colour than Steerfoth. And few people just looked at me like, that's never gonna work. I mean, how's that ever gonna work? And then our experience has been, well, you can tell us but when people see the film, actually, it just works. It's what theatre has been doing now for a long time.
CB: I'd completely agree and wanted to sort of reference that Oscar Wilde quote: 'you'd have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing'. It was obviously a different, different book, but I think it does get at the heart of something that sort of people do say
AI: Oscar Wilde, where is he now?
CB: He didn't follow up on his early promise. He touches on something that people say about Dickens, that sort of the comedy really lands, but maybe the tragedy I mean, not so much. It feels like you've leaned into that a little bit with
AI: Well, also, you know, I've been a huge fan of Dickens since about the age of 12, because I've always found his writing funny, and very modern. But we do have this image, I think, of Dickens as being a long winded Victorian melodrama sentimentality, marred fog, darkness, ogres and all that. Yes, and there is an element of that, but also there is this amazing vitality and originality and just the sheer one liners that he comes up with.
We tried to use as many in the film as possible when you know, when he describes Uriah Heep as being so near to you, he's closer to you than your own shirt. I mean, that's, that's a gag, you know, that's, that's, that's from a comedy really, and, and also the themes that he touches on, I think, are so modern, not just the social ones like the homelessness on and the effect of debt on the personality and the burden of debt but also mental illness.
The first proper depiction in English literature of mental illness described properly in Mr. Dick and treating it with the kind of honesty that it merits and the whole very modern thing of identity, and who am I? David has basically what we today call status, anxiety and imposter syndrome. This am I fitting in? What do people make of me? You know, if I meet some new people, are they talking about me? If I mentioned anything from my past? Will it harm me, you know, will I be embarrassed, that feels to me a very modern psychology there.
And so that and the humour always struck me as something that actually hasn't carried over so much in many adaptations, because everyone wants to concentrate on the plot. And the plot actually is something that Dickens was making up as he as he went along, because he was writing these things on a monthly basis and weekly basis, he didn't quite know where it was going sometimes, in the earlier books anyway. So, for me, it was less about doing a translation of the greatest hits of the book into film and more trying to recapture the amazing originality that's in the writing and try and transfer that onto the screen. You know, seeing David drunk for the first time, which is all in the book, or him being so besotted with Dora, that he sees her name everywhere, on a wig or coals everywhere, which is in the book, you know, it's that that modernity that I wanted to capture.
CB: Yes, and you've got one of the most probably sympathetic Uriah Heeps, I think I've ever seen, I mean, not that he's not a villain, but it's like sort of Partridge or somebody in The Thick Of It, they're awful. But at the same time,
AI: Well I felt sorry, because the basis of Uriah, we talked about this, in the early stages, the rehearsals, David and Uriah roughly had the same start in life and have just decided to go slightly different ways. You know, David's decided to be honest and friendly and Uriah decided to be slightly bitter, and take that bitterness out on those who he feels have got more than him. But I kind of feel there is a sort of cruelty to Uriah, from David and his friends. And I thought it was important to show that as well. Dickens is very honest in his description of David, you know, David is a frail hero in that he makes friends with the wrong people, he sort of gets besotted with someone who you know, it's not gonna work, but he's not really listening to the advice of those around him. He's, you know, it takes him a while to work out how to sort of be himself and stand up for himself more. And I find I kind of like that honesty. And therefore it I think it's important to show that kind of ambiguity in the relationships.
CB: I'm going to open it out to the audience. Questions?
AI: I'm going to hum while the mic
CB: Should we do some Oscar walk-on music?
Q1: Hi
CB: Hi
Q1: When the film started, I was struck by the fact that it started in a similar way to The Death of Stalin with a performance. And then as someone who didn't know the story of David Copperfield, I was interested that the story itself contains so much about writing and I was wondering if that was something that drew you to the story, and in general, as a creative person?
AI: Well, I mean, it sort of feels personal to me the story for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is the fact it's about a writer kind of working out. You know, I grew up also with a sense of, do I fit in? And Dev and I discussed this as children of immigrant families, you do grew up with a sense of, are we in, are we out? Are we also with them? Are we British? Are we, what are we, all those questions. So as a sort of Italian in Scotland, and then going to University of Scot in England, and then, you know, latterly a break in America you know, you're always slightly, not quite knowing. So there was an element of that. And also, David Copperfield is such an autobiographical novel that actually is an element of Dickens and David, and Dickens used to go out and do what you see David doing at the start of the film, which is go on stage and narrate his stories.
And it became very, you know, he was a huge commercial success doing that, going around the world doing that, he was the world's first celebrity. Rolling Stones, he was the Lou Reed of his time. And, you know, he was very much into kind of telling his stories. So we knew we wanted to frame it with that sense of, and also going back to what I was saying earlier, trying to make it from being episodic, turn it into something, a film with a beginning and a middle end, I felt for me, the theme of the film was about David turning his memories and his half forgotten memories and experiences, not into writing, but reimagining them, and maybe elaborating them at times. And his way of identifying myself was to identify himself as a writer. So it was only when he realised he could write this down and make sense of it all that he actually worked out who he was. He was I mean, we had this amazing theatre that we went to in, um
KL: Yeah, it's embarrassing. In the Netherlands, The Royal Theatre Carré, which is from that. Well, it's bit early in that period, but it's one of the last two, I think, yeah, proper Georgian theatres around.
AI: It was around 1830 or something. Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous. Yeah.
Q2: Hi. Firstly, thank you for making such a beautifully optimistic film. I needed that. Thank you. I was just wondering, did you need that? And really, how much did you feel the weight of Dickens, maybe for yourself amongst your peers, when you're tackling this, how much does that play into the film production?
AI: I didn't feel the weight of Dickens because I felt I'd kind of worked out what I want to do with it. And part of the decision you have to make early on is, you mustn't be so reverential towards it that you can change your thing, because you've got to make it work and therefore you know, there were characters in the book that had to go just because there's no room you know, people always mentioned Barkis Is Willing, that's not there. Certain things were moved around, so, so I knew if I kind of was too frightened to change anything, we would get nowhere.
In terms of the optimism, yes, I sort of feel that the language about this country over the last three years has been so, the default is that we're now an isolationist nation, that we're inward looking, that we're putting barriers up, and so on. And I don't think that's the case. I think Britain is a kind and generous and open, and big hearted country that has a sense of humour about itself. It's very playful, and has an amazing creative industry within it and creative talent. And that hasn't changed. And I think that has got drowned out in the other discussion that's going on. So I wanted to make something that I felt celebrated how I see this country really. And that's why it was important.
Yes, we set it in 1840. But I wanted everything about how we shot it, how we made it, to feel that it was happening now, in front of us. that it didn't feel like it was in the past that actually, it's actually a reflection of now. That was the underlying kind of intent behind it. Apart from you know, wanting to be funny, and, you know, people will leave it thinking, Oh, I must dig out some Charles Dickens, that's fine. If people leave it thinking I must just read more, that's fine. But fundamentally, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to make something you know, the last film was The Death of Stalin, which was so bleak and capable. You know, this is not a companion piece to The Death of Stalin. And I wanted to make something that, we hadn't planned it, but this is a PG, it's like for all ages, and I kind of like that, I kind of like we've seen families come to it, then go home, discussing it really among themselves, really.
KL: I mean, we always designed it so that people could bring their children, and then we had a little bit of a battle with the censor at one point, who mistook the fight with the butcher's boy as a kind of gory episode, and didn't quite appreciate that a lot of the blood in the scene was joke, you know, pig's blood effect. Yeah. And they did actually get up and shake hands afterwards, etc, etc. So we sort of went back on appeal and got
AI: What's the description? Does it say like mild terror or something?
[Laughter]
KL: Mild terror [Laughter] A pig's head?
AI: [Singing] Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee dee,
Q3: Hi there. My question was to do with the dual casting of Dora and his mother, you could say something oedipal about it, but from the horse's mouth
[Laughter]
KL: Some people don't even notice it. So congratulations on that. Yes.
AI: Did people notice it was the same actress? Oh, yeah. There's something in the writing in the book that David, as the narrator of the book describes Dora and a mare as very kind of mother substitute kind of way. And I suppose he loses his actual mother fairly early on, or his memories of his mother are kind of clouded in so much other kind of misfortune that it seemed, if anyone - we did think at one point, have quite a few of the actors playing different parts. I remember
KL: Well, I think that was when we were in the kind of, 'Well theatre has been doing this'. Yes, I'll see. 'What's the other thing that theatre does', oh yes, they double up
[Laughter]
AI: And then it also got tricky, because, you know, involve having everyone, just timewise it was an hour. But I did like the idea of Morfydd playing an English-accented Clara and a Welsh-accented Dora, just to make that strange thing that is going on in the book about what David sees in Dora, he sees a sort of reflection, in not in that kind of creepy way, but just in the person who loves him, get away. So that's there. But it's, you know, if you don't notice it, it doesn't, it shouldn't affect your take from the film, really.
CB: Kudos to making her so funny, because she's annoying in the book.
[Laughter]
AI: She is. That's the other thing, you know, there are certain units, especially Dickens' writing of women, they're either grotesque, or they're very dull. And we wanted Agnes to be sharp and kind of David's equal. And we wanted Dora to be, you know, a bit eccentric, but not stupid, more just different worldview. And in fact, in the end, the agent of her own outcome, really, in that she's the one that recognises that it's not working, and that she should leave, whereas in the book, David actually marries her. And it's clearly a ghastly mistake. But at that time, you can't have them divorcing, because that's scandalous.
So she just dies, just for no reason. Over a chapter, she just withers away and dies, as does Jip on the same day, and you just have more sympathy for the dead dog.
[Laughter] I just thought that's, I'm not having that. I don't care who he is that's written this. I'm not having that. So, we changed that.
CB: We should have had a spoiler warning for the novel of David Copperfield for anyone who hasn't read the book.
AI: The A.N Wilsons of this world
Q4: I think you already partially answered my question in what you were just talking about with David's love interest in Clara.
AI: Dora!
Q4: Dora. Sorry. Sorry.
AI: Clara's his mum!
CB: Freudian slip.
Q4: Yeah, I was very aware of the fact that the winning love story is between two characters of colour, which I'd like to thank you. That was incredibly refreshing. I wanted to sort of ask about like, how, how intensely subversive were you of the sort of traditional way that Hollywood likes to depict Victorian romances because I saw, I think the shipwreck scene is very Byronic, and reminds me of the story of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Byron on the beach. And also, I see a lot of really stereotypical tropes of the romantic, or the romantic lead in so many movies. And that's why I personally chose to not go and watch Little Women, for example, because, like the dark-curly-haired Timothy Chalamet almost looks exactly like you're very Byronic. I was just grateful to sort of see people in colour sort of coming to the forefront.
AI: Well, I mean, there was no specific list of characters that we were going to select in certain ways. No, it was just a case of each character. I just wanted to find the right person. But I just wanted to choose from 100% of the acting talent available to me and not feel that I couldn't, with the actual characters in the writing. And we have them discussions with the actor who's playing and we have discussions and then rehearsals, well before we start shooting, about those characters, we all want to give them life and not feel that they were just composite of people's memory of what those characters should be.
For example, I mentioned Mr. Dick, you know, it's so easy in adaptations to make him kind of mad, crazy eccentric, who's just a figure of fun, and a bit of a kind of grinning fool, you know, and he's so not, he's, he carries a sad illness with them. And he's such a warm, gentle man as well, that we want to make sure, and Hugh Laurie does this amazing performance of Mr. Micawber, for example, I think we regard as a kind of roly poly jovial figure from adaptations, but he's constantly in debt. And Dickens describes, when there's a knock on the door, as the bailiff is calling, he falls into deep depression, and he makes these kind of throat cutting signs to his wife saying, you know, I want to kill myself. I didn't want to hide that, and I didn't want to dress it all up as kind of everything's jolly and nice, you know, I wanted to feel real.
And so we did that with all the characters, with Betsy and with Ham. With Ham we kind of wanted because he's a slightly, we talked with Anthony Welsh about how Ham sounds like he might be picking a fight with you. But that's just the way he delivers his lines. Actually, he's actually very generous and gentle.
For some reason, David and Steerfoth, take the wrong attitude towards Ham, whereas Ham, that's just the way he is, you know, things like that. And simply we talked about Uriah, I didn't want him to be that kind of evil, right from the start, you know, he's nasty, because that means everyone else is good. And I like the kind of the ambiguity and you can see why Uriah might have ended up the way he was just by the way he'd been treated previously. So that's all part of the
KL: It's probably just worth saying to people who don't know, the rehearsal process, which goes on for a few weeks before shooting does involve not only all the access, but you and Simon Blackwell, your co-author of the screenplay. So it's very much about continuing to explore the text of most things, and also working out some of the physical comedy, of which there's a lot of this film, as you've seen, so you know, the whole sequence with the globe? Yes. Yeah. Those things that had to be kind of more slapsticky and more choreographic, physical comedy, we'll work that in rehearsals
AI: That was a sort of half a day in a rented church hall with Benedict Wong. And I was trying to hide the drinks from him and him, trying to get to them and just trying to think of more ways that we could pass the trolley.
KL: So with my producers hat on, it's because you know, Churchill's and Bloomsbury are much cheaper than having 100 crew standing around on an expensive location. So encouraged the rehearsal. Absolutely.
AI: And I don't I don't know why doesn't have more in films, that tends to be films, everyone arrives for the first time on day one of the shoot, and then they work it out there. But as you say, there's 150 people standing around, waiting for you to be ready. So why can't we just have those conversations two weeks previously in a church hall and get it out of the way?
CB: It's interesting you had that time for rehearsal, I know that you, on TV projects have sort of encouraged improvisation, which I'm guessing is more difficult to do in a Victorian dialogue.
AI: No, but the improvisation is really there to make it feel real rather than you know, natural conversation rather than scripted. But even without we still do rehearsals, you know, because it helps the actors to it helps them get to know not just their character, but each other's character, so that if you are seeing a scene between... For example, Mr. Dick and Betsy, so clearly, they've known each other for a long time, so when we see them, we've got to feel they know each other. So Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie worked out this sort of physical behaviour they did where, you know, Betsy is always keeping one eye on him and moving him if he's wandering over, and clicking her fingers, if he's not looking, you know, and they just work that out so that when we see them for the first time, we kind of feel they're very comfortable with each other.
Q5: I've got a couple of questions. I wonder what the main challenge was of getting a cast like that together? It's huge. And they're all busy, all the time. And also, do you feel that there's a challenge these days in trying to be sustainable with when you're shooting on location?
KL: Well the cast did have some challenges, because as you probably noticed, the film was shot in many different places. And not much of it was in London, because it's very hard to shoot in Victorian London, London now. So it was a bit of a scheduling challenge, you know, a week in various Netherlands, then a week on the Norfolk coast and then a week in Kings Lane and so on, and Tilda had an out I remember, we had to shoot her out in the first four weeks. And in the normal things you put up with, you know, when you're trying to do something with very in-demand and prominent actors, but the goodwill we had from everyone kind of made us able to
AI: And also as an attraction, it seemed to them. I know you're very busy, but we just need you for three weeks. And that's actually can be an incentive in a way, which is, I'd love to be in the film. Ooh, if we can get into three weeks, that'd be great. I'm on. You know, and they turn up and there you are, you know, plus, we need you for the rehearsals.
KL: Rehearsals are the non negotiables. But they're all for it.
AI: Sustainability?
KL: Sustainability. Well, we, I think nearly every film production now, certainly in this country, and in the states as well, you know, there are certain minimum standards you have to really adhere by. So, you know, there's no single use plastic on set, and we have recycling protocols and fuel protocols and all the rest of it now. So, you know, we'll get the sustainability kind of charter markers too.
AI: It is hard because there are a lot of there are a lot of vehicles and things.
KL: It's a hard one too, and we carbon offset. And although that's not as good a thing I know, but there is a real push towards it. And actually some of the modern technology like new lighting that's around now, the HMDI lighting, it's so much more energy efficient than it was back in the days of huge big lights and David Lean shooting Lawrence of Arabia. So on the whole, we use much less energy than we used to,
CB: On that future forward note, and since we've got to wrap up soon, I wonder whether we might just quickly talk to people about what you're doing next? Avenue 5? A sci fi comedy?
AI: Yes, it's well, it's done. It's set in space. It's my next show for HBO, and it's set on a space cruise. Hugh Laurie is the captain. And it's 5,000 passengers on an eight-week journey round Saturn and back and then something goes wrong. They're going to be stuck up there for years. It's not really a sci fi, it's more a social laboratory.
It's an existential nightmare for 5000 people all having to come to terms with each other and work out how they're going to live and what kind of society they're going to have and who's in charge. And you know, if somebody commits a crime, is there punishment, and who administers the punishment, and what is the law, and things like that, while still trying to get home. So it's that. With a light touch. [Laughter]
CB: On that light touch, I think we do have to wrap up, I'm afraid. But thank you so much for joining us. And please join me in a huge round of applause.
AI: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks.
EEJ: Thanks for listening to this Barbican ScreenTalk with Armando Iannucci and Kevin Loader. This season of Barbican ScreenTalks is full of similarly insightful chats with filmmaking greats. So to support film the Barbican, and make sure you don't miss an episode, rate and subscribe via Apple podcasts, Acast or your usual podcast providers, or visit barbican.org.uk.
Maybe you were a guest a particularly brilliant live ScreenTalk that you'd like to see me visit on the podcast. If so, please come find us at Barbican Centre on social media and tell us about it. Barbican ScreenTalks Archive is presented by me, Ellen E Jones and produced by Jane Long for Loftus Media.
We'll be back next week with a discussion of the captivating New Orleans documentary 'What You Gonna Do When The World's On Fire'. Until then, be well and goodbye.
