British filmmaker Armando Iannucci wasn’t planning to give his political satire much connection to real-world events, but he found such an opportunity too rich to ignore.

That’s why the sharp-tongued In the Loop, while fictional, has so many topical references in its story of politicians and bureaucrats in both England and the United States making a mess out of deciding whether or not to invade Iraq.

“I had always wanted to make a fast-talking, funny kind of screwball comedy,” Iannucci said by phone from London. “I was reading about the actual events that led within the White House to factions and fighting with the Pentagon, and also how the Brits got sort of lured into this world. What I was reading about was an actual farce, and yet it had devastating, terrible consequences. I knew that was the film. These people are fighting so much in their office politics that they kind of forget the international politics.”

After he decided to build a script around that concept, Iannucci found a connection to The Thick of It, his British television series that ran from 2005 to 2007 and was set in the same world of political satire.

He structured the script around a few of his main characters from the series and reached agreements with some of the primary cast members to reprise their roles, most notably Peter Capaldi as a venomous government spin doctor. He also collaborated with the same writers and creative team.

Iannucci added various other characters to the mix, including a bumbling British foreign minister (Tom Hollander), a no-nonsense U.S. general (James Gandolfini), a suspicious American diplomat (Mimi Kennedy) and various interns with agendas of their own. Each has different views on a potential war and none knows quite how to express it.

“Sometimes you write funny lines, but if it didn’t feel real, I ended up taking it out. I didn’t want to hit people over the head with anything preachy,” Iannucci said. “I wanted to keep it set in the comic world while keeping it as believable as possible. It’s up to the audience to decide where they would stand.”

Although the project was filmed from a fully written script, Iannucci encouraged improvisation from his actors as a method of shaping the characters but also keeping the dialogue lively and spontaneous.

He estimated that while 85 percent of the film comes directly from the script, the other 15 percent is a “dirtying up” of the script that felt more genuine. He used the same technique in The Thick of It.

“I kind of like the idea of people whom we quite like actually disappointing us in the end, and people whom we may not like so much standing up for themselves a bit more, and not quite knowing who is going to do what,” he said. “It’s very densely written. The improv is just a means to an end. It’s just there to make the dialogue feel real and believable. I wanted it to feel as though we’re eavesdropping on actual conversation.”

Iannucci applied some of the other characteristics of his show to the film, such as a documentary-style use of handheld cameras.

“It was a coming together of two different things,” he said. “We were doing the TV show on one hand but also thinking about film and arriving at a political environment.”

Iannucci admits that some of the characters are based on real people, most being amalgams of true-life political figures from the Bush and Blair administrations. He also said he wanted to spare neither side, tossing satirical barbs at both England and the U.S.

Although some politicians in England were critical of The Thick of It, the filmmakers were still granted unprecedented permission to film for a day at 10 Downing St., the real-life home of the British prime minister.

Iannucci said the residence had never before been filmed for a fictional project, but that he received an enthusiastic endorsement when he sent a script along with his request.

In the Loop is now playing at the Magnolia in Dallas.

TODD JORGENSON can be reached at 940-566-6871. His e-mail address is tjorgenson@dentonrc.com .