He's broken into the United States State Department. He's talked an actor into shouting lines like "lubricated horse cock." He's made one of the sharpest, most biting political satires imaginable. But in the end Armando Iannucci turns out to be a nice guy with an easy smile, willing to sit down for what's surely his hundredth promotional interview and listen to me rattle off all my favorite parts of In the Loop.

In the Loop, as I've written already, is my favorite movie from Tribeca, so I talked to him a lot about the fast-paced, documentary feel of the film. "Comedy has to feel like it's happening in the real world, like you're eavesdropping on them." He continued by saying he wanted to keep the film realistic, and not along the lines of satires he admires like Dr. Strangelove or Brazil. "I just felt that environment, if you start making it caricatured, you don't feeel threatened by it. I do want people to feel slightly discomfited by it. I want people to ask themselves, would I do the same?"

The characters we're following in In the Loop, minor politicians from both sides of the Atlantic, are getting up to all kinds of stuff: starting wars because it's politically expedient, sleeping with people for information, and mostly belittling each other in order to get the upper hand. Iannucci said he specifically wanted to target the "special relationship" that is said to exist between Britain and the United States. "Really politicians in America rely on us just to say yes," Iannucci said with a laugh. "I hadn't seen Washington portrayed in film before as being a little bit rubbish."

Check out some excerpts from our video interview below. In the Loop will be released in theaters this summer, and definitely, definitely check it out then.