I spoke yesterday morning with In The Loop director/cowriter Armando Ianucci. The point or goal of our chat was to advance the notion that Ianucci and his Loop co-writers (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche ) perhaps deserve to win the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar more than the competition. If this is so (and I wouldn’t argue against it), it’s because no other film in the history of cinema has made such ringing poetry out of scatalogical rage.

In The Loop director/corwriter Armando Ianucci

I’ve said at least once or twice before that everyone swears, but you need God’s help to make ferocious sputtering meat-puppet swearing — Peter Capaldi‘s, I mean, in his role as Malcolm — sound so delicious and uproarious that people have created websites to celebrate it. This, in a nutshell, is the argument for In The Loop. Take it or leave it. No other screenplay has ever mouthed off like this one.

It needs to be repeated that Capaldi didn’t improvise a thing. Every last fuckity-bye was hatched, honed and typed up by the screenwriters. And then memorized within an inch of its fawking life by Capaldi.

I have an idea that the tide might be running in Ianucci’s favor. Maybe. Then again people might be inclined to give the Oscar to Up In The Air co-authors Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner as a makeup award in light of the film itself apparently being out of the Best Picture running. Or perhaps they’re thinking the same thing about Nick Hornby‘s adapted screenplay for An Education.