Friday, May 8, 2009

British Comedian Gives Me an Idea for Summer Project

Well, it just goes to show how far you can get with a printer and a little bit of confidence. This headline from the UK Telegraph made my Friday:

Comedian sneaks into US State department

This story was made for ComedyandPolitics! It's got literally everything in this blog's name in the article! It reads as follows (posted in full):

Mr Iannucci was researching his latest film, the US-British political drama 'In the Loop', when he visited the department's headquarters in the Foggy Bottom neighbourhood of the US political capital.

The identification he had with him was an amateurish BBC pass with his face show by a print out of a picture of him from the Internet.

He flashed the card at the guards in the main reception of the building, said he had an appointment and was waved through.

The comedian then spent an hour walking around the building taking photographs, which were later used to help with the set designs for the film.

The writer, who also created political satire-cum-farce The Thick Of It for BBC4, said: "I had a terrible, amateur BBC identity pass, with basically my face printed off Google and my name under it.

"A child could have produced it in 20 seconds. I wandered up to the front reception of the State department and said 'BBC. I'm here for the 12. 30.'

"They showed me in. I spent an hour wandering round the building with my camera taking photos for our designer.

"Part of me thought it was fun, another part thought it was probably international espionage."

So in a few weeks I'll be going to London to sneak into "Parliament" and whatever other wacky buildings they have "over there" and I'm bringing my camera and my googled picture of myself.

You may be saying to yourself, "John, someone already did that. That's the whole point of the article you just posted in full." Yeah, you're right, and it sounded fun. And when has the fact that the Brits already did something ever stopped Americans from copying it poorly? Check. Mate.

1 comment:

Tempy said...

Wow that's crazy. Why Parliament? You should go somewhere like Iran where they love people pretending to be reporters.