"Four Lions" examines the effect of terrorism on our society through a funny and emotional story of would-be jihadis (Drafthouse Films)

“Where does the AP feed go to?,” he asks the nearby cameraman, even as he leans over a laptop, scanning several search windows’ worth of news.

“The BBC, is one,” says the cameraman.

“Lazy bastards! Where else?”

“Al Jazeera.”

Morris straightens up from the computer, and fixes all his engagement on the cameraman. “But they should be here!,” he exclaims, and crosses to the AP team to continue explaining.

Though he seems tall on camera, Morris seems even a bit taller in person, and without the shoulder pads of his customary news anchor or businessman characters, somewhat narrower and lankier.  He also, live and in person, has a large swath of angry red skin, from just under his left eye, down to his chin and onto his neck. Despite being halfway through a full day of tv interviews to promote his debut feature film, Four Lions, Morris has made no attempt to cover up the mark. This is the other thing that seems to drive him: an absolute demand to see and present the world as it really is.

VIDEO: NT interviews Chris Morris, the director of "Four Lions"

Morris has a history of presenting perhaps more truth than most of his audience has been prepared to accept. His gained notoriety in his native Britain in 2001, when "Brass Eye," his fake "Inside Edition"-style news magazine, aired its “pedophilia special”: a sharp take-down of British society’s obsession with the topic that spared neither the media, the public, nor political leaders in its faux coverage.

With "Four Lions," which Morris spent three years intensively researching, he has trained his considerable attention on possibly the most inflammatory topic of our current world: terrorism. One of Morris’ main assertions with the film, an unflinchingly funny, honest and frequently emotional story of a group of would-be jihadis attempting to plan and carry out an attack, is that our inability to even think about terrorism is one of its darkest attributes.

“Look, there’s no question this film should have been done before, and not just by me. I mean, it’s an abject desertion of all responsibility that this hasn’t happened,” he says, sitting bolt upright and leaning forward in his chair. The laser debater’s stare that pinned the AP cameraman is back in full effect.

“There’s sort of been no level of attempt to engage with the subject at all, virtually anywhere in Western culture, it’s beyond pathetic, and the fact that I’ve accidentally done it, is really, you know – it shouldn’t be up to somebody noticing the funny bits and making a comedy out of it, it’s just like, come on, everybody.”

The funny bits are the Keystone Kops moments Morris turned up in his conversations with extremists, counterterrorism experts, and trial transcripts. Boats loaded with explosives sinking into the sea, bored cell members debating the relative coolness of Bin Laden and Johnny Depp – anecdotes as surprising and entertaining as Morris’ invented device of a terrorist invoking "The Lion King" to explain suicide bombing to his young son.

Like these stories he has gleaned, Morris seems never more than a moment from this root ability to disarm and unbalance. He takes in my question about his evolving use of narrative to create satire, looks straight at me, and says, “You could even ask me what the perfect ratio between satire and narrative is. It’s a classic 30 / 70.” Until he laughs, I’m totally sold on whatever it is that I’m two steps behind him in understanding.

He takes pity, and goes on to clarify: “Unless you’re going quite a lot further than what satire really is, you shouldn’t even bother. With a narrative, then you’ve got something that is in a lot of ways more powerful than just an angular joke that you’d put onto a topical daily show.  You’ve got something that you can [use to] drive people through an experience.”

This point becomes truly clear only after our interview ends. Because I keep talking to him, Morris keeps talking to me. I ask about the calm of the wife of one of the bombers in the film – great pains are taken to draw the normalcy and tenderness of their relationship, which strike palpably against her support for his endeavor, as if it were a promotion at the office. Morris is visibly excited to explain how this shows how far we are, in the West, from understanding a worldview that truly factors in the afterlife and its rewards.

He is saying: terrorists are people too – and this means not only that we should not flinch from understanding the real contours of their motives and lives, but that doing so does not mean that we cannot still condemn immoral acts – in fact, it is only in the full, sober, confusing light of honest engagement that we should.

Un-journalistically, I’ve brought my boyfriend’s DVD of "Brass Eye" to get signed. Morris signs it, without pausing his mini-diatribe on those who assume the film will be controversial before they see it, and hands it back to me. In the second that I duck to stow the DVD in my bag, Morris retrains his lecture on the next available body, no beat skipped.

When I’m safely in the elevator, I take out the DVD to find the day’s last lesson in Morris’ precise, relentless perceptiveness. “To Becca - ,” is written in quick, thick strokes. “Under disguise of ‘boyfriend.’ “

Any comedian could have thought of it, and written it, but Chris Morris is the one that did.

Four Lions opens in theaters Friday, November 5. 

VIDEO: Trailer for "Four Lions"

Reach reporter Rebecca Kinksey here.