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Laurence Sterne has a heroic reputation as the unique subversive
of 18th-century literature, the Jimi Hendrix of the Georgian
era, playing a magnificently self-indulgent 600-page guitar
solo. His famous book, 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram
Shandy', was the garrulous shaggy dog story that began to
be published in 1760, in which the hero, after chapters
and chapters filled with wacky invention, somehow never
gets any further than the fraught and chaotic circumstances
of his own birth. Michael Winterbottom has produced his
own movie-riff on this self-referential romp.
As in Spike Jonze's Adaptation and indeed Karel Reisz's
The French Lieutenant's Woman, Winterbottom reproduces the
meta-textual level by simply making it a film about the
making of a film - which has to be the best way of filming
Tristram Shandy, probably the only way, though it could
be applied to any and every kind of book without much difference
to the immediate effect. With this split-level spectacle,
Winterbottom generates an almost delirious atmosphere by
making us breathe two different sorts of heady fume: postmodernism
and celebrity.
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play themselves playing the
roles of Shandy and his eccentric Uncle Toby in a movie
adaptation of this unadaptable book: sniping and bitching
and each perpetually afraid that the other will get all
the laughs and walk away with the film. Jeremy Northam and
James Fleet play the director and producer; Ronni Ancona
and Greg Wise play the backers from BBC Films and Gillian
Anderson plays herself, the Hollywood megastar 'coptered
in miraculously at the last moment to play Widow Wadman,
the woman with romantic designs on poor, unworldly Toby.
The risk of studenty archness is high, and it is tricky
to handle the comedy inherent in the fact that all this
non-action and thwarted narrative is often quite boring.
'Brydon comes close to pinching the whole movie, especially
in a I was particularly worried by the first 10 minutes
or so, long-running height contest' ... A Cock and Bull
Story with Coogan cumbersomely speaking directly to camera
and Michael Nyman's music sawing away dispiritingly on the
soundtrack. Yet things soon cheer up.
Clive James has a maxim to the effect that, in any work
of art where there are "levels of reality", there
will always be one that is really real. And that level is
inevitably the contemporary showbiz-gossip level, which
has an old-fashioned narrative interest that upstages the
deconstructed anti-action of Shandy's periwigged world.
Coogan playfully and yet leniently pastiches his own celeb-reputation
as an actor who is obsessed with movie-league status and
has a roving eye for the ladies, despite having a beautiful
partner and an adorable new baby boy. In fact, he is conducting
a very dangerous flirtation with the gorgeous on-set runner,
Jennie, played by Naomie Harris. On his case is a sleazy
tabloid reporter (Kieran O'Brien) who is hanging about the
location.
There are lots of very funny improvised encounters with
Brydon, who does indeed come close to pinching the movie:
especially in a long-running ego contest about which one
of them is taller, with Coogan insisting on built-up shoes
to the despair of the costume department who are striving
for authenticity. Having already given us an under-appreciated
TV classic in Director's Commentary, Brydon is now coming
very close to A-list status on the big screen. But Coogan
also treats us to a bravura performance, proving, incidentally,
what a terrific technical actor he is. Early in the film,
he elaborately demonstrates - while stuffily in semi-character
as Shandy's father - how one should act out the pain of
a penis injury. Later, playing himself, someone puts a hot
chestnut down his trousers and his agony looks horribly
real.
Cheeky and flippant, the movie chimes nicely with a book
that, as Coogan puts it, "was postmodern before there
was any modern to be post- about". Yes, at the risk
of pedantry, I would say you would have to be unaware of
Jonathan Swift's genially digressive Tale of a Tub (1725)
to insist on its absolute originality. Stephen Fry is wheeled
on in the dual role of Parson Yorick and a donnish expert,
who explains that insofar as Shandy is reducible to anything
as dull as meaning, it is that life, in its wild uncontainable
profusion, will always evade the strictures of art. This
movie is, however, closed out by a conventional happy ending:
that Coogan, or rather "Coogan", is redeemed by
fatherhood - sweet, though not quite in the book's sceptical,
anarchic spirit. As for the rest: it curbs our enthusiasm
for celebrity culture in a funny and shrewd way. Exactly
how relevant that is to Tristram Shandy is an open question,
although the author certainly enjoyed the sensational fame
that came with his book's success, and which he was able
to feed and maintain with successive volumes. However, there
is little in Winterbottom's film that approximates the novel's
occasional bursts of sadness, and here the director tempted
to breeze past them, making them subordinate to topical
showbiz-insider gags. The film might date quicker than the
book.
Film Focus Interview with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon,
by Leigh Singer: Original
Article
FF: Once you see the film on screen it becomes
a lot clearer but how was it put to you?
SC: The original script was actually not a complete
script; it was only about 60 pages long, it was incomplete.
Michael has a strange way of going about films, he schedules
them and then just makes it whether the script's ready
or not. He just says, "Right, we're going to make
the film, and we'll worry about the script when it comes
to filming."
I read the 60 pages and thought if it was anyone else
other than Michael Winterbottom doing it I wouldn't have
gone ahead and done it. It looked too self indulgent.
But I thought that at worst working with Michael it would
be a noble failure rather than just a clichéd film,
it would be original and quite different from anything
else. And because I'd worked with him before I've learnt
to trust him. I've learnt that working with Michael you
have to get used to not being entirely sure what you're
doing. He's not somebody who seems to have any military
planning to his films, he works largely on instinct. But
I trust his instinct, so that's really why I did it.
FF: Were you worried that it wouldn't work at all?
SC: It worried me slightly because I thought it
was a bit risky; as did a lot of finance people who said,
"This is a waste of money, it's self-indulgent, no-one
cares about this." I realised, actually, that the
parts of the script about Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan
aren't really about us they're about other issues; they're
about the amorphous, formless disorganisation of everyone's
life as rendered through these characters. So I understood
the logic to it, but it was very difficult to get off
the ground.
Any problem Michael encounters, he tries to turn into
a virtue. So for example, I had to visit a financier with
Michael to try and get money for the film; I had to perform
a bit of the film in front of the financier, like some
monkey. I did, and he laughed, and because he laughed
he wrote the cheque. So that became one of the scenes
in the film, Michael just thought that was interesting
and he put it in the film. Equally, there's a scene where
I say to one of the writers, "I think Walter Shandy
should have a scene with his son, because that would make
you forgive him all his faults." In actual fact,
in reality, I said to Michael, "I think I, as Steve
Coogan, should have a scene with my baby, because that
will make people think I'm not a complete twat."
It's a long-winded answer to the question, but with Michael
you don't judge something by what's on the page. It's
a risky thing to say - don't judge the film by the quality
of the script - because normally you can't make a good
film out of a bad script but you can make a bad film out
of a good script; but you know that when he works he brings
something else that you can't quite quantify.
FF: How reflective of your own relationship with
each other is the one we see in the film?
RB: We took aspects of our relationship. Initially
the script was written with the relationship between Steve
and me being meant to mirror that between Walter and Toby,
in the way that Toby is quite deferential towards Walter.
That manifested itself in my character asking Steve for
advice on how to get acting work in America. But I thought
the reality of our relationship was more interesting than
that and less predictable in that over the years it's
been quite a warm but a bit spiky too. We've had our ups
and downs. There is competitiveness but it's a healthy
competitiveness, though in the film we make it less healthy
because in drama or comedy you're always looking for conflict.
We could have highlighted the rather sane aspects of our
relationships I suppose. Over lunch today we were discussing
the assets of a good people carrier. That'd probably be
rather dull...
SC: I actually think that'd be quite funny. Dull
conversations about inconsequential things are actually
quite interesting. I think what you're trying to say is
that we have a good relationship when we try to think
of another project together or something like that. Those
things are interesting to us but to others are actually
dull and not particularly funny.
RB: For this kind of project it would be tweaking
the competitiveness, and what you do for the kind of comedy
that Steve and I do is take an aspect of yourself and
you warp it and you pervert it until it becomes what it
needs to be for the story. So there is some competitiveness
- OK, not quite what's in the film - so we thought let's
use it for this. I'd said that to Michael, and he wasn't
sure but I think he saw us talking on set, messing about,
being ourselves. So the scene that opens the film, in
the make up trailer, is an improvised scene that we shot
halfway through the schedule, simply because it was raining
and we couldn't shoot what we'd planned to shoot outside.
And that then informed a fair bit of the rest of it. It
certainly informed the fact that the final scene, over
the credits, was something we shot about three months
after we finished principal photography because I think
Michael thought it'd be nice to have two bookends to the
film.
SC: The thing about Michael is, I've thought of
a really good analogy-
RB: Is it the tennis one you "thought of"
earlier?
SC: No it's not the tennis one. Michael, when he
directs a film, adapts it to the strengths - certainly
when he's worked with me - of what you do. He doesn't
have a pre-ordained view of exactly what the film should
be like. It's a bit like - ready for this?
RB: Yeah...
SC: A shopping trolley that's got a wonky wheel.
Whenever you push it it goes that way, but Michael doesn't
fight it, he goes that way with the shopping trolley.
He just wants to get up a good head of steam. That's another
analogy.
RB: It's a steam train pushing the trolley... It's
a steam trolley!
SC: Michael's films are like steam trolleys!
RB: So Michael just pushes this trolley and he
doesn't mind where it's going...
SC: As long as it gets there quickly. That sums
him up for me...
FF: This is obviously not your first steam trolley
with Michael, but is this the one that's going to catapult
you into superstardom and inflate your egos into catastrophic
proportions?
RB: Undoubtedly... *laughs*
SC: Well, it's all... I think with Rob, yeah, but
I'm a bit jaded because I always think that every film
I do might be the one that turns things around for me
and might be the thing that finally lays the ghost of
Alan Partridge to rest.
RB: Was that you? I knew that was... I'd been sitting
here going, "I know the face..." A-Ha! Is it?
Unbelievable... Sorry, you were saying?
SC: *tired laugh* Nah, actually it's paled in comparison
with your humour...
(This interview continues at some length on http://www.filmfocus.co.uk/lookat.asp?FilmbaseID=358&FeatureID=61)
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