by SARAH ROWLAND

Getting lowered into a mastodon-sized meathole may not be the kind of emotionally charged drama that will earn Steve Coogan an Oscar, but according to the British thespian, ridding Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story of all clichés was more important than critical acclaim. “I remember thinking even if this film ends up being a load of self-indulgent rubbish, at least people won’t be able to say, ‘Oh it’s just another one of those person-being-stuffed-into-a-giant-vagina films.’ Last I checked, there weren’t too many of them around,” says Coogan, who sat down with the Mirror during last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

And he’s not just tooting his own horn here. Director Michael Winterbottom concurs that the 40-year-old actor was quite accommodating when it came time to dive down the foam rubber birth canal.

“He’s really good about that sort of thing actually,” says Winterbottom, who collaborated with Coogan in 2002’s 24 Hour Party People. “He was a tad reluctant when he read it in the script. But on the day of the shot, he was great. Unfortunately, we hadn’t realized how complicated it was going to be getting him in and out of there or what a strange colour it would be.”

Intricate intertwining

Finding just the right shade for man-made beef curtains wasn’t the only challenge in making this film within a film, within a film. Coogan plays three intertwining characters: the title role, a nobleman who walks us through his life story; the role of Shandy’s father, who re-enacts Tristram’s birth and conception; as well as himself, in the movie’s fourth-wall-breaking behind-the-scenes footage.

In keeping with the spirit of Laurence Sterne’s book, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, originally published in the mid-18th century, Winterbottom’s adaptation cleverly weaves several narrative lines so that you rarely know what you’re watching: it could be the Shandy biopic, rushes of the movie, actual shooting or scenes from the making-of-the-movie mock doc. Adding to the mix, there were two independent documentary crews filming the controlled chaos. It’s an ambitious premise and one that Coogan wasn’t sure they could pull off. In fact, it wasn’t until the film received extremely favourable reviews at TIFF that he stopped worrying whether people would get it or not.

“My fear was that people wouldn’t understand that there’s a method in Michael’s madness and would watch me thinking, ‘Who is this wanker and why is he talking to himself on camera? This is not a movie,’” says Coogan.

Another aspect of making Tristram Shandy that proved challenging for Coogan was playing himself. “It’s something that if you think about it too much, you kind of go a little crazy,” says Coogan. “It’s not for everyone. If you’re someone who is psychologically vulnerable, for instance, I don’t think it would be a very healthy exercise. But then it wasn’t as if the part was some sort of psychoanalysis of me. It was a tool to use to help bring the novel to life. It was just a mechanism to do that. So I was quite comfortable with it and quite enjoyed it in a strange way.”

The ego has landed

Actually, he seems to out-and- out relish it. At heart, this film is a piss-take on Coogan’s (or at least the movie version’s) enormous ego and philandering ways. When he’s not having anxiety attacks about his co-star Rob Brydon getting more wardrobe attention than him, he’s making passes at the production assistant—this despite the fact his girlfriend (played by Kelly Macdonald of Trainspotting fame) and newborn son are on set, visiting him.

“He’s very, very willing to push the bad aspects of his character and show traits that aren’t very flattering,” says Winterbottom. “It just seems to be an area that he’s really adept at manipulating.”

The knack for coming across as such a likeable prick combined with his wickedly dry delivery has garnered a lot of press ink in Britain, where Coogan is often referred to as a comic genius—a label he must be flattered by, yes?

“Well, it’s better than being called an asshole,” says Coogan. “But it can sometimes be a bit of an albatross around your neck. Because then people—be it journalists, critics or even friends—see it in print and say, ‘Yeah, well I don’t think he’s that great.’ It’s a double-edged sword, really. So I try not to go around thinking, ‘Am I a comic genius or am I not a comic genius?’ I just try and get on with my work.”

“They used to only call Sellers a comic genius,” says Brydon, who plays Tristram’s emasculated uncle—and himself, of course. “Nowadays the term gets bandied about everywhere. I’ve been called a comic genius and I know at least 10 friends that have been called that by big reputable newspapers. Yes, he’s brilliant and he may very well be a comic genius. But I think it would feel odd as someone who knows him as well as I do to call him that. All I know is that he’s a good bloke and bloody funny.”

Competitive compatriots

If you detected a touch of one-upmanship in Brydon’s response, you’re not alone. It’s something Winterbottom tapped into when he saw Coogan and Brydon play off each other in 24 Hour Party People.

“Rob really likes to compete and it became very clear early on that it would be much more fun for him if he could play more of a rival in Tristram Shandy,” says Winterbottom, before adding, “I assume that underneath it all, they actually like each other.”

According to Coogan, Winterbottom’s assessment is spot on: “I do love Rob but he irritates me sometimes. He likes to wind me up a

little. But since we have this huge respect for each other, we didn’t mind pushing each other’s buttons... sometimes.”

In the process of taking the piss out of each other, they made Winterbottom’s job that much easier.

“I just worked on the premise that they’re really funny and I’m not, so I didn’t try to second-guess them,” says Winterbottom, who decided to let the two comics have it out in two improvised scenes that bookend the film. “I just concentrated on the shape of the story and the rhythm of the film. Other than that I didn’t really have to do anything.”

Blooper-free

With so much scripted and unscripted hijinx going on, you’d think there would be a lot of hilarious bloopers. Not so.

“I’m afraid I’m not much of a corpser [British term for choker],” says Brydon. “If I make a mistake, I just go, ‘Can we start again?’ You know I can count on my hand—or rather the hand of someone who’s had a very bad industrial accident—the number of times that I’ve corpsed in my career. I just don’t do it. I don’t know what that says about me.”

Bloopers or no bloopers, Brydon says he can look back on the making of Tristram Shandy as a perfect working experience: “From my point of view, it will be quite hard to beat.”

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story opens Friday, March 24

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