Brydon’s crowd-pleasing instincts are clearly another long-established
topic (‘That old chestnut, yeah,’ he groans when Coogan raises the
subject. ‘This is one of his themes’). Similarly, if we talk about
either one of them for any length of time, the other resorts to
conspicuous attention-seeking: Brydon fiddles with his phone and rolls
his eyes; later, when he reminisces about an early viewing experience
(‘When I was a kid, I remember watching “Where Eagles Dare”...’),
Coogan lets out a sigh of exaggerated boredom. ‘He’s exhaling loudly,’
Brydon coos indulgently, as if watching a baby. ‘Put down: “‘When I was
a kid…’ Steve exhales loudly”.’ All that’s missing is the pipe and
slippers…
Feature continues
Such mutual appreciation is all the more charming given the relishably
spiky rapport the pair display in their most substantial collaboration
to date, ‘A Cock and Bull Story’, Michael Winterbottom’s loose
adaptation of ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’.
Initially, the film offers a reasonably faithful account of Lawrence
Sterne’s infamously tricksy novel. In the book, Shandy gets so caught
up in describing his attempts to write his life story that he never
quite gets round to the subject itself; the film modifies this chattily
self-referential first-person narration by having Shandy (Coogan)
wandering through the events he tries to describe, addressing the
camera and occasionally engaging with the characters – including Brydon
as Tristram’s ingenuous Uncle Toby – or indeed the actors playing them.
Just when you’ve got used to that, the film withdraws through another
frame to tell the story of the film production itself, with Coogan and
Brydon playing heightened versions of themselves amid the d logistical
and emotional vagaries of a twenty-first century feature production.
It’s one of the smartest films of recent years, offering a consistently
challenging, self-aware viewing experience with few recent cinematic
precedents; the ones that come to mind are Charlie Kaufman’s
‘Adaptation’ and Winterbottom’s own ‘24 Hour Party People’, in which
Coogan’s Tony Wilson performed a similar function to his Shandy here,
leading the audience through his own story. (Incidentally, the real
Wilson pops up in ‘Cock and Bull…’ to interview Coogan.) What makes
‘Cock and Bull…’ terrific fun as well as very clever is the needling
rivalry through which its leads play on one another’s insecurities and
ambitions: ‘Steve’ is centre-stage as neurotic leading man, young
father and tabloid celeb struggling with damage limitation over a
lap-dancer’s kiss-and-tell story; ‘Rob’ is the talented up-and-comer
who frets about his status while making Steve anxious about his own.
When he isn’t worrying about the colour of his teeth or size of his
bald spot, Rob impersonates Steve for the crew’s amusement or tells
him, ‘You could become a great classical actor and be taken seriously’;
when he isn’t agonising over his next role or his attractive runner,
Steve pooh-poohs Rob’s aspiration to ‘co-lead’ status and tells people,
‘I think he’s a bit obsessed with me’. There’s friction over who comes
higher in the credits, who has bigger heels on their costume shoes, who
does the best Pacino impression… As in real life, it’s a running
competition in which to laugh at the other’s joke is to admit defeat;
unlike real life, the defeats really hurt, the nerves are more raw. Was
there any risk of causing actual offence?
‘We know each other well enough to not mind being a bit personal in the
banter,’ Coogan explains. ‘Even though it looks like we’re fighting
each other we’re not actually – in terms of the comedy what we do is
one of us will veer down a certain path [and] we’ll both go there
together.’ ‘There’s a rhythm and there’s a trust with each other,’
Brydon adds. ‘And you can take it slow.’ It sounds almost erotic.
‘Improvising is a little bit like flirting, isn’t it?’ he grants – the
tentative sending out of signals, the attention to the response, the
effort to keep in step. ‘It is,’ Coogan agrees, ‘it’s like a non-sexual
flirtation.’ ‘Yeah. So far.’ Coogan flinches. ‘Oh, please! Urgh,
horrible! Or is that a case of the lady doth protest too much…?’
The next project?
