Synopsis

Slyly acknowledging public fascination with the movie industry, "Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story" strolls onto a modern film set, complete with insecure actors, scandal-hunting reporters, and balky investors. What begins as a seemingly straight forward attempt to recreate the frenetic novel "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", quickly derails into a behind the scenes document of the film’s actual production. Working triple time Steve Coogan is hilarious as the insecure "Steve Coogan," a shallow actor who is more interested in his cute assistant than the mother of his newborn child. Meanwhile, "Rob Brydon" is trying desperately to convince "Steve Coogan" that his role is a co-lead, not merely a supporting one. As the production threatens to spin out of control, the filmmakers hire Gillian Anderson to fill a much-needed role. Coming off like a madcap collision of "Barry Lyndon" and "24 Hour Party People", Winterbottom’s film is a hilarious, surprisingly tender ode to fatherhood and moviemaking.

What The Critics Say

"Probably the best-known but-I-digress novel in English literature, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, has inspired Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, surely the best but-I-digress movie this side of Adaptation." Eleanor Ringel Gillespie ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION "Coogan is adept at playing himself as a total jerk ... and his performance here is scathingly funny." Sean Means SALT LAKE TRIBUNE "It's pretty funny. You don't actually watch it so much as indulge it and admire its cleverness." Stephen Hunter WASHINGTON POST "Tristram Shandy is that best of all worlds: a continual surprise from one scene to the next." Lewis Beale FILM JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL "The film's playful, subversive and selectively self-referential sensibility is equal parts blarney and bluster, and has the endearing quality of a tall tale told tongue in cheek." Duane Dudek MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

"Even if you don't get all the inside jokes, and the jokes that go inside the inside jokes, I still think you'll find this film to be very, very funny." Richard Roeper EBERT & ROEPER "A sly, delirious homage to the writers, producers, techies and thespians who assemble with the common mission of telling a tale, and then, many months and meltdowns later, move on to the next project -- and paycheck." Steven Rea PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER "The film is hugely enjoyable; it’s reminiscent of Robert Altman in its use of the Scope screen and half-heard dialogue, it contains reminders (in news broadcasts) of the real world going on outside this film production cocoon; but above all it’s witty, dry and extremely intelligent. It's terrific. 4 1/2 STARS" David Stratton ABC AT THE MOVIES "It's a hoot. Just watching those scenes, I can hardly contain myself, I just find them so funny. I think Steve Coogan is really brilliant and he obviously works with Winterbottom superbly. But what I love about it is, I haven't read the novel. mean it's just layer upon layer of deliciousness, this film. 4 STARS" Margaret Pomeranz ABC AT THE MOVIES "Rest assured, you don't have to know a thing about the Shandy novel -- let alone having read it -- to have a lot of fun with this Cock and Bull Story." Jack Garner ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE

The Life Of Laurence Sterne Laurence Sterne was born on November 24, 1713, at Clonmel in Tipperary, Ireland. His father, Roger, was an itinerant army ensign, the black-sheep son of a prominent family of Yorkshire gentry and grandson of the archbishop of York; his mother was the daughter of an army provisioner. Sterne's early childhood was spent traveling between Ireland and England as his father's fortunes dictated; not until he was ten years old did the boy permanently settle in Yorkshire. From 1723 until his father's death in Jamaica in 1731 he was sent to school near Halifax. In 1733 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge. Less than two months after taking his B.A. degree in 1737, Sterne was ordained a deacon and, like many deserving but impoverished young men of his station, embarked on a career in the church. His first appointment was to the curacy of St. Ives, but a year later in 1738 he was invested into the priesthood and named vicar of Suton-on-the-Forest, a village some eight miles north of York. There, in 'a bye corner of the kingdom,' as he later described it, Sterne passed the next twenty years of his life as an unobtrusive yet cultivated rural clergyman. In 1741, after a one-year courtship, he married Elizabeth Lumley, daughter of the vicar of perhaps the richest parish in Yorkshire, and through his wife's influence received additional income by becoming vicar of the neighboring parish of Stillington. It was an unhappy marriage but it did produce a daughter, Lydia, who was born in 1747. During the 1740s and 1750s Sterne engaged in a brief flurry of political writing, and some of his pieces have been identified in surviving issues of the York Gazetteer, a paper representing Whig interests. In addition, he published several sermons; one, 'The Abuses of the Conscience,' is noteworthy because Sterne later included it verbatim in Tristram Shandy. Yet it was the appearance in 1759 of his witty, satiric pamphlet entitled "A Political Romance", which lambasted members of the York church courts for their pettiness and venality, that proved the turning point in Sterne's fortunes. Within the year he was able to offer Robert Dodsley, the most famous printer publisher in London, a manuscript of the first two volumes of "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman". The publication in December 1759 of the initial installment of Tristram Shandy transported Sterne, at the age of forty-six, from his country pulpit to the center of London's literary world. The book was an immediate success. 'Who has not 'Tristram Shandy' read? Is any mortal so ill-bred?' wrote James Boswell in a famous epistle. Sterne was invited to Windsor, and his portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Sterne settled in the parish of Coxwoldthere in a house he named Shandy Hall; the house still stands in this beautiful village fifteen miles north of York. The country parson turned bestselling author basked in his celebrity: 'I wrote, not be fed but to be famous,' he said. Between 1761 and 1767 he brought out seven more volumes of Tristram Shandy. Sterne suffered from tuberculosis and was continually plagued by ill-health. His sole remaining work, "A Sentimental Journey", was published in February 1768; it was based on Sterne's escapades during a seven-month tour by coach through France and Italy. P On March 18, 1768, a month following the appearance of A Sentimental Journey, Laurence Sterne died in London of pleurisy, leaving debts of Ã1,100. Many conflicting rumors surrounded the details of Sterne's burial. Some said he was interred at St. George's Hanover Square cemetery in Paddington. Others maintained his body was dug up only days after the funeral and sold to a professor of anatomy at Cambridge; recognizing Sterne midway through dissection, the physician supposedly returned the stolen corpse to its grave. In 1969 skeletal remains generally acknowledged after scientific examination as Sterne's were reburied in the Coxwold churchyard. The Inside Story Witty, sparkling, seductively wicked are words that immediately spring to mind after seeing Michael Winterbottom's latest film "Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story". I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to see it twice and both times I was impressed with the clever banter, the cast and its scrumptious humour. Like many cinemagoers I wondered at the title, "Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story"? I can say that after watching the film it certainly fits the bill. Winterbottom's film is based on the Laurence Sterne novel, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman." Published in nine volumes from 1759 to 1767, the novel was an immediate success. Loved for its bawdy, satirical humour and structural eccentricities, the book made Sterne a celebrity who was feted in London and Paris. Narrated by its title character, the novel is ostensibly an autobiography. "Tristram Shandy" is a staple of English university curriculum, and it was at university that both Michael Winterbottom and his frequent collaborator, writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, first encountered it. At one point, they considered adapting the book for television, as either a soap opera or sitcom. Three years ago, however, Winterbottom and his partner in Revolution Films, Andrew Eaton, decided to attempt a big screen adaptation. It was nervy undertaking; with its copious digressions and a main character who isn’t even sentient for most of the story, the novel is widely acknowledged as being unfilmable. So why attempt it? "Because it’s funny," offers Winterbottom. However, when Cottrell Boyce went to write a straight adaptation, his screenplay ran a mere thirty pages. "That was all the plot there was in 500 pages," marvels producer Andrew Eaton. "So much for a long-running sitcom. We couldn’t even stretch it to ninety minutes." "So much of the book was about the process of writing the book," Winterbottom notes. "The only way to mirror that was to do a film about making a film. "Tristram Shandy" is a book about telling a story, and Sterne has a lot of fun with that. But underneath all that, the digressions and the surface complexities, it’s really just a daft but heart-warming story about a bunch of people living in a house and behaving idiotically in their own way. Something I thought could apply quite easily to a film set." Winterbottom's film is one of two periods, then and now. The period part of the film focuses on the basic storyline in the book: the family story of Walter Shandy and the birth, erroneous naming, and accidental circumcision of his son Tristram. The second half of the film offers a bird’s-eye view of a film crew at work. Mirroring their 18th Century forebears, these 21st Century men and women are involved with a birth, this time of the movie, and they bring their individual quirks and concerns to the task at hand. The two main actors are engaged in an unspoken rivalry that fuels their clever banter, much to the enjoyment of the crew. While the filmmakers bring their best efforts to bear, there are inevitably circumstances beyond their control. "Everything that’s in the second half is a version of something that has happened to us on at least one of our films," Andrew Eaton affirms. "Some lines are verbatim, such as when one of the financiers says to the producer, 'Don’t try and hold us to ransom.' That’s actually been said to us." Everything in the film revolves around gifted comic actor Steve Coogan, who plays Tristram Shandy, his father Walter, and a fictionalized version of himself. Coogan is superb in the lead role producing what can only be described as a brilliant performance. "Steve was very open to the idea of playing a bad version of himself, and that’s one of the reasons why he is so brilliant to work with," notess Winterbottom. "I like the idea of not making people better than they are. We tend to equate good behaviour with good people, but everyone does good and bad things. In our film, you watch Steve Coogan do things he shouldn’t be doing, but you still understand and like him." "Often the best place to source material is from the truth," says Coogan. "For those who know me this is pretty edgy, but it works for people who don’t know what is true and what isn’t. In America they don’t care about Steve Coogan, but it still works as an insecure actor doing things he shouldn’t." Joining Coogan in the cast is the man he claims to have 'discovered', Rob Brydon. "I always joke that I discovered Rob. Well," Coogan says, "actually I did. But he blossomed very quickly in his own right and then he got very comfortable with me very quickly and started taking the piss. In an affectionate way." With the two main characters cast co-producer and casting director Wendy Brazington revealed that the "remaining cast quickly fell into place. Everyone loved the script and actors enjoy working with Michael because they like improvisation and they trust him. Plus it’s a film about filmmaking, which actors love." Olivier Award winner Jeremy Northam agrees. "I enjoyed the script because it has a real sense of fun and mischief about it and I’ve a real fondness for the book," he said. "To transfer some of the spirit of the book onto the screen and merge that with a contemporary scenario was very appealing. And I had wanted to work with Michael for a very long time." So, did working on a film within a film create any problems? "There were a couple of days that I had to remember which cameras were fake and which were real," admits Dylan Moran who plays Dr Slop and of course, himself. "Everybody was mirroring the reality; you had actors being actors and actors being crew. And crew being actors. The whole thing became a hall of mirrors." While Winterbottom's film depicts being on a film set as 'circus-like', Northam feels the film does hit "the right tone of wry affection. As an actor, I can say that a film set is my most favourite place in the world. People generally have an odd conception about what a film set is actually like and it’s easy to take the piss: producers only care about money; actors only care about what they look like and how much time they have on screen. It’s perfectly fair game to poke fun,” says Northam. “But Michael has come up with something that doesn’t have a cynical bone in its body: the film is taking a generous, kind-hearted laugh at it all." "Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story" is worlds apart from Winterbottom's controversial last effort "9 Songs" and should not be missed. It is a cinematic indulgence all fans of clever storytelling will devour ravenously. The Verdict "Having seen "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" twice I can guarantee that while it isn't filled with riotous laugh your guts out comedy it is so witty, so funny in the sense that you knowingly laugh at just about everything these twits get up to. Funny? It's funny! Clever? It is! Entertaining? Wickedly, deliriously so! 4 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY" stars .......
Steve Coogan ["24 Hour Party People", "Ella Enchanted", "Around the World in 80 Days" and "The Alibi"]; Rob Brydon ["First Knight", "24 Hour Party People" and "MirrorMask"]; Naomie Harris ["28 Days Later", "After the Sunset" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"]; Kelly Macdonald ["Gosford Park", "Intermission", "Nanny McPhee" and "Lassie"], Raymond Waring ["Lucky Break", "24 Hour Party People", "Heartlands" and "Finding Neverland"] and Gillian Anderson ["Three at Once", "The Turning", "The X Files" and "The House of Mirth"] as Widow Wadman/Gillian Anderson.
"TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY" was .......
directed by Michael Winterbottom ["The Claim", "24 Hour Party People", "Code 46" and "9 Songs"]; screenplay by Martin Hardy ["Welcome to Sarajevo", "24 Hour Party People", "Code 46" and "Millions"]; original story by Laurence Sterne ["A Sentimental Journey" and "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman"]; cinematography by Marcel Zyskind ["In This World" and "The Road to Guantanamo"]; costume design by Charlotte Walter ["I Capture the Castle" and "Lassie"]; production design by John Paul Kelly ["24 7: Twenty Four Seven", "Bloody Sunday", "I Capture the Castle" and "Lassie"]; edited by Peter Christelis ["In This World", "Code 46" and "Haven"]; produced by Andrew Eaton ["Resurrection Man", "Wonderland" and "Bright Young Things"]. Run Time 94 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2006 - Madman Films - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2006 - Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved