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A Cock and Bull Story

A Cock and Bull Story (released in the United States and Australia as Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story) is a 2006 British comedy directed by Michael Winterbottom. It is a film-within-a-film, featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves as egotistical actors during the making in a screen adaptation of Laurence Sterne's 18th century novel Tristram Shandy. Gillian Anderson and Keeley Hawes also play themselves in addition to their Tristram Shandy roles.

The film was the last in a long working relationship between Winterbottom and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce. After some dispute, Boyce decided to take his name off the script, instead using the pseudonym 'Martin Hardy'.

Plot

A Cock and Bull Story depicts Steve Coogan playing himself as an egotistical actor with low self esteem and a complicated love life. Coogan is playing the titular role in an adaptation of Tristram Shandy being filmed at a stately home. He constantly spars with actor Rob Brydon, who is playing Uncle Toby, and believes his role to be of equal importance to Coogan's, calling himself the "co-lead".

The film incorporates several sequences from the film-within-the-film of Tristram Shandy; these are limited to the story of Tristram's conception, birth and christening; Uncle Toby's experiences at the Battle of Namur; Tristram's sudden and accidental circumcision at the age of three; and the concluding scene of the novel, in which Yorick says "It is a story about a Cock and a Bull - and the best of its kind that ever I heard!"

Exhibition

A Cock and Bull Story was released on both Region 1 and Region 2 DVD in July 2006.

Cast

Steve Coogan – Tristram Shandy/Walter Shandy/Steve Coogan
Rob Brydon – Captain Toby Shandy/Rob Brydon
Keeley Hawes – Elizabeth Shandy/Keeley Hawes
Shirley Henderson – Susannah/Shirley Henderson
Gillian Anderson – Widow Wadman/Gillian Anderson
Dylan Moran – Dr. Slop/Dylan Moran
David Walliams – Curate
Stephen Fry – Parson Yorick/Patrick Curator/Stephen Fry
Jeremy Northam – Mark (director)
Ian Hart – Joe (writer)
James Fleet – Simon (producer)
Naomie Harris – Jennie
Kelly Macdonald – Jenny
Mark Williams – Ingoldsby
Tony Wilson – TV interviewer (as Anthony H. Wilson)

Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack is notable for featuring numerous excerpts from Nino Rota's score for the Federico Fellini film 8 1/2, itself a self-reflexive work about the making of a film. Other non-diegetic musical references are made to Amarcord, The Draughtsman's Contract, Smiles of a Summer Night and Barry Lyndon. Michael Nyman, composer of The Draughtsman's Contract provides a new arrangement of the Handel Sarabande feautred in the latter film, while the pre-existing tracks of The Draughtsman's Contract (the original soundtrack recordings--the score has been rerecorded numerous times) serve as a temp track to film of the Sterne material.