Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon Interview

Even the basic story of this film sounds highly complicated - how was the idea pitched to you Steve?
Coogan: "The original script 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 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 wouldn't be a clich©d 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."

Were you worried that it wouldn't work at all?
Coogan: "It did worry me slightly. It seemed a bit risky, as it proved to a lot of the funding people who weren't interested in putting any money into it at all. They said it was a waste of money, it was self indulgent, no-one cares, and I realised that even the parts of the script that are about Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan aren't really just 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."

How did you deal with the problem of the financiers?
Coogan: "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 out. So that became one of the scenes in the film, Michael just thought that was interesting and he put it in the film."

How reflective of your own relationship with each other is the one we see in the film?
Brydon: "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 it 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 a competitiveness. 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."

Coogan: "I actually think that would be rather funny, perversely. 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, those things are interesting to us but to others are actually dull and not particularly funny."

Brydon: "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, pervert it until it becomes what it needs to be for the story. So as there is some competitiveness, I thought 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."

Coogan: "The thing about Michael is, I've thought of a really good analogy, 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 what the film should be like. It's a bit like 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."

Brydon: "It's a steam trolley."

Coogan: "Michael's films are like steam trolleys."

How is it Steve, working with someone who you know so well like Rob?
Coogan: "When you work with people who don't take their eye off the ball, I know he won't do anything that will make him look literally stupid rather than stupid in a funny way. When you're with people who won't let themselves down then you're in good company. I've used the tennis analogy before, but Rob's like having a good tennis partner. He raises your game. With Rob you know that you're both in tune with each other. You're sensitive to it. I think if you've got any competence as a comic actor you can do the funny stuff but you also listen to the other actor's performance and respond to them in ways that find the comedy. Sometimes I'll be led by Rob and sometimes he'll be led by me, it sort of shifts, it's really fruitful, stimulating and enjoyable."

Brydon: "When you're improvising, you can have people who are okay at it, but when it's someone like Steve it's at another level. An obvious example of this is to with pauses, and being comfortable at leaving pauses. If you're improvising with somebody who's not quite so good at it you're afraid to leave a pause because their instinct is to fill it. Where there's silence they're going to fill it with something funny. But Steve and I are very comfortable just to let things sit, but also being aware that the other person may be teeing something up. There's lots going on in that. Someone who is not quite as good as that would talk a lot more, and would want to jump in. You don't get it then, everything becomes very questioning when they're doing it. It's pretty good but it's not really good."

Coogan: "You can be comfortable with silences, and knowing that can be as interesting to the audience as when you're talking. But that comes from experience."

How important is it to the pair you that this film does well in America particularly?
Brydon: "From a career point of view for someone like me it's just great to be having more than three lines in a movie and be making a bit of an impact in it. I'm very pleased because I'm doing the humour that I think of as my kind of humour and I'm very happy to see that on the screen. People always say 'America, America'; I've never yet been to America and not felt a bit 'urrgh' about being over there, away from home. I'm sure that will change if I had some wonderful offer I think, but there isn't a great hunger in me to go to America I have to say."

Coogan: "I've got mixed feelings about it because 24 Hour Party People was noticed more by the cognoscenti in America than it was here. It got good reviews here but it wasn't really noticed, whereas in America - in terms of the film industry at least - lots of directors saw that film and then familiarised themselves with my work because they enjoyed it so much. They knew about that before they learnt about Alan Partridge. They asked themselves who this British character was, and it lead to some interesting work over there."