Task: Story Composition
Input (English): Fact1: Steve Coogan playing himself as arrogant actor with low self-esteem and complicated love life, Fact2: actor Rob Brydon believes role to be of equal importance to Coogan 's, Fact3: Toby 's of Wadman takes place in sequence dreamed by Steve Coogan, Fact4: Yorick in is played by Stephen Fry scene, Fact5: Stephen Fry appears in film as Patrick
Output (English): The film depicts Steve Coogan playing himself as an arrogant actor with low selfesteem and a complicated love life. Coogan is playing the eponymous role in an adaptation of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 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 Coogans, calling himself the colead. The film incorporates several sequences from Tristram Shandy. Not all of these are part of the filmwithinthefilm. The latter are limited to the story of Tristrams conception, birth and christening; Uncle Tobys experiences at the Battle of Namur and Tristrams sudden and accidental circumcision at the age of three. Uncle Tobys wooing of Widow Wadman Gillian Anderson takes place in a sequence dreamed by Steve Coogan and after the cast and crew have viewed the completed film ending, with Walter Shandy fainting at the sight of his wife giving birth, the question How does the book end? is followed by 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! Yorick is not in the filmwithinthefilm; in this scene he is played by Stephen Fry, who appears elsewhere in the film as Patrick, a caricatured version of the actual curator at Shandy Hall. The DVD extras include a scene of Fry talking with the curator he portrays.