6 Unfilmable Books That Actually Got Made Into Movies

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

The novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne is a book about a man failing to write his autobiography. So, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is naturally a film about failing to make a film of Tristram Shandy.

It follows a difficult, self-centered actor (Steve Coogan) playing Tristram Shandy in an adaptation of Sterne’s novel. Coogan’s love life forms the center of the film, as well as his interactions with fellow actors, including Rob Brydon, Gillian Anderson, and Dylan Moran, all of whom play themselves and characters from the novel. Interweaved through the narrative are events from the novel, both taking place in the film-within-a-film and as part of Coogan’s meta-narrative.

The film meanders between two fictional worlds, acting both as a faux-documentary and an adaptation. This mirrors the novel’s tangential narrative, in which Shandy wanders off on discussions of his family’s past, rumination on philosophy and romance, and stories about his Uncle Toby (here also played by Rob Brydon). Interspersed throughout the film are discussions of the book they’re enacting, adding yet another twist to a complicated metafictional narrative.

In some ways, Tristan Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is an incoherent film, failing to be either a faux documentary or an actual adaptation. But that is also its project: it is film about failing to make a film of a book about a man failing to write a book about himself. So if it does fail to maintain coherent narrative, perhaps that’s the point. You can’t get much more meta-narrational than that.