A Cock and Bull Story A Cock and Bull Story A Cock and Bull Story (marketed in Australia, New Zealand and the United States as Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story) is a 2005 British comedy film 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 of a screen adaptation of Laurence Sterne's 18th century metafictional novel "Tristram Shandy". Gillian Anderson and Keeley Hawes also play themselves in addition to their "Tristram Shandy" roles. Since the book is about a man attempting but failing to write his autobiography, the film takes
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman "grave and sober account" of Cicero's grief for the death of his daughter Tullia. His text is filled with allusions and references to the leading thinkers and writers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Pope and Swift were major influences on Sterne and "Tristram Shandy". Satires of Pope and Swift formed much of the humour of "Tristram Shandy", but Swift's sermons and Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" also contributed ideas and frameworks Sterne explored throughout the novel. Other major influences are Cervantes, and Montaigne's "Essays", as well as the significant inter-textual debt to "The Anatomy of Melancholy", Swift's "Battle of