Coogan's Bluff
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pROfilEs cOOgaN’s Bluff Britain’s reigning king of the comedy of embarrassment. BY jOHN laHR n a sweltering morning in mid- He specializes in creating characters, March, three executive produc- not jokes. Each comic persona has a dis- ersO for HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusi- tinct world view, a unique idiom, and asm,” David Mandel, Alec Berg, and a richly imagined backstory. Coogan’s Jeff Schaffer, lolled around in shorts at humor often trades on the almost Ori- the patio table of a Malibu beachfront ental complexity of the British class sys- house waiting for the actors to arrive so tem, which means that his most mem- that the day’s shooting could begin. All orable characters—the beer-swilling were graduates of the Harvard Lam- Mancunian slacker Paul Calf and his poon and of “Seinfeld.” A month earlier, sluttish sister Pauline, for instance— they had put the British comedian and don’t always travel well beyond the actor Steve Coogan up for the role of borders of the British Isles. (“It really Dr. Bright, a psychiatrist whose advice bugs me,” Paul Calf said in one routine. lands Larry (Larry David), the antihero “They say, ‘Oh, David Beckham—he’s of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” in a world not very clever.’ Yeah. They don’t say, of woe with his wife, Cheryl (Cheryl ‘Stephen Hawking—shit at football.’ ”) Hines), in the penultimate episode of In Britain, however, they are house- the sixth and possibly final season of hold names, as much as Jerry, George, the series, which airs November 4th. It Elaine, and Kramer are here. If you was a meatier role than most guest ap- were alive in England in the nineties, pearances, and the producers had been Coogan’s character Alan Partridge was hoping, according to Schaffer, to “get one of the cultural icons by which you someone great.” They were all Coogan measured time, a Malvolio of media fans. Larry David, however, knew noth- personalities, on a direct line of wit be- ing about him. tween Basil Fawlty and David Brent. In 2005, “The Comedian’s Come- A hapless talk-show host demoted to dian,” a British television special, asked radio d.j., Partridge was mean-spirited, more than three hundred respected com- self-aggrandizing, status-seeking, for- edy professionals worldwide to rank their ever tempest-tossed in the Sea of Me. favorite comedians. Coogan came in at He was also a fun-house reflection of No. 17, just ahead of Charlie Chaplin Tory Britain, the ultimate Thatcherite (No. 18), just behind Peter Sellers (No. Middle Englander. His three series on 14), and well ahead of many more famous BBC2 riveted the country from 1994 to figures, such as Eddie Murphy (No. 32), 2002, attracting as much as twenty per Bill Cosby (No. 47), and Mel Brooks cent of the audience share and selling (No. 50). (Larry David was No. 23.) The more than half a million DVDs. forty-two-year-old Coogan is, in some For a few years now, Coogan has ways, a British version of Larry David. been sowing the seeds of a success- He has captivated British audiences for ful acting career as well. He is the only more than a decade, with a run of enor- British comedian since Dudley Moore mously successful television series which to make significant inroads into the are the kind of high-water marks of com- movie market, with fine performances edy in Britain that “Seinfeld” (for which in such films as Jim Jarmusch’s “Coffee Larry David co-wrote sixty episodes) and and Cigarettes” (2003), Michael Win- “Curb Your Enthusiasm” are for Amer- terbottom’s “24-Hour Party People” ican viewers. (2002) and “A Cock and Bull Story” In his shows, Coogan, like David, (2005), and Sofia Coppola’s “Marie An- has accentuated the negative and ex- toinette” (2006), as well as some not so plored the comedy of embarrassment. fine outings in such big-budget Holly- 42 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 5, 2007 TNY—2007_11_05—PAGE 42—133SC. wood movies as “Around the World in Eighty Days” (2004) and “Night at the Museum” (2006). By Coogan’s second day on the set of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” according to Mandel, “it was just like he’s one of the regulars. It’s very simple to see when Lar- ry’s having fun.” Mandel was holding the day’s script—a single piece of paper with seven typed lines—which gave the ba- sics of the plot that Coogan, David, and Hines would flesh out through improvi- sation over the next eight hours: Larry, in an effort to get himself out of the dog- house with Cheryl, who has moved to a rental in Malibu, takes Dr. Bright there and tries to persuade him to accept the blame for everything that has gone wrong. As the crew positioned the lights around the wicker living-room furni- ture and adjusted the curtains of the bay window overlooking the glassy Pacific, Coogan, in conservative psychiatrist garb—blue gabardine suit, suède shoes, and glasses—milled around the set in a kind of focussed, anonymous solitude. Once the actors had blocked out the scene, he and David began to improvise an argument about who should take re- sponsibility for David’s marital crisis. “I’m taking ninety per cent of the blame,” Coogan said. “I’m asking you to take ten per cent.” David refused; mayhem en- sued. After each take, the writers hud- dled around the actors and rearranged the syntax of the scene, clarifying ideas, cutting excesses, adjusting words, reset- ting props, and debating character points. Gradually, they built up a gram- mar and a rhythm for the exchange. Steve Coogan is, in some ways, a British version of Larry David. Around the fifth take, as the argument about Dr. Bright’s percentage of re- scribbling on my notepad and sashayed Coogan seemed almost embarrassed sponsibility escalated, David began to over. “Why did I let you on the set?” he to be the focus of attention on Larry Da- crack up in the middle of the scene. asked, then dictated, “Larry David vid’s set. “It’s someone else’s show,” he Two or three times, he started to speak, looked pensive before the shot,” and said at the lunch break. “I want to do in- then collapsed in guffaws. “I’m so sorry,” headed off with a pensive look on his teresting stuff without overwhelming.” he said more than once. On the sixth face. I asked him what was so funny While he waited for a van to take him to take, Coogan’s exasperation—“I take about Coogan. “He’s just got a funny his trailer, a couple of miles down the one hundred per cent!”—set David way,” he said, turning back. “When he Pacific Coast Highway, he said, “I find wheezing like a tire deflating. He cov- started yelling, I hadn’t heard him yell it quite inspiring. It’s like playing tennis ered his face. “I can’t help it,” he said. before. That really made me laugh. I with someone who’s really good. It raises On the seventh take, Coogan nailed it. cannot keep a straight face when people your game.” Even when he climbed into He spoke of Larry as being under his yell at me on the show. In life, of course, the van beside David, Hines, and the “auspices”—a pompous term that some- I cower.” David went on, “He plays con- producers, who were heading to a local how captured the preposterousness of fusion and ineptitude very well.” Schaffer sushi restaurant, he maintained a polite, the man and his situation. “That was added, “Steve’s able to get a lot of com- almost shy reserve. David was talking ko ko S ri pretty wonderful,” Mandel said, under edy on reactions. He’s skilled enough to about his diet, about Coogan’s comedy, T r E his breath, and called, “Cut.” know that he’s gonna get huge laughs by about something that the character rob During a break, David noticed me saying nothing.” George had said on “Seinfeld.” The van THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 5, 2007 43 TNY—2007_11_05—PAGE 43—133SC.—livE ArT r16741 swung into the show’s base camp to drop Coogan off. “I respect you all. Goodbye,” he said as he got out. a KOsMOs “ he spirituality of imperfection is You lay in your last sleep, not-sleep, what interests me,” Coogan said of head tilted stiffly to the right on the pillow hisT comedy. In life, Coogan’s imperfec- at a sharper angle than when you bent over poems, tions have landed him, variously, in ther- year after year, and we plucked at each other’s lines, apy, in rehab, and in the British tabloids, where he regularly sees himself depicted as if now you considered some even starker question. as a Viagra-gobbling, coked-up libertine Your I.V. tubes were gone. Your arms were bruised. with a sweet tooth for threesomes. In A blue cloth cap enfolded your pale, bald head. 1996, Coogan’s four-year relationship It was too late to give you the lavender shawl I’d imagined with the lawyer Anna Cole ended—six months before their daughter, Clare, was more for my sake than for yours. born—after tales surfaced of his bedding Your mouth was suddenly tender, the mouth of a girl. another woman on a mattress covered in You had come very far, to come here. ten-pound notes. In 2002, Coogan Never one not to look at things squarely, hosted “a bevy of lap dancers” in his hotel room.