by Steve Coogan
In my head I kept going over the short speech I’d scribbled down at breakfast. And then suddenly he was in front of us, a big grin on his face.
‘This is Philomena Lee,’ I said. ‘Our message is your message.’
He nodded. He shook my hand, Philomena’s hand and Jane’s hand, blessing us as he did so.
Philomena said thank you. The Pope said thank you in return and nodded, grinning more than ever.
He said he was familiar with the film and knew of Philomena’s story. But of course he wasn’t going to pass comment on it or get into any kind of discussion.
Philomena felt a huge weight had been lifted from her; in blessing her as he shook her hand, the Pope had forgiven her. However much she loved and missed her son, and however wrong she knew the sisters had been, she also disapproved of her own ‘disobedience’.
Anyone brought up as a Catholic learns very early on about obedience and disobedience. When I went to my first confession at the age of nine, I had no idea what to say and so was given some ideas.
‘Bless me, Father, these are my sins. I was rude to my mum and dad. I answered back. I was disobedient.’
I did absently cross myself during the papal audience, but I did it out of habit and out of respect. Equally, I don’t have to be as rigid as Richard Dawkins, even though I’m more sympathetic to his views. I don’t believe in religious dogma, but I do still have a slight romantic and cultural attachment to Catholicism. It’s part of me, it’s what formed me.
I don’t think you have to try to embrace Catholicism or kick it to death. And I feel I have a right to take an interest. I don’t believe in God. I know one can never be certain, but I’ve always felt agnosticism is for cowards.
I thought it ironic, too, that the Church of my childhood, the Church I’ve left behind, briefly figured so prominently in my life. Taking Philomena to meet the Pope felt perfect. I can’t pretend it happened organically. Harvey Weinstein was there at every turn, using his unorthodox methods to help the film on its journey to the Oscars. But the film was about so much more than an awards campaign; it was about something real.
When I heard that the people behind the film Noah had also sought an audience, I thought it was fatuous. What did they expect the Pope to say? ‘Oh yes, that was a brilliantly accurate, literal interpretation of something which never actually happened.’
I mean, the Catholic Church has its faults, but a blindly literal creationist interpretation of the Old Testament isn’t one of them.
*
That afternoon we all went back to the Vatican to host a screening of Philomena. The papal chair was there, in the middle of this large, wood-panelled room. Bishop Sanchez and Monsignor Guillermo Karcher, one of the Pope’s ceremonialists, sat behind the empty chair.
At a certain point it became clear that the Pope wasn’t going to turn up, so I had to introduce the film to the assembled throng of church dignitaries, friends of the Vatican, and Cynthia McFadden, a reporter from ABC News.
I felt immense pressure.
My uncomfortable conversation with the senior sister at the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary epitomised the attitude of the Church, so I had to steel myself and couch the introduction in conciliatory terms, framing it as an olive branch, an opportunity for a mea culpa.
It was more than a little surreal to watch Sanchez and Karcher as they sat very still when Judi Dench, as Philomena, said, ‘I didn’t even know I had a clitoris, Martin.’ They even appeared to laugh when I later said, as Martin, ‘Fucking Catholics.’
After the screening, we talked to the Bishop and the Monsignor about the ongoing adoption issues in Ireland and the Irish Church’s refusal to be transparent. Philomena, Jane and Susan Lohan were brilliant; their collective passion for the subject would stop anyone in their tracks.
The Bishop listened attentively to Susan’s requests regarding the Irish Church and the Irish government and said he would contact his counterpart in Ireland. He added that Pope Francis wanted to acknowledge mistakes made by the Church and to be open to criticism. It seems the ‘little monsters’, as Pope Francis called poorly trained priests, have yet to adapt to the enlightened attitude of their own leader.
When I said to Sanchez that there were people who were critical of the film in America who called themselves Catholics, he said, ‘You don’t need to worry about those people. We are not those people.’
I kept glancing at Philomena’s face. She is a very composed woman, but I could see she was thrilled to be there. Unburdened of the guilty secret she had kept for fifty years, here she was in the belly of the beast. And the only sin being discussed was the Church’s.
I learned something about myself during this time too. I learned that it’s OK to acknowledge your weaknesses. It’s fine. Not only is it fine, but it makes you stronger, rather paradoxically.
It is generally thought that fallibility is wrong. A large number of people think that you can’t openly say you’re not very good at something, or that you shouldn’t admit to making a mistake. In actual fact, the opposite is true. Admitting to weakness is empowering. It liberates you to take risks in the knowledge that potential failure is OK.
It has taken me decades to fully understand this, and now I’m almost addicted to the risk of failure. I love the idea of doing something that might not be very good and the adrenalin that comes from creative fear.
*
While it’s clear that the Church can no longer hide behind the cloak of impunity, a film like Philomena can only pull at the thread.
Still, as it turned out, Philomena and the Philomena Project effected a change in Irish government policy in terms of access to information. After refusing to tackle historical adoption issues for so long, the government has now publicly said that it is the Church’s duty to provide information to help children find their parents and vice versa. The film reignited the adoption debate in Ireland, a debate that some elements of the Church clearly wished would remain unheard.
Although I didn’t yet know that Irish policy would change, when we left the Vatican in our convoy of chauffeur-driven black Mercedes I did momentarily feel like a mini-Bono. (Funnily enough, we bumped into Bono and the rest of U2 a number of times on our travels. Bono ended up dancing with Philomena at one point, despite the fact that she insisted on calling The Edge ‘The Egg’.)
The visit to the Vatican was a surreal experience. It was almost as if I was in a film, in the sense that I felt I was on the outside, watching it all unfold.
A decade or so previously, I would never have had the confidence to stand in the heart of the Vatican to introduce the film and frame the issues brought up in it in a diplomatic way. Although I felt nervous, I also felt I was capable of doing it.
Sometimes you end up thinking, ‘Oh, I suppose I’m a grown-up now.’
CHAPTER 8
IN THE YEARS before I started work on Philomena, I was cut adrift. The people I’d written Partridge with – Armando Iannucci, Peter Baynham – had gone off to do their own thing. If I tried to talk to either of them about doing an Alan Partridge film, they would both drag their feet. It had been talked about for too long.
Understandably, they were both fed up with the character. Half an hour with Alan can be quite entertaining, but imagine spending eight hours a day with him for months.
To use a Bob Monkhouse line, I had a bed with four bad sides to it. I think Armando and Peter were also a bit fed up with me. My abrasive northernness was compounded by my self-induced post-narcotic headache.
I knew some people were already sharpening their knives in anticipation of the Partridge film being awful. But I was driven by my determination not to allow anyone the pleasure of being able to say ‘I told you so’ or ‘I knew it wouldn’t be any good.’
Journalists were always asking me one of two questions about Alan. First: when was I going to make a film? I almost wanted to make a bloody film just to stop them asking about it. And second: was I ever going to kill Partridge off because he had be
come an albatross?
I wanted to have my cake and eat it. I wanted to make a brilliant Partridge film and yet not be defined by Alan. This caused mild outrage: how could I do both? I didn’t care. The antipathy simply spurred me on. As did an article in a national paper about why a Partridge film should never be made.
It was a red rag to a bull.
What annoys me the most, however, is people saying, ‘You’re a bit like Alan, aren’t you?’ And then laughing hysterically.
To which I reply, ‘Well, yes. Of course I am.’
They can’t quite believe this admission. ‘But he’s an idiot! Are you saying he’s part of you?’
As patiently as possible, I’ll say, ‘Yes, because part of me is an idiot.’
I have no problem showing all those imperfections. What liberates me and makes me stronger is utilising all that dysfunction. I really don’t care. Especially as I get older. I just think to myself, ‘Put in all those negative things. Put in all the stuff that is unattractive, that clearly comes from somewhere, that must be part of me.’
I wouldn’t still be doing Alan if he didn’t make me laugh. When we’re writing, I laugh a lot. Obviously I don’t laugh when I’m being Alan, but I do laugh when we’re writing and when I watch it back. Which is, I suppose, a bit like laughing at the ridiculous part of myself.
*
Once we had decided to go ahead with the film, Pete Baynham and I went to Los Angeles to secure financial backing. The first producer had white hair and a deep tan; he looked like one of those guys who are born middle-aged and in tennis whites. A healthy, rich, liberal Hollywood producer.
I pitched the film idea to him.
At that point, the plot involved members of Al-Qaeda taking over the BBC. A washed-up Alan, who has turned up at the BBC trying to pitch ideas, ends up electing himself as the key negotiator. When the terrorists want to shoot a hostage, Alan has to decide which one. There is a divorced chap who is clearly depressed and who has even considered suicide. If Alan chooses him, he is simply bringing the inevitable forward by a month or two.
Meanwhile, one of the terrorists is curious about a poster on the wall: it’s for an old BBC panto of Aladdin in which Alan is blacked up to play Ali Baba. The terrorist sends Alan off to find the tape in the BBC archive. Alan is terrified that the terrorists will be offended by the panto, but in fact they love it.
Pete started to sweat. He realised our pitch wasn’t landing. The tanned guy didn’t laugh once. He just kept nodding his head, his fingers making a cathedral shape that he held sagely at his lips.
When I’d finished, the tanned guy very slowly said, ‘That sounds hilarious, guys. But I’m part of an inter-faith dialogue initiative. I wouldn’t be so happy being involved in a script that caricatures Muslims.’
I can’t remember if he was drinking Yerba Mate tea or if there was a yoga mat in the room, but there should have been.
Humourless, enlightened liberals bring out the fascist in me. Pete and I just wanted to leave, but we had to listen to the tanned guy’s idea. He had Alan working in a chip shop in Norfolk. Alan has to travel the world to find true love and eventually realises his true love was working alongside him in the chip shop all along.
We left, and he presumably went back to making asinine shit and hundreds and millions of dollars.
It didn’t knock our confidence; we realised as soon as we walked into the offices and saw the framed film posters decorating the walls that it wasn’t the right place for us. I hated pretty much every film they’d done.
We went to Fox Searchlight with the same pitch. They listened. They laughed. They seemed to get it.
It’s worth saying that not everyone in the movie business can do comedy; certainly not everyone understands it. I realised this in 1997, when I did a television film with Paul Greengrass called The Fix. I put some comedy into my role and Paul was unexpectedly deferential; he held his hands up and said, ‘I don’t do this.’ He couldn’t believe how easy it was for me.
Anyway, Pete and I went to see the head of another large film company.
‘Sit down,’ she said, ushering us into her office. ‘How do you find driving on the other side of the road? Isn’t it confusing?’
It was an odd opening gambit. I said, ‘No, you get used to it pretty quickly.’
I changed the subject by asking the kind of question that usually helps focus the conversation: ‘Is there any of my work you specifically like?’
She immediately got to her feet and said, ‘Can you excuse me one second?’
She returned with a few sheets of A4 stapled together. ‘Well, Alan Partridge is the thing we absolutely love …’
Sunlight caught the paper. It was a printout of my IMDb pages.
*
We had to change the Partridge plot after the London bombings on 7 July 2005. Patrick Marber wasn’t involved in the script, but I talked to him about it and he rightly felt that this idea was now impossible to do.
Pete, Armando and I talked about the new ideas. Maybe Alan could go to America as a film producer that no one wants to talk to. He has to stand at the gates, trying to get into Universal Studios. But Borat was a variation on that.
So we decided to be myopic. As well as now being offensive, the terrorist attack seemed too fanciful. What could we do that was cinematic, but not so grand you lose Alan’s very DNA?
I spoke to Ben Stiller and he offered to direct it. Years later, when the film was eventually released, he sent another email: ‘I guess I’m not directing it then.’
But he gave me some good advice when we were at prep stage: ‘Don’t lose the small world that Alan lives in.’
It made me realise we had to shoot the film in East Anglia. We just had to make sure Alan’s parochialism worked on the big screen. We could also use the original hostage idea in a different way: Pat Farrell, one of Alan’s fellow DJs at North Norfolk Digital radio, is fired and retaliates by taking the current staff and the new management hostage. He asks Alan, whom he trusts, to negotiate with the police on his behalf. Alan sees it as a chance not to help Pat, but to promote himself.
My two touchstones for the film were both directed by Sidney Lumet: Network and Dog Day Afternoon. The former is about a fictional television network in the States struggling with poor ratings; news presenter Howard Beale memorably has a meltdown on air.
In the latter, Al Pacino holds the staff of a New York bank hostage. The scene in Alpha Papa in which Alan comes out of the building talking on a headset is stolen directly from Dog Day Afternoon. The film also has an amateur look to it that I love.
I wanted to call the Partridge film Hectic Danger Day or Colossal Velocity. I don’t know why no one listened to me.
CHAPTER 9
AS SOON AS I’d finished Philomena, I had to turn my attention to Alpha Papa. I was in this strange position where I knew Philomena was a decent film at the very least and as such would establish me as someone capable of good, serious work. I wasn’t going to let Alpha Papa derail or have any kind of negative impact on Philomena.
If I could have done, I would have stopped Alpha Papa going into production. But it was too late.
I had already delayed it and no one could really understand why we were postponing it for this other film I was making about an old lady trying to find her son.
Given that I had no choice, I decided to be positive and to look forward to Alpha Papa. I’d got my passion project out of my system and I was at least on familiar ground with Partridge. But as soon as I arrived on set, I discovered that everything was in a state of disarray. We didn’t even get Declan Lowney on board as director until the final stages, which meant he had to deal with the chaos too.
The first week of the Alpha Papa shoot was unbelievably hard.
The film very nearly went off the rails: there were issues with funding; the script wasn’t ready. Brendan Gleeson had agreed to play Pat Farrell if I attended to the script and improved it. I had been so bogged down in Philomena that I never go
t the chance.
At the eleventh hour I was walking into a cast and crew screening of The Look of Love when I got a call from Brendan.
‘Steve, I’m out. You said you’d improve the script. You’ve let me down; it’s just not on the page.’
I couldn’t even argue with him. He was absolutely right. I would have pulled out too if I was him. He’s a great actor, one of Ireland’s finest exports; he didn’t have time to wait for me. After Philomena and Alpha Papa came out, he came up to me and was effusive and generous about both films. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.
Fortunately, into the breach, like a slightly cantankerous white knight, stepped Colm Meaney. He was refreshingly blunt and to the point on the phone. ‘I’ve worked with Judd Apatow. I know a bit about improv. I don’t suppose there’s much point in asking to see the script?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘There really is no point. Thanks for being so understanding.’
I still felt like I was piloting the Titanic straight towards the icebergs. Everyone had thousand-yard stares on their faces. I’d pass Declan on the stairs and he’d say, ‘Steve, the crew are here, the actors are here. We have to shoot something. Anything.’
I wouldn’t let Declan start shooting until the script was sharper. I knew we had to get two days ahead of ourselves, which meant we weren’t just rewriting tomorrow’s scenes, but also the day after tomorrow’s scenes.
The pressure was immense. I wasn’t about to make a substandard film to cash in on Alan’s name. I had just made a film about integrity, and I knew that Alpha Papa had to be about the number of laughs per page. I also knew that if we didn’t hit the audience hard with humour, real, laugh-out-loud humour, we’d be crucified.
I don’t enjoy working with my back against the wall. I’d rather have time to refine, refine, refine. When you’re up against it, there’s so much tension in the writing room and on set. There are also amazing highs: a fantastic piece of dialogue, a great idea, a shot that really works. You have to hang on to those moments and learn to push the anxiety away.