• Title: "Missing Out on a Coogan Trilogy"
• Date: 29 June 2007
• Reporter: Pam Grady
• Source: FilmStew.com
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See Sunshine this summer and sigh. Not because of what Irishman Danny Boyle's sci-fi thriller about a team of astronauts sent to re-ignite a dying sun is, but because of what might have been.
To hear Michael Winterbottom tell it, there should have been a companion piece to Sunshine, a comedy starring Steve Coogan as an astronaut bored in space. "It never happened and it's a shame, because I think it would have been really good," mourns the director.
Winterbottom was in San Francisco recently promoting A Mighty Heart, his box office challenged docudrama limning the events surrounding Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's 2002 abduction and murder in Pakistan, as seen through the eyes of his widow Mariane. Sober work such as that, The Road to Guantanamo, In This World and Welcome to Sarajevo suggest a serious, even humorless mind. But this is the same man who made the hilarious and idiosyncratic 24 Hour Party People and, more recently, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, both starring Coogan.
"I would definitely work with Steve again," Winterbottom tells FilmStew, growing downright giddy when the subject of his aborted space comedy arises. "About two years ago, Steve and I were talking and Steve was saying he's kind of always wanted to do a comedy in space.”
“I thought it would be a really great idea to do a comedy in space where nothing happens,” he continues. “That's the reality of space. The reality of space is that when you look at the NASA web sites and see what they do in space, they do absolutely nothing. It must be so boring. It sounds so exciting, but the reality is boring. Space films generally try to make space look really exciting."
About the same time as he and Coogan were kicking the idea around, the filmmaker began getting reports from cinematographer Alwin Kuchler and production designer Mark Tildesley, both of whom had collaborated with Winterbottom in the past. ("Now they're too big for me, too grand for me," he jokes.) They were working with Boyle on Sunshine and their talk centered on the huge set going up in London, a spaceship. That gave Winterbottom an inspiration.
"I thought it would be brilliant if we could go on their set and film this comedy where nothing's happening while they were doing this big action movie about saving the planet," he says.
So he approached Sunshine's producer Andrew Macdonald with a unique proposition, telling him, ‘We want to come on your set at night. You do your film during the day. We'll come on at night. We're just going to use a handheld camera. We won't damage your set. We're just going to run on your set for about six hours every night and we're going to shoot a comedy on your set. All right?’
Macdonald agreed, at least initially, before coming back to Winterbottom a month later with a different idea. Winterbottom recalls the producer telling him, ‘We're worried you might damage our set. So you can't do it at night, but as soon as we're finished, you can do it.’
With that OK in mind, Winterbottom, Coogan, and the actor's frequent collaborator Patrick Marber began fleshing out the story. "It was hard to sketch out the idea, because the idea is that nothing happens,” Winterbottom recalls. “So we sort of messed around for a little bit, came up with a rough outline."
In the meantime, Sunshine went into production. "They started filming, they got quite busy," says Winterbottom. "We kept saying to Andrew Macdonald, 'We are going to come on to film afterwards, aren't we?' And he kept saying, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' Paramount was going to do it. Paramount was really keen to do it. Everyone was really keen and Andrew Macdonald would be involved and it was like, 'Yeah, it's going to happen.'"
But as time wore on, Winterbottom began to get a sinking feeling. "We had a bit of a fight about it, because we were doing other things, but we had about six months thinking that he had said yes. And I kind of said to [Macdonald], 'Are you sure you're saying yes? Don't say yes if actually you're going to say no.' He said, 'No, no, we really think this is a good idea.'"
He sighs. "Then, after a while, it just became clear that Andrew McDonald was never going to let us onto the set."
The idea died. Winterbottom and Coogan drifted to other projects. When Sunshine came out in England in April, the director saw it and mourned what might have been if his little space comedy had managed to piggyback onto the big sci-fi thriller. He says ruefully, "I thought, 'Wouldn't it be really good to see Sunshine and then next week go and watch the antithesis of Sunshine?'"
