I Think You're Totally Wrong (8 page)

DAVID:
The Trip
was originally six half-hour episodes on BBC, which later got edited down into a two-hour movie. I much prefer the show, but this is the movie—hope you like it.

Steve Coogan: Hey, Rob, Steve.… Are you free?…

Rob Brydon: Why me?

Steve: Well Mischa is unavailable. You've met Mischa, haven't you?… I've asked other people, but they're all too busy. So, you know, do you wanna come?… There's a small fee, which I'll split with you, sixty-forty
.

Rob: It's 2010. Everything's been done before. All you can do is do something someone's done before but do it better or differently
.

Steve: To some extent, that's correct
.

DAVID:
To some extent, that's incorrect. If I believed that, I'd slit my wrists.

CALEB:
I agree. Nothing is exactly the same. Every work of art is both original and influenced by other works. You want this flip at the end, like at the end of Wallace and Lipsky, but maybe I come out of this more convinced that I'm right and you're wrong.

DAVID:
Hmm. Not sure we self-consciously say that we're trying to do all that, do we? Is that gonna work?

Magda the Hotel Clerk: Sorry, we only have one double room for you
.…

Rob: We can share, that's all right
.

Steve: No we can't
.…

Rob: This is a huge bed. We could easily share this bed
.

Steve: It might be huge to you
.…

Rob: What's the problem, anyway? What do you think's gonna happen?

Mischa: (on phone with Coogan) You think I'm gonna go to Las Vegas and become a prostitute?

Rob: (to his wife, Sally, on phone) Could I interest you in some rather salacious … I'm not wearing any pajama bottoms …

Rob: Don't you find it exhausting, still running around going to parties and chasing girls at your age?

Steve: I don't run around and go to parties. I don't run around and chase girls
.

Rob: You do …

Steve: Do you find it exhausting looking after a baby?

Rob: Yes …

Man on Street: Are you Steve Coogan?

Steve: Yes, I am
.

Man: Aha!

Steve: Aha
.

Man: All right, man. How you doing?

Steve: Fine, thanks
.…

Man: Can I ask you a question?

Steve: Yeah, of course, absolutely
.

Man: Is it true what I read about you?

Steve: What do you read about me?

Man: That you're a bit of a cunt
.

Steve: Well, where did you read that?

Man: It's in today's newspaper. Here, look. (Holds up a newspaper with the headline “COOGAN IS A CUNT”)

Steve: Uh, whoever said that doesn't know me very well
.

Man: Are you sure? (Unfolds newspaper with full headline: “COOGAN IS A CUNT SAYS DAD”)

Steve: I'm sure people think we're gay
.

Rob: I don't care
.

Rob: (at home after the trip) Hello …

Sally: I've missed you
.

Steve walks around his empty apartment, looks through his mail, sighs. Piano music
.

Rob: (playing with his daughter, then sharing dinner with Sally) … delightful homecomings …

Steve: (watching a video of himself with Mischa, then leaving a message on his agent's voice mail) I'm not going to do the HBO pilot … I've got kids … Bye
.

Rob: (hugging Sally) I don't like being away from you
.

Steve is alone in his apartment
.

Film ends. Credits
.

DAVID:
It's pretty great, isn't it? We're watching the trading of skins. I love that moment when Brydon, even though he
thinks of himself as a domestic man, comes on to that girl and gets rebuffed.

CALEB:
You almost want to see what would have happened.

DAVID:
The way he crawls back to his original position on the couch—it's hard to watch.

CALEB:
He's relieved he doesn't have to go through with it. Did he do it because he's not happily married?

DAVID:
To me, no. It's because he feels pressure from Coogan to act out. Then, of course, at the end, there's Coogan, looking forlornly at his copy of
Vanity Fair
.

CALEB:
“I'm not going to do the HBO pilot. I've got kids. Bye.”

DAVID:
It's incredibly beautiful, but the first time I watched it I thought (and Laurie did, too) the ending was a little too easy. I wish they hadn't oversold the pathos.

CALEB:
It's almost a happy ending, even a moral ending, which I thought you were supposedly against.

DAVID:
I cry at
Friday Night Lights
.

CALEB:
Coogan chooses fatherhood. And Brydon probably feels relieved he didn't cheat, as he returns to his wife and child.

DAVID:
I can feel Coogan's loneliness at the end. It's quite palpable.

CALEB:
And he realizes this. Even though his children live with his ex, he chooses them. He won't advance his career if it means he'll be a nonexistent father.

DAVID:
I think I'm starting to fade. I'll see you tomorrow, Caleb.

CALEB:
Good night.

CALEB:
Did you and Laurie ever discuss having a second kid?

DAVID:
Yes. In what was probably not my greatest moment, I said no.

CALEB:
No?

DAVID:
I was teaching twelve months a year—four quarters at the UW plus any visiting teaching gigs that came up—to make ends meet, and had no time to write. Now all I do is think about Natalie, but those first couple of years I wasn't hugely loving being a parent, I must admit. And, probably most importantly, Laurie and I weren't getting along that well.

CALEB:
What's the age difference between you and Laurie?

DAVID:
We're the same age. She had the famously bad formulation of “We're not getting along that great, so let's have a second kid.” My response was “I'm pretty ambivalent about almost everything, but one thing I'm certain about is that I don't want a second child. I'm sorry.” I wasn't draconian. I just said, “That's the way I feel. How do you feel?” And she said, more or less, “I'm not a hundred percent certain, and if you're pretty certain, I'll yield to that.” That's my memory; I should ask her if I'm remembering correctly. I do remember talking about it with her later, and she said, “If I had really wanted to have had another child, I would have just had one,” which at the time I remember thinking
was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. Men are apparently that manipulable. I know the conventional wisdom is that if one person, especially the woman, wants a second child, you're supposed to say, “Aye aye, Cap'n.” I didn't do that. It was a very selfish decision, mostly having to do with writing and a little having to do with not wanting to be paying college tuition when I was sixty-five. My feeling at the time was “Let's raise Natalie and we'll see where we are then, and if we wind up getting divorced, each of us'll still be fifty-four. Not dead yet.” Pretty pathetic.

CALEB:
Did you say that to her?

DAVID:
No, but I remember Laurie saying at one point that if we didn't have Natalie to connect us, she didn't know why we would stay married. For a variety of reasons that I can go into if you want, I now feel very happily married, and I couldn't imagine not being with Laurie, but like any marriage, our marriage has had its ups and downs, and that was undoubtedly its—

CALEB:
Nadir.

DAVID:
And it wasn't horrible; it was just one discussion. It's one of Laurie's best traits: she moves on. At least to me, she presents as the queen of non-regret. But if we had never had a child, the marriage would almost certainly have ended.

CALEB:
That's something you decide before you get married.
Didn't you talk about how many kids you wanted?

DAVID:
No.

CALEB:
How many years were you together before you got married?

DAVID:
Four years.

CALEB:
And it never came up?

DAVID:
Both of us were equally ambivalent. When it came up, we just said, “We'll see.” I'm very “female” in wanting to talk about everything, but Laurie never wanted to talk about it. You guys had specifically agreed: three children?

CALEB:
We talked beforehand: as many as three, no more. The first two turned out well, so what the heck, we tried for a third. Terry wanted only girls. If we had a fourth, she'd want another daughter.

DAVID
: Wait—what's wrong with the male sex?

CALEB:
She's great with her mother. They talk daily. Her mom was only nineteen when she conceived Terry. She's like an older sister. Both Terry's parents are cool—quasi hippies or ex-hippies, although I don't think that's how they see themselves now.

DAVID:
How old are your kids?

CALEB:
Six, five, and two. Terry was, respectively, thirty-five, thirty-six, and thirty-nine when she had them. She's a year younger.

DAVID:
Why three? Why not two or four?

CALEB:
We each are the oldest of three siblings. I'd been living in Asia up until we got married, and when we got married we immediately tried for a child. Terry was thirty-four, we didn't want to wait, and she got pregnant almost instantly. We married in June and by September she had her twelve-week checkup. We lived in a condo. I worked construction, and I played basketball at Green Lake almost every day. I wanted to get into this basketball culture now that I was back in Seattle: make friends, be cool.

DAVID:
And she's pregnant?

CALEB:
This is the first time she's ever watched me play. Game ends, I go to the sideline, and she says, “I miscarried.”

DAVID:
Oh my god.

CALEB:
Tears and hugs. We go have a cup of coffee near Green Lake, and I tell her we'll try again. She tells me we have to wait at least six weeks. They have to perform this procedure to remove the remnants of the fetus. On the way back, in the parking lot, there's Tyrone, and he's like, “What's up? We gonna have that beer?” I look at Terry, and she says, “I'll meet you at home. You do what you want.”

DAVID:
Did Tyrone know your wife had miscarried?

CALEB:
Not yet. Terry has gone to her car, and I'm thinking, well, I feel like a beer, and what more can I say? I've done my duty. So I go with Tyrone.

DAVID:
You're not serious.

CALEB:
Instead of walking to a nearby tavern, we hop in his car and he drives to this mini-mart, buys a twelve-pack, goes back to the Green Lake parking lot, yells to a couple of his homeys, they get in the car, and we're all drinking beer behind tinted windows, and then one of the guys pulls out some dope and loads a bowl. I'm thinking, gee, we're in public, I could get busted, my wife's home wondering where I am after a miscarriage, and I'm more worried about making contact with some dudes. This is fucked up.