Steve Coogan in Hamlet 2 Courtesy of Focus Features

Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) had spent years trying to break into acting. There was a bit part on Xena: Warrior Princess. He'd been an extra in an Al Jazeera TV movie. Perhaps his biggest financial break was a television commercial for a Herpes cure. But he had been, to use his own words, "fisted by critics," and so decided to head out for the place "where dreams go to die": Tucson, AZ.

Taking his cue from inspirational teacher movies like Mr. Holland's Opus, Dana channels his talents and becomes a drama teacher at a local high school. But his staging of Erin Brockovich: The Play is a flop. Other ideas, like a musical version of The Lake House, fail to get traction. And his class — with the exception of two overly eager sycophants — consists of football jocks, meatheads, and disinterested dropouts.

The hopelessness of his situation is compounded when he is informed that, due to budget cuts, drama will be axed from the curriculum. To draw attention to the issue of lack of funding for the arts and to save drama, he decides to stage an original play: Hamlet 2. Based loosely on the notion that if Hamlet had a bit of therapy he could have "turned everything around," Hamlet 2 — which features the Gay Men's Chorus of Tucson, a time machine, a homage to Grease, and songs like Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," as well as Jesus with "a rocking swimmer's bod" — whips up a storm of controversy and is soon slapped with a cease and desist order. But the show must go on.

The film turned out to be the darling at a sluggish Sundance this year, and was picked up for $10 million by Focus Features after a bidding war, making it the highest price paid for a Sundance film after Little Miss Sunshine. The role of Dana could prove to be a breakout performance for British comedian and thesp Steve Coogan, who is perhaps best known stateside for British indies like 24 Hour Party People and his role as the doomed director in this summer's smash Tropic Thunder.

In this exclusive, Coogan discusses the art of striking that balance between laughable naivety and cutting cynicism, the "horseshit" on the Internet, and why John Wayne's portrayal of a Roman centurion is one of greatest moments in cinematic history.

For the uninitiated or for those who flunked Shakespeare in high school and think they are going to see a film based on something by the Bard or like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, how would you describe this film?
It has pretty much nothing to do with Shakespeare, and please don't be put off by the fact that it's called Hamlet 2. It is more of a satire of an inspirational teaching movie that becomes an inspirational teaching movie, and [it's] a comedy. That is a simple way of describing it.

The film turns the convention of the white teacher coming to the underfunded inner-city neighborhood to inspire and save them on its head. It's almost as if it is the kids who save a lost, drowning man. Would you agree?
I think that is absolutely right. No one has pointed that out before: that they save him. Yes, that is right. They are not caricatures. He has seen inspirational teaching movies and likes to think that he is living an inspirational teaching movie. And of course, life isn't as straightforward as "they have no hope and he saves them" in that kind of savior-like way. He's somebody who is just trying to do the right thing, but he mythologizes himself. Like the scene where one of the kids [is shown to have] quite upper middle class parents [who are] academic. [The kids] are really not that deadbeat. They are more just ambivalent and a bit bored, like most young kids.