Eighties classic Withnail and I remains a coruscatingly funny rites-of-passage story

Anyone who’s ever been young, irresponsible and ripped off their face is logically a devout and ardent fan of Bruce Robinson’s 1986 booze, drugs and struggling artist mayhem classic Withnail and I. Or, at least, they would be fans if they remembered what it’s like to have been up for it in a desperate, seductively self-destructive kind of way. This is because the film’s portrayal of its two lead characters, Richard E Grant in his finest hour as Withnail and sensitive lamb Paul McGann as “I”, the two unemployed actors spending their dole money on booze instead of heating, rent and food, is so hilariously, committedly accurate – even though Grant, astonishingly, was (and remains) a teetotaller.

This cult classic was made through George Harrison’s Handmade Films, which also (unsurprisingly, for there are echoes of Python throughout the film) financed many Monty Python-related projects like Time Bandits and the rather pallid The Missionary. It has the happy knack, like Python, of eliciting fanatical and spontaneous script recitals. Robinson’s first-time script is a real beauty for brilliant lines, most related to the deleterious effects of the imbibing and ingesting of vast quantities of booze and drugs.

To wit: Withnail: “I feel like a pig shat in my head.” Or I: “My thumbs have gone all weird!” Or Withnail’s splendid, imperious and self-deluded instructions to the tea-shop lady: “We want the finest wines known to humanity, we want them here, and we want them now!” Or the starving and emphatically non-vegetarian Withnail in the country retreat: “I must have some flesh!” Or the following scintillating exchange, which those of us who have been wasted will probably admit to having had at some stage, as they hunch over quadruple whiskeys and plan to ask Withnail’s Uncle Monty for the use of his “country house”:

I: Let’s phone him up and ask if we can stay in his cottage in the country.

Withnail: No, you phone him.

I: But I don’t know his number – I’ve never even met him …

Withnail: Well neither have I … What the fuck are you on about?

Many comments about the film focus on its two ostensibly “serious” themes, that of the repressed homoeroticism between Withnail and I, which is brought to a head by lecherous Uncle Monty’s visit to the cottage in pursuit of I, and that of its lament for the passing of the Sixties and its counter culture (the film begins, you’ll recall, in London’s Camden Town in late 1969, and Drug Dealer Danny’s archetypal spacehead monologue leaves us in no doubt in the closing stanzas; as he puts it: “The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. And as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black”).

These themes are no doubt central to whatever constructive and earnest can be gleaned from this scabrous, underground and coruscatingly funny slice of life, or maybe they’re just attempts to overinterpret what appears on the face of it a very flimsy tale about two drunk and unemployed young acting rakes taking off for a jaunt in the country. But for me the film is most impressive as a perverse and adult rites-of-passage film.

Withnail and I are at the point most of us get to sometime between leaving school and deciding to submit to life’s hard choices, when committed hedonism of the mind-altering bender variety becomes an attractive lifestyle option. As Withnail so memorably puts it: “I’m drifting towards the arena of the unwell.” It’s I who gets lucky and gets an acting role, but by then Withnail, in his closing monologue from Hamlet, is on the cusp between getting out or getting dead. That the film’s pathos comes in such an uproarious package is to its lasting credit.

Brilliant, mental and still hilarious. Just watch out for the huge spade in the bath.

Well well well, the perks of joining the mailing list seem to include the chance to interview REG. I cobbled together questions from various members of the REGiment and emailed them to REG. He very kindly replied and you can read the resulting interview by clicking here.

Laila has sent through an interview from last year in the Irish Times. Read it here. More Jack and Sarah pics here, and Georgia sent therough a bumber crop of pics from Twelfth Night. See some of them here. (I’ll put more up later)

Nikki was told yesterday (Monday 11th October) that Richard was on “Richard & Judy” around Mid-day, needless to say she was at Univeristy in a lecture and her mate wasn’t….did anyone watch/record it? She’d love a copy.

What’s On TV Guide – October 1999

By Fiona Cumberpatch

It’s every actor’s dream to have a part written specially for them, and when that actor is Richard E. Grant, the part is bound to be something out of the ordinary.

Richard, who specialises in edgy, eccentric characters, says he jumped at the chance to appear in Trial and Retribution III, Lynda La Plante’s latest two-part psychological thriller, which starts this week.

I’ve known Lynda for years and she had said that she was going to write something that was perfect for me, explains Richard. When I saw the script and read the character I was to play, I was completely taken abackˆ but I thought it was a hell of a part.‚ Richard plays Stephen Warrington, an upstanding member of the community and a charming businessman who is hiding the fact that he suffers from cyclothymia, a form of manic depression. It‚s only when he starts making obsessive telephone calls to Detective Inspector Pat North (Kate Buffery) of the vice squad that he betrays he instability ˆ and his possible links to the death of a young girl.

To prepare for the role, Richard attended meetings of a Kent branch of the Manic Depression Fellowship. Meeting real suffers of Stephen’s condition completely altered my preconceptions about how this part could be played‚ Explains Richard. “The people I met had an amazing sense of humour and they shared incredible stories with me.”

Richard is no stranger to characters who live their life on the edge. He got his first break playing a neurotic out-of-work actor in the movie Withnail and I (1986). Since then, he has given a string of manic performances in films as varied as How To Get Ahead In Advertising (1989), The Player (1992), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and Spice World (1997).

Despite his extraordinary roles and on-screen success, Richard tries hard to keep his feet firmly on the ground. He lives in London, rather than Hollywood, with his wife of 16 years, voice coach Joan Washington and their young daughter Olivia. Being a celebrity means living a completely abnormal existence” he says. You’re paid millions; everyone thinks you’re beautiful, brilliant and they’re gagging to hear your every word. Then the next day, you learn you’re ugly, you speak all wrong and you’re not talented after all!

To see a scan of the actual article, click here.