The Belsize Park Belle – 15th November, 2011

By thebelsizeparkbelle

It was hard to escape The Rum Diary and Johnny Depp in London last week as it seemed no matter where you turned there were posters, red carpet pics, reviews, etc… Who doesn’t love a little Johnny anyway? Especially in a costume period piece. (Speaking of which, does he do anything else these days?)

Well, I haven’t seen The Rum Diary yet, but it was directed by Bruce Robinson who brought us comedic genius in Withnail & I. Where does all of this boozeyness lead us, you may ask? To a countdown that I can’t resist, my favourite Richard E. Grant moments! Sadly, he is not in The Rum Diary, but he has a number of films currently in the works! (Disappointingly, none of them are a Warlock sequel.)

Gird up your loins, grab a cocktail, and enjoy! (Don’t forget to post your favourites in the comments.)

“How can it be so cold in here? It’s like Greenland in here. We’ve got to get some booze. It’s the only solution to this intense cold.”

HUDSON HAWK

Some of you may have never even heard of this film, others who have may recoil in disgust. I, on the other hand, absolutely adore the crazy and zany film for the following reasons.

1. Bruce Willis sings! (and not as Bruno thank goodness!)

2. Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard as maniacally evil supervillains.

3. David Caruso as a CIA secret agent named Kit Kat who doesn’t speak once during the entire film! (anyone who has seen CSI Miami knows what a wonderful thing that can be)

4. CIA secret agents all named after candy bars and headed up by James Coburn! Yup, it is that awesome.

5. Andie McDowell is in this and she plays a nun and is the Bruce Willis love interest. Too fantastic!

THE PLAYER

A very dark and cheeky peek behind the Hollywood curtain. Can Richard E. Grant pitch my movie, pretty please?

WARLOCK

There are so many things wrong, that frankly, make this movie so right. Richard E. Grant and Lori Singer fighting Julian Sands’ evil warlock?! The cast coupled with pre-CG special effects make this one of my personal faves. Oh yeah, the warlock is eventually defeated by salt. Man, they don’t make movies like this anymore!

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

On a more serious note, this film is one of my most beloved Scorsese films of all time. Richard E. Grant has a minor role, but his performance, as always, is stellar as Larry Lefferts.

WITHNAIL & I

I demand to have some booze!

Ciao!

FemaleFirst.com – 15th November, 2011

“How To Stop Being A Loser” director, Dominic Burns, was recently interviewed by Helen Earnshaw for FemaleFirst.com on the making of the film. During the interview he talks about Richard’s involvement in the movie and how he came on board. I’ve included the excerpt from the interview below.

“It was also nice to make something that the girls would enjoy as well having just done a gangster film (laughs). So that was how it came about really and we developed it and we saw a part that we thought Richard E. Grant would be a dream for we took a punt and went for him – he was by far the biggest name that we had ever approached – and he took it. And off we went from there.

It was a simple case of brainstorming ideas, Simon and I and then the writers. When we first started the project we were like ‘give us your ideas on who you like’ and we gave them ours and we all kind of reached an agreement. Richard E Grant was top of the list and we just approached the agent and went for him first – we had done enough work for him to consider us.

He read it and asked some questions and we went from there – the beautiful thing about making films on a low budget you know that if you do get those actors on board you are getting them from a passionate point of view because we can’t afford to buy them (laughs).

And so when Richard came on board it became a lot easier because as soon as you say you are doing a movie with Richard E Grant everyone was like ‘well I will have a read of that’. So off it went and we ended up with a really impressive ensemble cast.”

The read the entire interview in full, just go to the FemaleFirst website.

Deadline.com – 14th November, 2011

It’s just been announced that “The Iron Lady,” starring Oscar winner Meryl Streep, will hit theatres in selected cities Dec. 30. The Weinstein Company has scheduled a broader release for the film in January 2012, according to Deadline.com. This is possibly due the recent groundswell of interest in the film.

As you can see I’ve also included a couple of new promo pictures for the film, and you can see the new trailer here.

The Guardian – 14th November, 2011

In our writers’ favourite films series, Tim Jonze raises a glass or six to Bruce Robinson’s tale of two struggling actors who go on holiday by mistake.

Withnail & I
Production year: 1986
Country: UK
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 102 mins
Directors: Bruce Robinson
Cast: Paul McGann, Richard E Grant, Richard Griffiths

‘I think a drink, don’t you?’… Paul McGann and Richard E Grant in Withnail and I. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

On telling the powers that be on the film desk that Withnail and I was my favourite movie, I was informed this was a “typical choice for muso types”. I was outraged. Were they suggesting “muso types” were the kind of drug-hungry, unemployable reprobates portrayed in the film? The sort of people who live on little more than raw potato, red wine and lighter fuel? Oh …

I have to confess, I first heard about Withnail and I in terms of a drinking game – could you watch the film while matching the two lead characters shot for shot, pint for pint, Camberwell carrot for Camberwell carrot? Yet for all the wanton liver damage caught on celluloid here, Withnail and I is so much more than just a reckless bender. For me, it’s a devastating portrayal of that terrifying moment when adulthood finally catches up with you.

Doubtless the film buffs gathered here don’t need a lengthy plot summary so I’ll keep it brief. Withnail (Richard E Grant) and I (aka Marwood – although you’d only know this from the screenplay – played by Paul McGann) decide they need a break from their squalid lives as struggling actors in Camden and persuade Withnail’s rich uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) to let them spend the weekend at his cottage in Cumbria. Their plans for a period of relaxation and indulgence are thwarted, however, by their inability to cope with ghastly weather, frosty locals and the advances of Monty himself, who joins them unannounced halfway through their stay and makes it his mission to have his wicked way with Marwood.

I first watched this plot unfold as a teenager, along with my little brother. We resolved to spend the next 15 years watching it again. And again. And again. Before long the most quoted lines (“Hair are your aerials”, “I feel like a pig shat in my head”, “Perfumed ponce!”, “We’ve come on holiday by mistake”, “I demand to have some booze!” … oh, sorry, you haven’t got all day?) became passé and we started finding hidden humour lying in the merest twinge of facial expression. (Marwood’s terrified grins being the best.)

Like all great comedy films, you’ll notice new lines with each viewing. When I revisited the film I couldn’t believe I’d missed the potted cauliflower in Monty’s living room as he raves about his love for growing vegetables (“I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium”) or Marwood’s withering line about having to listen to “yet another anecdote about [Monty’s] sensitive crimes … in a punt with a chap called Norman who had red hair and a book of poetry stained with the butter drips from crumpets.”

These are the reasons why Withnail and I makes me crease up with laughter, but they’re not why I truly love this movie. The film is set in 1969, a time when what Danny refers to as “the greatest decade in the history of mankind” is fizzling out, leaving an entire generation with one hell of a comedown. The feeling of a utopian dream dying is encapsulated in one of Danny’s most memorable lines – “They’re selling hippie wigs in Woolworths, man” – and parallels our two anti-heroes’ own farewell to their 20s. (As Withnail says: “I’m 30 in a month and I’ve got a sole flapping from my shoe.”)

As a teenager I identified with Withnail’s sense of rebellion, even if the rebellion we see only ever really extends as far as driving dangerously and upsetting a few old ladies in a tea room. When you’re young you feel anything is possible and one day – to paraphrase Withnail’s drunken pronouncement to an empty Penrith sky – you’ll show the lot of them, you’re gonna be a star. My brother and I certainly did, as we smoked weed in the local park on hot summer nights and plotted a fantastical future. But the people you’d planned your revolution with end up betraying you: your peers settle down, they sign up for management training schemes, they have kids. Some of us delay adult responsibilities by becoming music journalists – a chance not to grow up for another decade at least – but you can only hide for so long.

When Marwood secures an acting job and finally leaves Withnail outside in the rain, Withnail’s face isn’t sad, it’s scared. His decision to opt out of the system has suddenly left him stranded. “There’s always time for a drink?” he says, offering to share a stolen bottle of Monty’s 1953 Château Margaux. But Marwood, with his newly cropped hair, needs to cut him loose and move on. Throughout the film, the selfish, cowardly Withnail is never the character you empathise with, yet this feels like another one of those massive betrayals.

Adulthood. Responsibility. The meaning of friendship and the passing of time. Behind the boozing, these are some of the big themes Withnail and I deals with. Themes, no doubt, that some of us “muso types” are still trying to run from.

Tim Jonze.

Ben-Hopkins.com – 12th November, 2011

By Ben Hopkins

Promoted as the new Johnny Depp film, The Rum Diary has also been tipped as the new Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas given that they’re both based on books by Hunter S. Thompson. Yet fans of Withnail and I, it’s something perhaps more momentous: the new Bruce Robinson film. Given that prior to The Rum Diary, Robinson had helmed just two more movies, it’s no surprise that he hates the process. “When I got the word back that they were going to make it, I was thrilled,” he says of his fourth film. “However, when they asked me to direct it, I wasn’t, because I didn’t want to. After the last unmentionable film I directed [Jennifer Eight], I was really determined that I would never do it again.”

On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be many similarities between The Rum Diary and Withnail and I. Seperated by almost a quarter of a decade, they’re actually closer than you would expect…

Similarities

The central dynamic between both films’ lead characters is almost identical. Withnail is effectively doomed to his lifestyle, his addiction dictating his professional failings, while for the seemingly younger Marwood it’s a stage in his life that he can move on from. In The Rum Diary, Kemp is ultimately able to move on: his older pal Sala’s declining talent and love of the glamour of island life keep him rooted to Puerto Rico.

Both depict the end of an era. Withnail and I charts the final decline of the Sixties ideal before the Seventies delivered a darker decade. By the close of The Rum Diary, The San Juan Star has closed down and the peak of the island’s commercial development – and therefore the local high life – has passed.

Neither film has a nuanced female character. Amber Heard’s Chenault looks sensational and reiterates a sense of glamour, but we learn little about her character and she adds little of substance to the plot. Still, that’s serious character development when compared to the women in Withnail and I.

The dialogue is exuberantly funny. Withnail and I could well be the most quotable film of all time. The Rum Diary can’t really match it, but its use of comedy is also its greatest asset.

Booze. Withnail and Marwood enjoy every intoxicating drink known to man. Kemp, Sala and pretty much every other character drink to excess too, although their chosen poisons of rum and cocktails are more sophisticated choices than EVERYTHING.

Both films depict three separate classes, which isn’t especially common for comedies. Kemp finds himself in the upper-middle class of the island together with most of his associates at the newspaper. The islanders forced away from the private beach of Aaron Eckhart’s Sanderson are the underclass in a place ruled by an upper class of American investors. Withnail shares a similar class level to Kemp, although his personal decline seems to have moved him down a level from that of his wealthy uncle Monty to the point where there’s little separation between him, the “scrubbers” and “the wankers on the site.”

On several occasions, Johnny Depp pulls the same leering, lascivious drunk expression as Richard E. Grant did as Withnail. Still, if you’re going to be influenced by anyone, one of cinema’s greatest portraits of an alcoholic is a fine starting point.

“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake.” Although Kemp’s ill-fated trip to the proposed development site of an idyllic local island is nowhere near as disasterous as Withnail and Marwood’s trip to the countryside.

Giovanni Ribisi’s Moberg and Ralph Brown’s Danny are effectively the same character. And they serve the same primary purpose as a comedy sidekick whose existence is even more extreme than the core characters.

Both share a rambling narrative direction. For all their strengths, neither film can claim to have an expertly crafted plot. Withnail’s is minimal – two alcoholics drink to excess in London, drink to excess on holiday in the Lake District and one takes a new direction upon returning to the capital – while almost every plot of The Rum Diary lacks focus.

Differences

The cinematography couldn’t be more different. Withnail and I’s squalid, retro atmosphere was captured with a grimy limited palette, while The Rum Diary bursts with the colours of a sunny, glamorous environ.

The Rum Diary is full of glamour. Flash cars, attractive women, ludicrous amounts of money, sunny beaches: it’s the epitome of the high life. The sole concessions to such an approach in Withnail and I were Monty’s ostentatious home and some very expensive bottles of wine.

The Rum Diary has a far broader collection of characters. Aside from those already mentioned, you’d struggle to recall any other character from Withnail and I – perhaps at a push you’d remember Michael Elphick’s Jake, a supremely unwelcoming local poacher. The Rum Diary’s supporting characters seem to have both screen time and contribute far more to the story.

Unsurprisingly, The Rum Diary hasn’t been a huge box office hit. Yet it’s undeniably a far more commercial proposition than Withnail and I was. Just examine the trailers. The Rum Diary: upbeat salsa music, stretches of beaches, Johnny Depp looking slick, jokes, fireworks, a carnival, flash cars, a diamond-encrusted tortoise, Amber Heard not wearing much. The Withnail and I trailer features an overweight middle-age man sipping wine, Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann drenched in rain, a randy bull and a dead fish.

Ultimately…

Withnail and I is so funny that I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it. The Rum Diary is entertaining and worth a watch, but it’s unlikely to leave the same legacy.