Withnail and I

Withnail and I is a cult British film made in 1987 by Handmade Films. Written and directed by Bruce Robinson, it was Richard E. Grant's first film role and launched him into a successful career. It also featuring outstanding performances by Richard Griffiths as Monty and Ralph Brown as Danny. The film has spawned many popular quotations.

Plot

The film details the lives of two resting (struggling) actors, who, confined to a Georgian flat in Camden Town through their financial difficulties, decide to take a holiday to the country. The narrative is told in the first person by the character played by Paul McGann, named in the script as Marwood, but never named as such in the movie - only credited as "& I".

Related Topics:
Camden Town - Paul McGann

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Robinson's script is largely autobiographical. Marwood is Robinson; Withnail is based on a friend he shared a Camden house with - Vivian MacKerrell - who died young; and Uncle Monty is loosely based on the unwanted attentions he received from an amorous Franco Zeffirelli when he was a young actor http://www.withnail-and-i.com/features.php?feature=2. He lived in the impoverished conditions seen in the film and wore plastic bags as wellington boots. Robinson threw four or five years' of his real life into the script, condensing them into two weeks.

Related Topics:
Camden - Franco Zeffirelli - Wellington boots

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In many ways, the film is melancholy and deals with endings: the end of Withnail and Marwood's friendship; the end of the 1960s (the film begins with King Curtis performing "A Whiter Shade of Pale" - King Curtis was murdered in August 1971; Danny's speech about selling hippie wigs in Woolworths); the probable 'beginning of the end' for Withnail/MacKerrell as he delivers Hamlet's soliloquy to a pack of wolves, the film is in part set amidst the demolition of parts of Camden at the beginning of the film.

Related Topics:
1960s - King Curtis - A Whiter Shade of Pale - 1971 - Hippie - Wig - Woolworths - Hamlet - Soliloquy - Wolves

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