Withnail & I

[lucimay]

before there was trainspotting...








before there was Spinal Tap...







before there was a fat bastard...








there was Withnail & I






The Street
They walk amongst the dereliction towards a pub, the Mother Black Cap. Despite his recent intake, Withnail's brain is in gear.

Withnail: All right, this is the plan. We get in there and get wrecked. Then we'll eat a pork pie. Then we drop a couple of Surmontil 50s each; means we'll miss out Monday but come up smiling Tuesday morning. What's that appalling smell?

Marwood: Perfume, on my boots. I had to scrub them with essence of petunia.




any other Withnail-heads here at the Watch?

[The Laughing Man]

I'm a fan of this thread! Marvelous composition and pacing, it's a joy to wander, all the way down.....nicely done!

[lucimay]

thanks! if you HAVEN'T seen this movie do so immediately...


well i'm standing next to a mountain
chop it down with the edge of my hand...

[CovenantJr]

I only saw this for the first time a year or so ago. It's depressing as hell, but in a good way.

[lucimay]

I only saw this for the first time a year or so ago. It's depressing as hell, but in a good way.

true!


but it's also one of the MOST emminently QUOTABLE movies EVER!

Withnail: At some point or another I want to stop and get hold of a child.

Marwood: What do you want a child for?

Withnail: To tutor it in the ways of righteousness and procure some uncontaminated urine.
(He takes out the bottle and instructions provided by Danny. )

Withnail: This is a device enabling the drunken driver to operate in absolute safety. You fill this with piss, take this pipe down the trouser and sellotape this valve to the end of the old chap. Then you get horrible drunk and they can't f*cking touch you. According to these instructions, you refuse everything except a urine sample. You undo your valve, give them a dose of unadulterated child's piss and they have to give you your keys back. Danny's a genius

[Tulizar]

I don't know about this Withnail movie. Don't get me wrong, I'll give it a shot only because I've seen a few Richard Grant movies and am impressed with his acting; but he'd better be pretty damn good in it because nothing--and I mean nothing--can compare to his performance in Warlock

[lucimay]

heh. before there was Warlock....there was Withnail!




Danny: Don't get uptight with me man. Because if you do I'll have to give you a dose of medicine and if I spike you you'll know you've been spoken to.

Withnail: You wouldn't spike me you're too mean. Besides, there's nothing invented I couldn't take.

Danny: If I medicined you you'd think a brain tumour was a birthday present.

Withnail: I could take double anything you could.

Danny [removing his sunglasses]: Very, very foolish words man.

Marwood: He's right Withnail. Look at him . His mechanisms gone. He's had more drugs than you've had hot dinners.

Withnail: I'm not having this shag-sack insulting me. Let him get his drugs out.

[Tulizar]

Withnail: This is a device enabling the drunken driver to operate in absolute safety. You fill this with piss, take this pipe down the trouser and sellotape this valve to the end of the old chap. Then you get horrible drunk and they can't f*cking touch you. According to these instructions, you refuse everything except a urine sample. You undo your valve, give them a dose of unadulterated child's piss and they have to give you your keys back. Danny's a genius

Ahhh the good old days.



.

[lucimay]

Withnail [dragging up all his acting abilities]:
I have a heart condition. I have a heart condition. If you hit me, it's murder.

Man [working up a rage]: I'll murder the pair of y'ers!

Withnail: [Pathetic whisper] My wife is having a baby. [Hits on a plan of action] Listen, I don't know what my f... [starts to say "friend"] acquaintance did to upset you but it's nothing to do with me. I suggest you both go outside and discuss it sensibly, in the street.

[Loredoctor]

The only funny thing about this movie is Uncle Monty. As someone said, it's depressing.

[lucimay]

well i obviously disagree.

[CovenantJr]

It's a snapshot of life at almost its lowest point, shot through with bleak and weary humour. I felt drained after watching it, but I don't regret doing so.

[lucimay]

guys...i'm sorry you found it a stressful movie in some way....

maybe it's a man pain thing.

[CovenantJr]

Personally I think, in my case at least, it's a Brit thing. It's so close to reality; claustrophobically close.

[lucimay]

it ought to be...it's based on Bruce Robinson's life.

bruce...during filming of Withnail & I....

This is almost certainly the last time I’ll ever write anything about Withnail and I. Just in case it doesn’t come out too good I’ll get to the point immediately. I want to dedicate this new edition to my friend Vivian.

From 1966 to about 1976, I kept a diary, and page after page of this is about Vivian and I. I met him in 1964 in our first year in drama school. He wore a blue suit and shades and looked like Marlon Brando. Everyone thought he was going to be a star. Within ten minutes I was his closest friend, and so was everyone else. Everyone loved Viv. He wasn’t a bad actor (though when we left Central School he hardly ever got a job). Wasn’t a bad writer either (although I don’t ever remember him writing anything). The reality is that, if he had acted, or had written, he wouldn’t have excelled at either because the interest wasn’t there. What Vivian was brilliant at was being Vivian. That was his genius, and everyone who ever met him was overwhelmed by it. His nicknames were “the spine” and “crime.” I don’t know where the first came from, but the latter predicated on his ability to spend all day in the pub, and always with discretion navigate his turn to buy a drink. “Crime doesn’t pay.” But none of us cared because his company was worth the price. Viv was into literature, Keats and Baudelaire, and turned me on to both these poets. Plus the funniest book I’ve ever read, the great À Rebours, is one of two novels Marwood shoves into his suitcase at the end of the film.

There isn’t a line of Viv’s in Withnail and I, but his horrible wine-stained tongue may as well have spoken every word. Without Viv, this story could never have been written. And all I’ve got to do is look back through this old diary with its daisies stuck under yellowing Sellotape, to realize why. Vivian and I lived Withnail and I for a long time before that weird thing happened in my head, and I had to sit at the kitchen table and try and write it down.

April 16, 1975. Hadn’t seen V. for two years. He’s lost his looks but not his habit. Scotch before breakfast. He doesn’t eat breakfast. Vivian is drinking himself to death. He said, “If there’s a God, why are arses at the perfect height for kicking?” and I said, “I’ve got to agree with you.” Going backwards now and plunging deep into the hangovers. I can’t believe the amount of hangovers.

November 16, 1969. In bed for two days. I can hear Viv groaning in the other room.

I can’t believe this one. It’s almost biblical.

I simply can’t believe the amount of drinking. Practically every entry starts with a description of a hangover, and they are all different, like Eskimos have twenty different ways of describing snow. This one was gin and retsina and lasted four and a half days. It gets about a page and a half, adjectives all over it, as I looked for different ways to describe pain. Vivian was of the opinion that the only way to deal with a hangover was to drink your way around it. Jesus, I remember you drinking them out. I remember you drinking the lighter fuel in the middle of a blistering argument. But I’d forgotten that I was a member of the Conservative Party.

January 16, 1970. V. came back and said we should join the Conservative Party. “What for?” I said. “Because they give you sherry.” (Apparently he’d met some accountant called Bill Twococks who told him this was the case.) That night we got on our suits and walked over to Primrose Hill. The Conservative Party was in a basement and consisted of about six women and a photo of Macmillan on the wall. A tall twot with a ludicrous accent and a second-hand Saab wanted us to “canvass.” We said we would, but didn’t get any sherry, so we threw their fucking leaflets over a hedge.

April 30, 1969. Vivian and I get on our suits and go down for wine-tasting at Sotheby’s. This time we didn’t get in. Some bloke with ears and a green hat prevented our entry. “We’ve come to taste the wine,” we said. “You two cunts can hop it,” he said. He obviously remembered us from previous tastings and this expulsion left us depressed. Sotheby’s was one of the best shows in town to drink brilliant wine and arsehole yourself absolutely free.

That night we go into Regent’s Park and look at the wolves. I can’t count the number of times we went into the park and looked at the wolves. And I can’t believe Vivian is dead. He got cancer of the throat and they tore his voice out. And the fellow I’d always thought of as being the biggest coward I’d ever met materialized into the bravest bastard I’d ever known. It’s got to be hard to laugh when you’re dying, but I’ll always remember you laughing. That sad, brilliant, bitter face of yours laughing. Good-bye my darling friend. This is for you forever. And I know if there’s a pub in heaven, you’ll be in it. And Keats will be buying the drinks.

—From the introduction to “Withnail and I”: The Screenplay 10th Anniversary Edition. Copyright ©1985 Bruce Robinson. Published in the U.S. by The Overlook Press. Used by permission of the author and of the publisher.

[lucimay]

opening sequence of Withnail & I :



[opening music: King Curtis' live sax solo version of Whiter Shade of Pale]

Camden Town, London. 1969
The Flat.
A few shafts of sunlight sneak through the curtains and illuminate a living room. Victorian heirlooms, antique furniture and a pair of iceskates. Empty bottles everywhere. Marwood is in a chair, smoking a cigarette and sweating anxiety. Looks at his thumbs. He gets up gingerly and walks into a kitchen full of bottles, washing up and dead flowers in black water. He lights the stove and dumps the kettle on it. Now he's down the stairs and at Withnail's door, knocking.

Marwood: I'm having a cup of tea, do you want one?
No response.

Marwood: Do you want a cup of tea Withnail?
Withnail: No.

He can't stay in this house anymore. He leaves, slamming the door behind him.

• A Whiter Shade of Pale
  Brooker / Reid
  
  We skipped the light fandango
  turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
  I was feeling kinda seasick
  but the crowd called out for more
  The room was humming harder
  as the ceiling flew away
  When we called out for another drink
  the waiter brought a tray
  
  And so it was that later
  as the miller told his tale
  that her face, at first just ghostly,
  turned a whiter shade of pale
  
  She said, 'There is no reason
  and the truth is plain to see.'
  But I wandered through my playing cards
  and would not let her be
  one of sixteen vestal virgins
  who were leaving for the coast
  and although my eyes were open
  they might have just as well've been closed
  
  She said, 'I'm home on shore leave,'
  though in truth we were at sea
  so I took her by the looking glass
  and forced her to agree
  saying, 'You must be the mermaid
  who took Neptune for a ride.'
  But she smiled at me so sadly
  that my anger straightway died
  
  If music be the food of love
  then laughter is its queen
  and likewise if behind is in front
  then dirt in truth is clean
  My mouth by then like cardboard
  seemed to slip straight through my head
  So we crash-dived straightway quickly
  and attacked the ocean bed

King Curtis

Curtis Ousley (February 7, 1934 – August 13, 1971), who performed under the name King Curtis, was an American tenor, alto, and soprano saxophonist who played rhythm and blues, soul, rock, and soul jazz.

Curtis was born in Fort Worth, Texas. During the 1950s and early to mid 1960s he both worked as a session player on such records as Yakety Yak and recorded his own singles. His best known singles from this period are "Soul Twist" (Enjoy) and "Soul Serenade" (Capitol). In 1965 he moved to Atlantic Records, where his most successful singles were "Memphis Soul Stew" and "Ode to Billie Joe." He led Aretha Franklin's backup band, The Kingpins, and produced records, at first with Jerry Wexler and then by himself.

Curtis guested on John Lennon's Imagine and was capable of attracting the best session musicians to put in appearances for his own albums, including guitarist Duane Allman on Instant Groove and organist Billy Preston on Live At Fillmore West. Curtis did venture to the Fame and American studios, but he preferred to work in New York. "In the South you have to restrain yourself to make sure you come back alive".

King Curtis' "A Whiter Shade of Pale" plays during the beginning of Withnail and I, and was chosen as a symbol of the end of 1960s idealism. His Saxophone solo of the song "When A Man Loves A Woman", originally sung by Percy Sledge, is an example of his virtuosity.

One of his last releases was the live Live At Fillmore West which boasted heavyweight versions of Memphis Soul Stew and Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love and Stevie Wonder's Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Musicians such as Billy Preston (piano), Jerry Jemmott (bass), Cornell Dupree (guitar, Curtis had a long standing with relationship will Dupree), Pancho Morales (percussion) and Bernard Purdie (drums) backed up Curtis.

On Saturday August 13 1971, at the height of a New York heat wave, King Curtis was carrying an air conditioner unit into his apartment at 50W.86th St. He found his access blocked by two men administering drugs to themselves. He asked them to move, there was a scuffle, and one of the men, later identified as Juan Montanez, stabbed King Curtis in the heart with a knife. Curtis was hurried to Roosevelt Hospital, but was dead on arrival. The funeral was held four days later. As the mourners filed in, Curtis' Kingpins played an hour long version of 'Soul Serenade' and a number of musician got up to play. Jesse Jackson preached the service, and Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Cissy Houston, Brook Benton and Duane Allman were among those attending. Aretha sang the closing spiritual , 'Never Grow Old'. The Atlantic Records office closed for the day

Curtis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 6, 2000.




www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000 ... 10-1058857

you can hear the whole track on Rhapsody>search king curtis - live at fillmore west.

[Reave the Unjust]

I DEMAND TO HAVE SOME BOOZE!

There's a ridiculous drinking game (aren't they all ) based on this film.

You have to watch the film and drink whenever they drink.
(Lighter fluid optional )
It sounds simple, but it has a very high drop out rate amongst the players!

Last time I won accidently by being the only one still concious at the end!!

I recently found out that Richard E. Grant (Withnail) is allergic to alcohol, but still drank it during the filming..... No wonder he looks so ill! It's not make up!

Oh dear, I feel the power of the quotes growing....................


WE'VE GONE ON HOLIDAY BY MISTAKE


ARE YOU THE FARMER?
ARE YOU THE FARMER?
STOP SAYING THAT!

WE WANT THE FINEST WINES AVAILABLE TO HUMANITY. WE WANT THEM HERE AND WE WANT THEM NOW!

[Cole]

Heh. I've heard of that drinking game. I must play one day.

Love the film and this really is a superbly composed thread, Luc.

[lucimay]

thanks Marv!!! AND REAVE!!! i knew there was a drinking game but
i rarely drink anymore.

but i'm willing to play should the subject come up at an Elohimfest!!

[lucimay]

I have of late--but
wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither...