Planning to go away this Christmas? It is worth revisiting this top-shelf comedy about two boozy would-be actors who go on holiday by mistake
By Dee Jefferson
If you like what Richard E Grant is doing now – in series such as The Franchise and films like Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Saltburn – you really should see where it all began: the 1987 flop turned cult classic Withnail and I. Grant delivers a tour de force comedic performance as an alcoholic out-of-work actor living with his best mate in a squalid London flat at the tail end of 1969 who goes on a rural holiday by mistake.
It’s funnier than it sounds. In fact, Withnail and I is top-shelf comedy, with some of the finest lines and line readings available to humanity. (A personal favourite: “This place has become impossible. Perpetual rain, freezing cold and now a madman on the prowl outside with eels.”)
t didn’t play this way at the beginning: like many cult classics, Withnail and I bombed at the box office and was generally poorly reviewed, accreting fandom gradually – in this case, assisted by the spread of VCR technology. In particular, it passed like a secret handshake through students – who recognised simpatico spirits and familiar dilemmas – which I assume is how I discovered it, in the early 2000s.
was familiar with the title and cover – it was a fixture of video stores in the 90s – but I’d somehow assumed it was too rarefied for my unrefined palate; only to discover, in my chaotic uni years, that it was a kind of spiritual homecoming. In my soul, I’m probably eternally pottering around the muddy countryside of Withnail and I, seeking beauty (and potatoes) while beset by madmen brandishing eels.
Circa 2000, Withnail and I was probably my first encounter with Grant, but with hindsight I realise it cemented the qualities that have defined his best roles in the decades since: sharp-tongued patrician hauteur interspersed with manic energy and childlike glee. It’s also a masterclass in playing drunk – all the more miraculous for the fact that he is a lifelong teetotaller.
Grant plays Withnail (pronounced “WITH-null” in the film, though curiously you only ever hear fans – even British people – pronounce the film’s title “WITH-NAIL”), an upper-crust scion with a world-class talent for drink and drugs, and a more dubious talent for acting; in his own estimation, “a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum”, thanks to his inability to secure an audition.
The titular “I” (played by Paul McGann) is Marwood: middle class, biblically beautiful, and also an actor, though mildly more successful – not only has he secured an audition, he’s about to get a callback. Like Withnail, Marwood is a prodigious drinker, but he’s less of a connoisseur of psychotropics than his friend; more a dilettante. The film opens on him in the middle of a panic attack, surrounded by the souvenirs of a speed- and booze-fuelled 60-hour bender.
This is ostensibly Marwood’s story, but from the moment Grant enters the picture around five minutes in – sepulchral in his hangover, wrapped in tailored tweed and brandishing a wine bottle – it’s clear he’s going to steal the show. “I have some extremely distressing news,” he informs Marwood. “We’ve just run out of wine.”
Writer-director Bruce Robinson based the film on his semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, drawing on his years as a struggling actor living in Camden. This is not the stylish, swinging 60s London often depicted on film, but rather a down-and-out working-class melting pot at the fag end of a decade of dissolution. The hangover is a bastard.
Marwood and Withnail, adept at dodging reality, decamp to the countryside: a holiday cottage in the Lake District owned by Withnail’s wealthy uncle Monty (the irrepressible Richard Griffiths), himself a failed thesp. Monty is also somewhat of a failed homosexual, and as we discover, Withnail has secured the keys to the cottage by offering up his unsuspecting friend as an amuse-bouche. When Monty arrives at the cottage looking to claim his prize, the wheels of the already rickety wagon fall well and truly off.
None of this plays out in the way you’d expect, which is really the strength of all the best films and certainly the best comedies. Writing from his own life – including his experiences of predatory older gay men in the clubs and casting couches of 60s London – Robinson is humanistic, even tender, and never glib. Monty is no monster. Even Withnail, a paragon of patrician entitlement, is more damaged child than diabolical fiend. And Marwood is no angel: we come to see that he has an exploitative instinct every bit as ruthless as his friend’s.
Withnail and I is foremost a comedy, but the film’s enduring emotional power lies in its devastating portrayal of a friendship that has tipped from intoxicating high into melancholic low. Marwood, as ambitious as his friend but more pragmatic, moves on – leaving us with the ambivalent sense that this is both necessary and a betrayal. But as with all trips, don’t let the inevitable comedown put you off going on the sublime and often ridiculous journey.
Discover why Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I is a must-read for screenwriters looking to study timeless dialogue and unforgettable characters.
By Martin Keady
In a new series for Script Lab, Martin Keady, our resident cinema historian, examines The Greatest Screenplays: scripts that every screenwriter should read and learn from. He begins with Withnail and I, Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical classic about a pair of unemployed actors trying to get their wits together in the countryside at the end of the 1960s.
You know a screenplay is great when you have read it over a hundred times, and it still yields new insights and delights. And lest anyone accuse me of hyperbole, that is at least the number of times that I read the screenplay for Withnail and I while researching and writing my contributions to Withnail and I: From Cult To Classic, the book about the film produced by the author and designer Toby Benjamin.
Few screenplays, if any, reward such voluminous rereading, but Withnail and I certainly does. Indeed, to paraphrase just one of its many magnificent pieces of dialogue, it contains “the finest lines available to humanity.”
Even if I were to put aside my contributions to the book, I have still written far more about Withnail and I than I have any other screenplay in more than a decade of writing for The Script Lab. Indeed, it was my numerous pieces for The Script Lab about the film that first alerted Toby Benjamin to my love for it, including my declaration in a piece written nearly 10 years ago (The Forty Greatest Screenplays Ever Written) that it was the only screenplay that could match Casablanca (1942) for sheer quotability, such that virtually every line, no matter how seemingly trivial, could be quoted and indeed was constantly quoted.
However, while Casablanca is almost universally hailed as one of the greatest screenplays ever written, if not the greatest screenplay, Withnail and I is, by comparison, relatively little known, especially in America. Consequently, I hope that this article goes some small way towards raising its profile in America and alerting US screenwriters to the existence of the greatest screenplay they have probably never read.
Withnail and I: The Backstory
Perhaps the first thing to say about the screenplay for Withnail and I is that it is just one element (albeit probably the most important element) of a perfect film. By “perfect,” I mean a film in which every single element, from the opening credits to the closing score (and encompassing everything in between), is of a uniformly outstanding quality. There is no miscast minor actor or awful backdrop-to-a-moving-car à la so many Alfred Hitchcock movies to make it lose its spell over a viewer for even a single moment.
In Withnail and I, the directing, acting, cinematography, editing, music, and everything else (set design, costume, hair, etc.) that makes up the movie is absolutely superb, such that it can be legitimately described as being perfect or as perfect as any human creation can ever be.
That is especially true of the screenplay, which in Britain has made it as legendary as any screenplay ever written. Indeed, the “backstory” to Withnail and I is itself worthy of being filmed, as it took its Robinson over a decade to complete, culminating in George Harrison reading it on a transatlantic flight and agreeing to produce it (for HandMade Films, the production company he had founded in 1978) as soon as the plane had landed.
What Makes a Great Screenplay?
As with any screenplay, the two most important elements of Withnail and I are its plotting and dialogue, both of which are exceptional, albeit for completely different reasons.
The Plot
The plot is simple, if not perfunctory. At the end of the 1960s (literally, as the action of the film takes place in the last few months of 1969), two out-of-work actors (the titular Withnail and I, who is named in the script as Marwood) emerge from their latest episode of Bacchanalian excess and decide that what they require is a break in the country, in keeping with the then-current trend among British bands, notably Traffic, to leave the city and record in more rural surroundings.
As I/Marwood puts it, with his usual mixture of plain talk and poetry: “What we need is harmony. Fresh air. Stuff like that.”
Being impoverished (even though Withnail comes from a wealthy family, albeit one he is largely estranged from), the pair resort to palling up to Withnail’s Uncle Monty, the one member of his extended family who he finds less than completely disagreeable, perhaps partly because Monty himself had “crept the boards in my youth” (i.e. acted). Monty duly lends them the key to his remote country cottage, which is more falling-down shack than a rural idyll, and the two set off from London for the Lake District, which is literally at the other end of England, for “a delightful weekend in the country.”
What ensues is anything but “delightful,” as Withnail and I/Marwood are set upon by amorous bulls, vengeful poachers, and ultimately Uncle Monty who, in the last days before homosexuality is fully legalized and generally accepted in Britain, has taken a shine to I/Marwood and consequently sets out to join him at the cottage.
This swift summation of the plot of Withnail and I was further summarised by one reviewer of the film as being, “Here. There. Here.” That line is a nod to a line in the script, namely the three-word note left by the poacher (when he is feeling less vengeful) alongside the rabbit he eventually decides to give Withnail and I: “Here, hare, here!”
In truth, there is little more to the supposed “storyline” of Withnail and I than this flitting between London and the Lake District, or between the city and the countryside. And yet Withnail and I is arguably the greatest example in cinema of the old dictum in literature that the greatest stories are those in which nothing happens but everything changes.
Nothing (or more accurately not much) actually happens in Withnail and I, yet everything changes for the titular pair, particularly I/Marwood, who gradually realizes that his supposed friend is actually utterly selfish and even prepared to risk his physical safety to get what he wants, most notably when he admits to I/Marwood that he had told Monty that I/Marwood was homosexual to gain access to his country retreat.
Ultimately, I/Marwood gains revenge by rejecting Withnail at the end of the film when he goes off to an acting job in Manchester, and Withnail is left to rot, alone, in the rat-infested flat that he now faces eviction from.
Among all its other achievements, Withnail and I is arguably the film that best demonstrates that a plot or storyline does not have to be epic, or even obviously dramatic, to be incredibly powerful and affecting.
In the story of one man coming to terms with the exploitative nature of the friendship that he has become entangled in, and finally escaping from it, Withnail and I captures the truth about so many relationships (especially so many male friendships) that have somehow continued long after they have become completely toxic.
‘Withnail and I’ (1987)
Great Dialogue
The second essential element of any great screenplay is great dialogue, and this is where Withnail and I really comes into its own.
If its plot is relatively ordinary, its dialogue is absolutely extraordinary, which is why I argued over a decade ago (an argument that I stand by today) that only Casablanca comes close to matching its seemingly infinite quotability.
The first exchange of dialogue in the film is mundane, involving I/Marwood asking (an unseen) Withnail whether he would like a cup of tea and Withnail (still unseen) replying, “No.” Yet in the café that Marwood decamps to, his first voiceover sets the tone for the flights of fancy, which are simultaneously poetic and defiantly prosaic, that he will often embark on during the rest of the film: “13 million Londoners have to cope with this, and baked beans and All-Bran and rape? And I’m sitting in this bloody shack and I can’t cope with Withnail. I must be out of my mind. I must go home at once and discuss his problems in depth.”
He does return home to Withnail but he emphatically does not “discuss his problems in depth” (problems that include a degree of self-absorption that would put Narcissus to shame). Instead, those “problems” are largely avoided until they can be avoided no more, and I/Marwood finally confronts Withnail, albeit in a decidedly non-confrontational way, at the end of the film.
In between, Robinson’s immaculate dialogue, honed over more than a decade and countless drafts of a screenplay that originally began as a novel, encompasses almost everything, or at least everything that was foremost in the minds of young people like Withnail and I/Marwood at the end of the 1960s: wealth and status, with Withnail saying of the cottage key he secures from Monty, “Free to those that can afford it. Very expensive to those that can’t”; politics, with Uncle Monty proclaiming that England and particularly those of his upper class have been “Shat on by Tories, shoveled up by Labour”; and even the Sixties themselves, with Drug Dealer Danny lamenting, “We are at the end of an age. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is nearly over. They’re selling hippy wigs in Woolworths. It is 91 days to the end of the decade and as Presuming Ed [his black sidekick and drug mule] here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black.”
Perhaps the only universal human obsession that is not directly addressed is sex, and yet it is there throughout the film, hiding, as it were, in plain sight.
In the first instance, it is there in the character of Uncle Monty, the old and “raving homosexual” (as I/Marwood describes him) who pursues younger flesh, whether or not that younger flesh is interested in him. Ultimately it is there in the very last line of the film, in which Withnail quotes Hamlet to convey his Hamlet-like disgust with the world (including I/Marwood) that has rejected him: “Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither.” The fact that this brilliantly delivered soliloquy, which proves that Withnail really can act, is delivered only to the disinterested wolves at London Zoo says it all about Withnail’s so-called “career” as an actor and, arguably, human ambition in general.
Robinson was an actor and for a time after leaving drama school a successful one at that, until he slipped into the post-drama school squalor that is alternatively celebrated and castigated in Withnail and I. Eventually, he stopped being an actor and became a writer—a great writer, as is proven by the script for Withnail and I alone. But he clearly never lost the actor’s ear for unforgettable dialogue and employed it to spectacular effect in his greatest screenplay.
See Withnail and I, and Read It for Yourself
Having seen and read Withnail and I so many times, especially while researching and writing a book about it, I can personally testify to its compelling, indeed haunting, genius.
But don’t take my word for it. If you haven’t seen or read it for yourself, do so as soon as possible, because I can virtually guarantee that you will enjoy it and be illuminated by it. And even if you have seen or read it before, see and read it again, because no other screenplay, with the possible exception of Casablanca, repays multiple viewings or readings so handsomely.
Richard E. Grant’s career comes full circle in The Franchise
By Tim Lowery
“I’m a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum!” cries Richard E. Grant’s Withnail early on in Withnail And I, delivering the line as if he’s Olivier at the Old Vic while he’s, in actuality, surrounded by the squalor of his Camden flat (and shirtless and slathered in lotion in a feeble attempt to keep warm), looking equally hungover and drug crazed and like he hasn’t slept days, and addressing or, better yet, performing for his roommate/drinking buddy, the “I” from the film’s title. It’s no stretch to say that Withnail is the role that made Richard E. Grant, who, before booking Bruce Robinson’s brilliant 1987 cult comedy, was not unlike his character, at least as far as career prospects: a struggling actor in London who was pushing 30 and whose opportunities felt fewer and farther between. “If Daniel Day-Lewis hadn’t turned down Withnail And I, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you right now,” the actor told me over coffees with a smile during an interview in 2018, before saying that, even 30-plus years into a successful and impressive career in films with far, far more eyeballs that Withnail, the line he was most often asked to repeat in public was from his screen debut—specifically, “Monty, you terrible cunt!”
Whether or not you’re completely taken by HBO’s new comedy The Franchise, one of its inarguable, let’s-keep-watching-this-every-Sunday-night joys so far is that it has Grant back in full thespian-diva mode, channeling a bit of the same Entitled Actor Spirit that made him such a revelation in Withnail. In fact, it feels safe to assume that one of The Franchise’s network notes was something along the lines of “Needs more Richard E. Grant,” as the guy, playing veteran stage actor Peter, steals just about every scene he’s in, usually while butting heads with Eric (Daniel Brühl), the director of Tecto: Eye Of The Storm, the prospective Marvel-esque blockbuster that The Franchise documents the making of, or Adam (Billy Magnussen), Tecto’s sweet but, at least in the eyes of Peter, unserious and undeserving star.
To the former, he spits out, in the show’s second episode, the following in an attempt to be No. 1 on the call sheet even though he’s the film’s supporting character: “I’m very low maintenance. Now get that through your thick fucking skull, Daniel!” (By that installment’s end, he indeed becomes “1 A” on said call sheet.) And in the third episode, he grouses to Daniel again, this time about a note: “The distance between nodding and cowering is 100,000 miles,” he tells his director with drama-queen vigor before shifting into faux humility. “I’m sorry, I just cannot see my way to a cower. Lord knows I’ve tried.” As for the latter—that’s Adam, a nice-guy bro who’s very much Peter’s comedic foil—he’s more fond of ribbing if not outright insulting him, preferably in public, describing him in an on-set TV interview as ““instinctual like a bear or a hog. And I say this, you know, with respect. It’s like working with a chimpanzee.”
Series creator Jon Brown and the show’s writers (among them, the great Tony Roche of the deliciously cynical political satire The Thick Of It by Armando Iannucci, one of The Franchise’s executive producers) are clearly Withnail fans themselves, tossing in little nods to Grant’s character in the film throughout. “Morning, cunts!” Peter cheerfully greets the director & co. outside of his trailer, which recalls that aforementioned memorable line from Withnail. In a different episode, as the camera makes its way past that trailer, you can hear Peter yelling offscreen, dripping with indignation and drama, “How fucking dare you?” which has echoes of “How dare you?” in Withnail, when Grant’s wannabe thespian blasts “I” (played by Paul McGann) with a stage-worthy overreaction.
New production photos have been released from the Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s production of Withnail & I.
By Stephi Wild
Birmingham Rep’s brand new adaptation of Bruce Robinson’s 1987 British tragi-comedy film, Withnail and I is directed by the double Olivier Award-winning Artistic Director of Birmingham Rep, Sean Foley and designed by Alice Power. The show is currently running at The Rep and Press Night is on 14 May at 7pm.
Robert Sheehan plays Withnail, Adonis Siddique plays Marwood and Malcolm Sinclair plays Uncle Monty. The cast is completed by Adam Young (Danny), Israel J Fredericks (Presuming Ed), Morgan Philpott (Wanker/Jake the Poacher), Matt Devitt (Farmer/Colonel & Band), Adam Sopp (Geezer/Policeman, Band & Musical Director), Sooz Kempner (Miss Blenehassitt/Policewoman & Band).
The creative team joining the writer, director and designer, Bruce Robinson, Sean Foley and Alice Power are: Jessica Hung Han Yun (Lighting Design), Ben & Max Ringham (Sound & Composition), Akhila Krishnan (Video Design), Candida Caldicott (Music Supervision), Ginny Schiller (Casting Director), Alison de Burgh(Fight Director), Sara Joyce (Associate Director), Simon Marlow (Production Manager), Jennifer Taillefer (Production Environmental Manager), Kay Wilton (Costume Supervisor), Robin Morgan (Props Supervisor) and Andriea Nelson (Wigs Supervisor).
Robert Sheehan made his acting debut in Aisling Walsh’s acclaimed feature Song For A Raggy Boy. Since then, his screen credits include: Season of the Witch, Cherrybomb, Killing Bono, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, The Road Within, The Song of Sway Lake, Anita B, The Messenger, Moonwalkers, Jet Trash, Geostorm, Bad Samaritan, Three Summers, Mute, Mortal Engines, the BAFTA winning Red Riding trilogy for Channel 43, the multi-IFTA winning Love/Hate, the BAFTA winning Misfits for E4 (for which he was BAFTA nominated), The Borrowers, Fortitude, Genius: Picasso, The Last Bus, The Umbrella Academy and the upcoming film Red Sonja. His theatre work includes The Playboy of the Western Worlddirected by John Crowley for the Old Vic, Richard III in The Wars of the Roses directed by Trevor Nunn for the Rose Theatre and Endgame directed by Danya Taymor for the Gate Theatre Dublin.
Adonis Siddique’s theatre credits include: The Crown Jewels in the West End, Saleem in East Is East (a Birmingham Rep co-production with the National Theatre); Dorian Gray in The Picture Of Dorian Gray at the Pleasance Theatre in London, Crowther in The History Boys, Jav in Mismatched, a Sky Comedy/Birmingham Rep production, Quasim in Very Special Guest Star at Soho Theatre and Kyle in Dad at SouthwarkPlayhouse. Adonis was a creative collaborator and actor in Shunt’s Party Skills For The End Of The World at The Manchester International Festival. His film & television credits include: Newark Newark, Tin Star, Tyrant, Beyond Reasonable Doubt for CNN and the feature film Me Myself and D.
Malcolm Sinclair is currently appearing at the National Theatre in Dear Octopus with Lindsay Duncan. His other many theatre credits include The Inquiry at Chichester Festival Theatre, My Fair Lady in the West End, The Light in the Piazza internationally and at the Royal Festival Hall, An Enemy of the People at Nottingham Playhouse, This House at Chichester Festival Theatre and at the Garrick Theatre, The Doctor’s Dilemma, The Habit of Art, The Power of Yes and House/Garden, History Boys and Racing Demon for the National Theatre, Ivanov at the Donmar Warehouse and Richard III, Uncle Vanya and The Comedy of Errors for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His many TV credits include Andor in A Star Wars Story for Disney +, Midsomer Murders, Virtuoso Silk, Henry V, The Hollow Crown, Foyle’s War, Hustle, Judge John Deed, A Touch of Frost and the US mini-series, Scarlett. His many films include: Drowning; The Man Who Knew Infinity, Survivor, A Belfast story, The Young Victoria, Casino Royale, V for Vendetta, Keep The Aspidistra Flying, Young Poisoner’s Handbook, God On The Rocks, Now That It’s Morning and Success Is The Best Revenge.
Written and adapted for the stage by Bruce Robinson himself, the writer and director of the original film, the show will bring to life some of the most iconic comic characters ever created. The film, based on Robinson’s own unpublished novel, was produced by Handmade Films and starred Richard E Grant, Paul McGann and Richard Griffiths.
Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan