Withnail & I

‘I couldn’t afford loo roll’: Bruce Robinson on being skint, Zeffirelli’s advances and Withnail’s return

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The director reveals why he finally came round to doing a play based on the cult film that made his name

By Robert Gore-Langton

Bruce Robinson is ramming a huge log into the grate of his ancient fireplace in mud-clogged Herefordshire. He’s 77 and the film for which he is famous, Withnail and I, is about to open as a play. Isn’t it curious it hasn’t happened before, given that the comedy is about two thirsty, unemployed actors and is a sort of love-hate letter to the theatre?

‘I was living on 30 bob a week – I could either afford fish and chips or ten gold leaf’

 

‘I wasn’t fond of the idea of staging it,’ says Robinson, who wrote and directed the 1987 film based on his own boozy life as an actor in the 1960s. ‘I’d done it, you know; it’s decades ago and it’s over. There was a time when Withnail was stuck to me like a colostomy bag. I just wanted to move on. But a while back, a lovely geezer called George Ward wanted to buy the stage rights. He is a very generous man and coughed up a good chunk of dough. So I’ve written the script but I am not the director. I’ve deliberately stayed away from rehearsals. I’d only bring a ball and chain as I would be looking to do what I did before.’

The show is being directed at the Birmingham Rep by Sean Foley, a seasoned comedy director who recently turned the Ealing classic The Man in the White Suit into a stage show. Two young actors play the leads. Robert Sheehan is Withnail, Adonis Siddique is ‘I’ (based on Robinson himself) with stage veteran Malcolm Sinclair playing Monty, Withnail’s fruity, lecherous, Old Harrovian uncle. It’s not a musical but there’s a live band to replicate the film’s soundtrack, which was notable for its doses of Jimi Hendrix. The film is set in 1969 and yet it remains oddly timeless. It made the names of Richard E. Grant (as Withnail) and Paul McGann (as ‘I’) as the two reprobates.

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10 Low-Budget British Comedies That You Need To See

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A selection of the best low-budget British comedy films including Withnail and I, and Comfort and Joy.

By Bradley Simpson

This look at 10 low-budget British comedy films traverses through a diverse landscape of movies, each offering a unique blend of comedy, drama, and social commentary

From Maxine Peeke’s captivating portrayal in Funny Cow, navigating the challenges of stand-up comedy against the backdrop of northern England’s working men’s clubs, to the darkly humorous take on terrorism in Chris Morris’s Four Lions, these films push the boundaries of storytelling and audience expectations.

As we explore the quirky humour of Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May and the biting satire of Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin, we witness filmmakers skilfully intertwining laughter with deeper themes of societal norms, personal struggles, and the human condition. Join us on this cinematic journey, where comedy meets tragedy, and the absurdity of life takes centre stage.

Funny Cow

Dir. Adrian Shergold (2017)

Maxine Peeke shines in Funny Cow, portraying a female stand-up comedian grappling with the challenges of navigating the comedy circuit in working men’s clubs across northern England during the 1970s and 1980s.

While the film’s portrayal of casual bigotry and racism is uncomfortable to witness, it serves as a poignant reminder of an era we hope, albeit perhaps fancifully, has passed for good.

As much a kitchen sink survival story as a comedy, Funny Cow encapsulates the quintessential British sensibility of skilfully intertwining humour with uncompromising bleakness.

Attack The Block

Dir. Joe Cornish (2011)

Attack The Block, depicting an alien invasion and the residents of council flats fighting back, carved its own niche in 2011, with its talented cast and crew subsequently moving on to greater heights, underscoring the film’s lightning-in-a-bottle quality.

Writer-director Joe Cornish, also known for 2019’s The Kid Who Would Be King, not only captured a uniquely British sensibility to approach the science-fiction genre with humour but also showcased the talents of Jodie Whitaker (pre-Doctor Who fame) and John Boyega (pre-Star Wars).

Prevenge

Dir. Alice Lowe (2016)

Alice Lowe’s directorial debut, accomplished in just 11 days of filming, is a testament to efficiency and skill. Over the course of a brisk ninety minutes, Lowe’s penchant for comically absurd scenarios permeates a stylised stage reminiscent of influences such as Argento, Lynch, and her collaborator Ben Wheatley, with whom she co-wrote and starred in Sightseers.

Prevenge stands out for its delightful subversion, both in narrative structure and thematic exploration, as it flips the classic revenge trope on its head, presenting it as both revelation and twist, while ingeniously transforming the life-giving biology of a pregnant woman into an instrument of death.

Nuts In May

Dir. Mike Leigh (1976)

Top 10 Films Brits on Holiday
In Nuts In May, originally aired on BBC television as part of its Play for Today series in 1976, Mike Leigh showcases his talent for delightfully quirky storytelling.

Alison Steadman and Roger Sloman lead the cast as a well-meaning couple embarking on a camping holiday. Steadman’s innocent, childlike wonder serves as a charming counterpoint to Sloman’s headmaster-like precision, resulting in a dynamic that is both odd and endearing.

Leigh skilfully mines humour from the contrasting personalities of the campsite’s other inhabitants, whose various agendas and approaches to leisure disrupt the couple’s peaceful retreat, adding layers of complexity to their idyllic getaway.

Sightseers

Dir. Ben Wheatley (2012)

Director Ben Wheatley, along with writers-actors Steve Oram and Alice Lowe, masterfully blend elements of romance, buddy comedy, domestic melodrama, and slasher horror in this twisted and original lo-fi comic adventure. Seamlessly intertwining genres, they skilfully play on our sympathies while tickling our funny bone.

In a unique amalgamation reminiscent of Nuts in May meets Natural Born Killers, the film admirably marries comedy with horror, showcasing how romance can thrive amidst the backdrop of serial homicide, highlighting the filmmakers’ ability to weave together disparate elements into a cohesive and captivating narrative.

The Death Of Stalin

Dir. Armando Iannucci (2017)

Armando Iannucci’s biting satire achieves a delicate balance between historical accuracy and daring creative license, portraying a tale of political chaos and power struggles among ministers in the aftermath of Stalin’s death.

The stellar ensemble cast, featuring Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Rupert Friend, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Simon Russell Beale as Lavrentiy Beria, and Jason Isaacs as Georgy Zhukov, alongside memorable supporting performances from Olga Kurylenko and Paddy Considine, brings vibrant energy to their roles.

With razor-sharp dialogue co-written by David Schneider, Ian Martin, and Peter Fellows, Iannucci’s wit is so potent that it should come with a warning: “Do not watch while drinking, as uncontrollable laughter may result in projectile spillage.”

Another Year

Dir. Mike Leigh (2010)

In Another Year, writer-director Mike Leigh skilfully navigates the complexities of light and dark, comedy and tragedy, to explore themes of marriage, togetherness, friendship, and love, while acknowledging the inherent challenges of life’s journey.

Gerri and Tom, portrayed by Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent, embody a long-married couple seemingly enjoying a comfortable and loving life. However, against the backdrop of their stability, their circle of friends and family grapple with life’s traumas, finding solace and support within Gerri and Tom’s nurturing home and friendship, where vulnerabilities are laid bare like open wounds.

Four Lions

Dir. Chris Morris (2010)

Finding humour in terrorism may seem inconceivable, but with Chris Morris at the helm, anything is possible. Four Lions delights in flipping our expectations, revealing the absurdity and folly inherent in the subject matter.

The film satirises flawed idealism, portraying unplugged fundamentalist factions interpreting religious scripture on a whim, and highlighting the futility of their actions.

This dark comedy serves as a biting contemporary social commentary, simultaneously funny and provocative, challenging audiences to confront uncomfortable truths with laughter.

Comfort And Joy

Dir. Bill Forsyth (1984)

Bill Forsyth's Comfort and Joy (1984)

In Scotland, radio DJ Alan Bird, portrayed by Bill Paterson, becomes embroiled in a conflict between rival families vying for control of Glasgow’s ice cream market. Directed by Bill Forsyth, renowned for works like Local Hero and Gregory’s Girl, this film stands as arguably his finest. It’s a beautifully melancholic and whimsically life-affirming story, following a down-on-his-luck Glaswegian who, abandoned by his girlfriend, unwittingly becomes entangled in the city’s ice cream war.

Withnail And I

Dir. Bruce Robinson (1987)

Top 10 Films Brits on Holiday
Considered the quintessential Brits-on-holiday film, Bruce Robinson’s seminal classic Withnail and I remains a cult favourite. Drawing from Robinson’s own experiences as an out-of-work actor amidst the squalor of Camden Town, fuelled by alcohol, the movie follows two unemployed Londoners as they escape to the countryside for a much-needed respite.

Mixing comedy with tragedy, Withnail and I offers a caustic, unapologetic, and inherently truthful portrayal of this fringe element of London’s evolving cultural and societal landscape. Its brilliance lies in Robinson’s sparkling dialogue and standout performances, notably Ralph Brown’s spaced-out drug dealer and Richard E. Grant’s perennially drunk Withnail.

Source: 10 Low-Budget British Comedies That You Need To See

The Actor Who Documented His Grief—And Shared It With the World

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After his wife died two years ago, Richard E. Grant began to film himself talking about his bereavement, creating a remarkable record of life after loss.

By Sophie Gilbert 

On camera, the actor Richard E. Grant tends to emit an unknowable, tenebrous quality: No matter how much his characters express, you always sense something between the lines that can’t quite be calibrated. In his new memoir, A Pocketful of Happiness, Grant elegantly summarizes his career as several decades of “minimalist villainy.” His characters have run the gamut from hedonistic wastrel thespian (Withnail and I) to authoritarian girl-band manager (Spice World) to utterly charming criminal accomplice (his Oscar-nominated turn in Can You Ever Forgive Me?), but if they share an attribute, it’s that you wouldn’t be even a tiny bit surprised if they stole your wallet.

In life, though, Grant has turned honesty into an inventive, impossibly delicate art form. Almost two years ago, his wife of 35 years, the dialect coach Joan Washington, died from lung cancer, and in the immediate months after losing her, he turned to Instagram to record fragments of his bereavement. In a typical video, his face is slightly off-center, his gaze away from the camera. He looks disheveled. He looks haunted. “What’s so incomprehensible is that we can never touch or talk to one another ever again,” he says in one reel. In another, he films himself walking through a wood, saying simply, “One step at a time.”

In the midst of grief—the most isolating state of all—Grant rapidly built community. “I’ve found incredible comfort in these thoughtful videos you share with us; their beautiful honesty, their pain—but always the careful reframing of each piece within the greater mosaic of a life well lived,” one woman commented recently when Grant shared that his mother had died. Taken as a whole, the uploads can be disorienting, which is what makes them so revelatory as a record of life after loss. Grant posts videos from friends’ houses; he promotes his own projects; he re-creates scenes from Withnail to pass the time during 10 days in quarantine. But underlying everything is Joan’s absence—the feeling, as he remarked in one post, while walking on the beach in Australia, of being “like an old turtle without my shell.”

When I met with Grant at his home in southwest London earlier this spring, he seemed still dazed by the confluence of grief, productivity, and public response over the past few years. At the urging of his literary agent and his daughter, he wrote a memoir about the last months of Joan’s life, interspersed with stories from the past few years of his career. The resulting book, A Pocketful of Happiness—published this month in the U.S.—is named for the edict Joan gave him before she died, the assurance that he would be all right if he could try to find just a little to be grateful for every single day. “She’d never come up with this phrase before in our marriage,” Grant said, rangy at 66 in black corduroy trousers and a black shirt, holding his daughter’s cat on his lap. “I think if one of us had ever said it, we’d have concluded it sounded like something from a Hallmark card. But it’s proved to be a very profound mantra from which to live.”

His decision to form the book’s narrative jointly out of the most enchanting highs (the Oscars, karaoke with Olivia Colman in a house formerly owned by Bette Davis) and the bleakest lows (Joan’s diagnosis, her fury when Grant inadvertently used the word terminal one day to describe her illness) came, he said, out of his desire to accurately capture what most people’s lives are like. In 1986, the year he married Joan, Grant was a jobbing actor at best, cobbling together regional-theater credits and TV movies. After a miserable nine-month stint of unemployment, he was offered a role that Daniel Day-Lewis had turned down: the flamboyant, sozzled Withnail in Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical feature film. The job was a huge break. At the end of the first week of rehearsal, Joan, who was 27 weeks pregnant, went into premature labor. Their first child, Tiffany, lived only half an hour, her lungs too undeveloped to let her breathe on her own. “I don’t think you get over it,” Grant said. “You navigate your way around it.”

A Pocketful of Happiness captures the ways in which disastrous news can be totally unmooring, even amid ongoing commitments and miscellaneous daily tasks. Grant writes of tidying up the garden while waiting for Joan’s radiation treatment to begin, of packing away boxes of Joan’s clothes for space and feeling stunned that she would likely never wear them again. Their relationship is the fascinating central pillar of the book—an unpredictably enduring love affair between a fiercely private Scottish dialect coach and a chronically overexcited, heart-on-his sleeve actor from Eswatini, in southern Africa, who was 10 years her junior. At the beginning of their relationship, Joan was well established in her career, and Grant was waiting tables. Over the course of their marriage, the balance of status shifted, and yet, he said to me, they never lost their connection: “A relationship that began in bed talking, in January 1983, ended in bed holding each other’s hands and me still talking to her, 38 years later.”

In Europe and Australia, where the book was first published last year, Grant has taken it on tour with a theatrical show incorporating videos and photographs of Joan; audiences have an opportunity, in the second act, to share their own grief. His willingness to perform an experience so typically understood as private—to so energetically upend our sense that the “right” way to get through it is stoically, and alone—is striking. He’s dismissive of the unspoken tradition of giving people space in the immediate aftermath of bereavement, the very “time that you need people to talk to.” And he’s audibly ferocious about the people who simply never acknowledged Joan’s death at all. Earlier this year, he posted a video about running into a couple in France, friends he’d known for 25 years, who very discernibly avoided him in the street rather than express regret for not having been in touch. “I felt as if I had been slapped,” he told me, vibrating with rage.

On Instagram, as his many commenters make clear, his dispatches have generated a powerful sense of recognition. And his willingness to make his mourning public urges questions: Why should grief be hidden, if sharing it feels cathartic? Why should people grieving spouses, parents, children do so quietly? Why is our innate response to people who are experiencing profound loss to duck and cover? “I think that it’s [people’s] fear that they’re either going to be intruding or that you’re going to fall apart like a jelly on the pavement,” Grant said. He still has, he confesses, days where he is so “poleaxed” by grief that the only thing to do is submit to it and wait for it to pass, but he also has good days, splendid days, days with happiness by the bucketload. He has a role in Saltburn, the highly anticipated second feature from the director Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman). He is also scheduled to appear in Sam Mendes and Armando Ianucci’s new HBO satire about a superhero franchise, and A24’s Death of a Unicorn, with Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega. (The latter is one of a handful of independent projects given approval to film this summer amid the actors’ strike.)

So many of the things he’s doing now—the book tour, the live events—he thinks, would have been too intimidating in the past. “The recalibration of Joan’s death has made me realize that all these things that you’re fearing are just to do with ego,” he said. “It’s so cataclysmic dealing with death that it simplifies everything else.”

 
Sophie Gilbert is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.

Source: The Actor Who Documented His Grief—And Shared It With the World