Crow Crag. The window on the bottom left is the window 'that faces look in at'.
The ever-wonderful people at Picnic Cinema have announced the dates for the 2019 screenings of Withnail & I at Crow Crag, aka Uncle Monty's, aka (in real life) Sleddale Hall at Wet Sleddale in Cumbria's Lake District. For those if you in the know, the dates and the on-sale date for the tickets is below. For those of you not in the know, have a read of this (lengthy!) blog entry from a few years back, which will give you the crack (as they say in these parts).
So, the all important dates are Friday 28th and Saturday 28th of June.
Tickets will go on sale on Thursday 21st February at 10am (and be aware, in previous years they have sold out in 20 minutes...)
For more info, and to sign up to Picnic Cinema's mailing list, go to:
https://www.edenarts.co.uk/projects/picnic-cinema
To celebrate the screenings of a certain film up at Crow Crag this weekend and next, here's a little Withnail treat. A little while back I came across a very special, one-off customised Withnail model Jaguar being offered for sale online, and I had to have it. No burglary was involved, and within days it arrived at the Little Shop. Its creator, the very talented model maker Joe Nagle has this to say about it:
"It was originally the colour that is underneath the bonnet [red], I went for a matt finish to replicate the Jag in the film, the wheels were wire spoked on the model but I had to hide this, also weathering and rust was matched to the original by using screen grabs. The finishing touches of course were the removal of the driver's side windscreen wiper and the correct number plate, but perhaps the most iconic thing about the car is the removal of the left headlight which just completes that Withnail look."
Thanks Joe! It's brilliant work, and is now safely in a case and on display at Withnail Books. It is NOT FOR SALE.
Christopher Nolan directing nearly-Withnail Ken Branagh in Dunkirk.
In what I'm pretty certain is a first, a selection from the soundtrack to Withnail and I has been chosen as a Desert Island Disc. Everybody's favourite future Bond movie director Christopher Nolan includes 'Marwood Walks' as one of his eight pieces of music to be cast away with (other film-related choices include a cue by his colleague Hans Zimmer, and of course a bit of 007).
Nolan says of his choice: "It's just a lovely, lovely piece of score. We first saw [Withnail] at UCL [University College London]. These screenings we would do at the Bloomsbury Theatre, and Emma [Thomas, now his wife and producer] and I would put together all-night film shows once a year, and one year we showed Withnail and I from a 35mm print. It's just a film that I connected with, first on the level that's it's an extremely funny film, but over the years it's sort of taken on a much more emotional, much more melancholic feeling for me. I think a lot of that is to do with this beautiful music."
Hear, hear. 'Marwood Walks' is (I think) the cue heard in the film when Paul McGann emerges from Crow Crag into the daylight the morning after they arrive. Wrapping his overcoat around him for warmth, he looks at the view (which the movie cheats: he 'sees' Haweswater, which is actually miles away from Sleddale Hall).
The incidental music for Withnail, by David Dundas and Rick Wentworth, is, of course, utterly brilliant. It's easy to downplay its part in the overall effect of the film, but for me, I tend to notice it more and more every time I re-watch the film.
But what of the gentlemen who made the music? Both sound fascinating fellows. Rick Wentworth is a BAFTA-nominated composer who has worked with all kinds of interesting people, including Paul McCartney, Grace Jones and Roger Waters. Dundas meanwhile is a mate of Bruce Robinson's, in fact it was his house in Camden in which Robinson and various others lived at the fag end of the 1960s. He is now *Lord* Dundas, if you please, and must be the only current member of the upper house to have had a pop career in the 1970s. Here's a clip of his most famous tune, 'Jeans On'...
The current link to Nolan's Desert programme is HERE. The BBC usually archive DID to be available 'forever', so this famous fan's little tribute to Withnail should be there for future generations to enjoy... even when mankind has to go live on the other side of a wormhole.
Johnny Depp and Bruce Robinson on the set of The Rum Diary.
News just in (or just noticed by me at least) that Johnny Depp will be introducing — live and in person — a screening of Withnail and I on 22nd June as part of Julien Temple's Cineramageddon at the (already long sold out) Glastonbury Festival.
According to Screendaily the film "will be projected onto the biggest cinema screen in the UK with the nocturnal audience seated in seventy mutated vintage British and American cars, repurposed funfair rides and a Lear jet."
Nice.
Depp will also be introducing screenings of a couple of his favourites from his own career: The Libertine and Dead Man.
Of Withnail, he says, "no film has ever made me laugh more, or filled me with so much joy… and dread, than Withnail & I! For me, this is perfect cinema. As perfect as Chinatown, as The Godfather, as Time of the Gypsies. Genius.”
Ralph Steadman's illustration for the original theatrical poster.
It was 30 years ago today that Withnail and I was first screened. Back on April 10th 1987 the response was, frankly, not particularly overwhelming... the film took years to build into the terrible cult that it is today. It had built up a head of steam by its 10th anniversary, when it had one of its many re-releases...
The 10th anniversary theatrical re-release poster. Sorry Ralph, they went for a photo. Sponsored by Oddbins!
... and while back then, the film was being aimed squarely at the Loaded generation, twenty years on, it can still be convincingly argued that it is a 'film for today', as this thoughtful piece at The New Statesmanshows.
There's another 30th anniversary piece at The Daily Beast, here, a listicle at the Torygraph here, and truly excellent, in-depth then-and-now look at the film's locations from Adam Scovell at the BFI, here. (Update: they were a few days late to the party, but the BBC weighed in with a lovely piece, including a new interview with Richard E Grant, which you can read here.)
As a final piece of birthday reading, here's Ralph (Danny the Dealer) Brown's blog post about seeing the film for the first time. (Brown's blog, taking songs as a way into stories from his life, is well worth a read, by the way.)
The Picnic Cinema 30th anniversary screenings of Withnail & I at Sleddale Hall in Cumbria (aka Crow Crag, aka Uncle Monty's cottage in the country) on the 21st and 22nd of July 2017 are sure to sell out very, very quickly. Now, thanks to an advance email to subscribers of the Picnic Cinema publicity list, we now know exactly when these gold-dust tickets will actually go on sale:
The now-annual 'Withnailer Weekend' at Sleddale Hall, aka Crow Crag, aka Uncle Monty's cottage in the country, is already a legendary event.
It's a chance to watch the film at the very location it was shot: if you want to know more, just click the link above that says 'Watching Withnail at Uncle Monty's' to read/look at a frankly overlong photo-essay I did a few years back.
The event always sells out, but this year the tickets are bound to go super-fast, as 2017 is of course the 30th anniversary of the film's original release.
Picnic Cinema, who organise the whole shindig, have just this minute announced this year's dates:
FRIDAY 21st July 2017 SATURDAY 22nd July 2017 The tickets are not yet on sale, but to be notified as soon as they are, click on THIS LINK RIGHT HERE and click subscribe!
This arrived in my in-box this morning: a fun 'what if?' from the chaps at Liberty Games. You can see more movie-tie-in-video-games-that-never-were here.
Exactly 30 years ago today, on August 3rd, 1986, a first time director, his crew and a few actors (not from London: one was and is a scouser, and the other grew up in Swaziland) gathered at Sleddale Hall near Shap in Cumbria, and rolled cameras for the first day's shooting of a little film called Withnail and I. The rest is history...
The Cumberland News, one of the local papers here in Penrith (Penrith!!) has done a great commemorative article, which you can read below...
Having been alerted to the anniversary, I checked in with REG himself to see if he had any plans. While he didn't reply as such (not as of this writing, at least) he did like my tweet, which in these parts is the equivalent of a benediction from the pope...
Limited edition prints and 'alternative' posters inspired by cult films have become quite the in-thing in recent years. The quick-sellouts and crazy secondary market prices for pretty much anything Mondoputs out has encouraged lots of similar enterprises on both sides of the Atlantic.
This summer, Print Club London has produced a slew of film-related work by various artists, and Withnail & I is represented in this print by the artist RYCA. I'm not sure what's going on with Withnail's mouth in the image, but the overall effect is rather good, with shades of Warhol's Elvis (to my untrained artistic eye, at least).
The print is 500 x 700mm, and limited to 200 copies signed by the artist, at £50 each. Not cheap, but very much the lower end of the going rate for such things. You can order a copy here.
Here's another, even more limited edition print, which I wish you could still order a copy of, as I'd love to have one, but alas the 50 produced all sold out in seconds a few years back (though copies have popped up on eBay since...). It's a typically witty idea by Olly Moss, the British artist who's a bit of a superstar in the world of Mondo prints and their ilk, thanks to his rapidly-becoming-iconic Star Wars posters, among many others. His Withnail image is simple, but brilliant...
Olly's work is all over eBay, but be prepared to pay decent money for the real McCoy - beware the pirated prints and posters! A slightly more affordable way to enjoy his stuff is to buy a copy of his first (and to date, only) book, Silhouettes From Popular CulturewhichI think is brilliant, but then I would, as with my Book Editor hat on, I was involved in bringing it into print.
Back in 1999, there was a charity auction, at which Withnail's coat, the original one worn by Richard E. Grant in the film, was the star lot.
Chris Evans (the ginger one, not the Marvel one), at the height of his drunken naughty boy phase, won the coat with a bid of £5,000. Actually that's not a bad price for such an iconic piece of cinema history. He also reportedly bought Paul McGann's leather jacket from the film for a bargain basement £700! Here is he happily wearing Withnail's amazing garment... Evans, like Richard E, is 6' 2", so he could carry it off quite well...
Tragically, Evans is rumoured to have since destroyed, or at least badly mangled the coat in a quad bike accident. Idiot. I wonder if he's still got McGann's jacket...
Still, the film's original costume designer, Andrea Galer, will sell you a replica of the coat, though it will set you back the best part of a grand (even more if you want it tailored to your person).
"Withnail is Coming" squealed the viral Photoshop collages, when it was announced that Richard E. Grant was going to feature in Game of Thrones.
It has been previously noted on this blog (here) that the GoT show runners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss must be Withnail fans: giving Diana Rigg a line which included the words "perfumed ponce" is proof if proof be need be.
So it was only a matter of time before REG (as he is known to his fans) appeared in the show. He duly made it to the screen in last week's episode, playing - what else - an actor. It was a cough and a spit of a role, so one hopes he'll be featured again...
Also in the episode, reprising his recurring role as Aeron Greyjoy, was this chap:
That's noted English stage and screen actor Michael Feast. Many years ago, he shared a flat with a few other aspiring young actors. He's the long-haired one sitting in in the middle of this photo...
... and yes, standing on the left is Bruce Robinson. While it's been well-documented that the character of Withnail was based largely on another of the flatmates, Vivian MacKerrell (who's standing at the back in the middle), Feast had a large part to play in the genesis of Robinson's script, not least because it was he and Robinson who actually went on holiday by mistake.
“That whole Lake District fiasco, all of that stuff happened. Getting into the field with the bull; the search for fuel; tying plastic bags round our feet; the chicken thing. The cottage was a tip. The farmer — who did have a plaster on his leg — was just looking to make a bit of extra cash from idiot southerners. It was freezing. We were burning bits of furniture. We slept with our coats on. Even ‘We want the finest wines available to humanity’ was coined up there. The first night we blew all our money on a slap-up meal in one of those very upmarket hotels.”
Is it a coincidence that the show runners cast Feast on Game of Thrones? Surely not. Sadly, given that REG is in Braavos and Feast is in the Iron Islands, it's unlikely they'll share a scene, but we can hope...
I recently came across this clip from an edition of Jonathan Ross's chat show that was broadcast a few years back. It's very silly, and proves that Fast and Furious star Vin Diesel must be a Withnail fan...
Before it was a script, Bruce Robinson's Withnail & I was a short novel. It was never published, and few people have ever had the chance to read it.
This week, the typescript is up for auction at Sothebys.
The catalogue entry for the lot is HERE. The estimate for the lot is £4,000-£6,000, but I have a feeling it may well top that quite comfortably.
The catalogue copy, reproduced here to add to the publicity for the sale (so please don't come after me Sothebys!) reads as follows. It opens with a quote from the manuscript, which includes, rather excitingly, some 'new' dialogue for Withnail...
"...We drove on into the suburbs of the suburbs: Withnail swilling from another bottle and pointing out areas of outstanding civic ugliness. 'That's the reason of course, this country's never been invaded. It's too revolting. Even the Australian's wouldn't come here.' He passed me the bottle and I drunk three huge mouthfuls, then hid it down by the handbrake. 'Look, look,' he screamed, slurred with drink, gesturing towards a sign - "Accident Black Spot. Drive with extreme Care". 'These aren't accidents,' he wailed. 'They're throwing themselves into the road - gladly. Throwing 'em selves in into the road to get away from all this hideousness..."
THE EARLIEST VERSION OF THE CULT CLASSIC. This short novel, which Robinson has described as "70%" autobiographical, was written in 1969-70, when its author was still living in the Camden Town house in which much of the debauched action takes place. Robinson had lived in the house since the mid-60s, when he and his housemates, including Vivian MacKerrell, who was famously the basis for Withnail, and David Dundas, who wrote the film's music, were still drama students at the nearby Central School of Speech and Drama. Withnail took from MacKerrell his outrageous self-confidence and alcoholism; MacKerrell is said to have downed a bottle of lighter fluid (a tipple Withnail recommends as "a far superior drink to meths") and Robinson's diaries record other sources of booze for the desperate ("...Sotheby's was one of the best shows in town to drink brilliant wine and arsehole yourself absolutely free...", K. Jackson, Withnail and I (2004), p.28). The predatory Uncle Monty is said to have been based in part on Robinson's encounter with Franco Zeffirelli and Robinson even endured a "holiday" similar to the grim days at Crow Crag.
In the mid-1970s Robinson lent this copy of his unpublished novel to another friend, also connected to the Central School and who had lived, briefly, at the Camden Town house in 1969. He wanted her comments on his depiction of the period and later gave her the typescript. In 1980 another copy of the unpublished novel reached executive producer Mody Schreiber, who commissioned Robinson to adapt it for the screen. It took several more years to get the funds in place and the film was made by George Harrison's company Handmade Films (formed to fund Monty Python's Life of Brian), after Harrison read the script on a transatlantic crossing. The film reached cinemas in 1987 and has, of course, since become a much-loved and much-quoted comic classic.
typescript, the first three pages original typescript, the remaining pages being contemporary photocopies, with many pages having revisions, often extensive, in black ink, further revisions in green fibre-tip and pencil, a few cancels in black fibre-tip and minor corrections in blue ball-point, title-page with Robinson's typed contact details (430 King's Road, Chelsea) and doodles by Robinson in black ink, 72 numbered pages, folio, [c.1970], two punch-holes held together with split-pins, occasional staining, nicks to title page, child's doodles in pencil
[with:] a single leaf torn from a magazine including a photograph of Robinson, MacKerrell, and housemates, outside their Camden Town house, late 1960s
Here's the photo mentioned (Robinson's on the far left, Vivian MacKerrell is, I think, back row centre):
Photo from
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/english-literature-history-childrens-books-illustrations-l15408/lot.64.html
... and here's that typescript page again, big enough to read it. As you'll see, it's mostly familiar from the script, with some extra detail... It's very much a working draft, with (presumably) Robinson's handwritten amendments and ideas for revisions. Obviously the person who ends up with this typescript will not also be buying the copyright (which will remain with Robinson), so I expect it's going to remain unpublished. Enjoy this little bit of it then...
Photo from
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/english-literature-history-childrens-books-illustrations-l15408/lot.64.html
UPDATE: Turns out I was right: the typescript sold for just over £8,000! Details here.
Bruce Robinson is currently doing the rounds to publicise his recently published Jack the Ripper book, They All Love Jack. Having now read all 800-odd pages of it, I can heartily recommend it to anyone who is even slightly intrigued by it.
Even if you've never read a book about the Ripper, if you're reading this blog entry I can only assume you're a fan of Robinson's work, and if that's the case, you won't be disappointed: it's written in his inimitable style, and is by turns shocking, deeply researched, closely argued, and, to be frank, an extended and often hilarious rant. Bruce is *furious* about corruption in Victorian society, and he's not shy about telling you why.
Does he completely nail his Ripper suspect beyond reasonable doubt? Not really, in my opinion, but it's as good a theory as any recent research has uncovered, and there is very definitely something about the historical record of Michael Maybrick (or rather, as Bruce points out, the suspicious lack of it) which points to a cover-up of some sort.
It's well worth a read: and if you're in the market for a copy signed by the author, which comes with an original (and now extremely scarce) copy of the sheet music for the Maybrick-penned song which gave Robinson his title, you just have to ask...
Interviews with Bruce Robinson are always a pleasure to read or listen to. He's pretty much incapable of uttering a dull sentence. Here's a bunch of links that should keep you happy on the YouTube for a goodly while...
The Peculiar Memories of Bruce Robinson documentary:
Bruce on the Ruby Wax show:
Withnail and Us documentary:
Radio 4's The Reunion, about Withnail and I (really excellent, this):
Bruce with Kermode and Mayo, on The Rum Diary:
... and a few more general Withnail links:
5 lads visit the filming locations:
A visit to, and inside, Uncle Monty's cottage, Sleddale Hall (before it was bought by its present owner, who is now busy restoring the house):
... and finally this small piece of genius. If you've seen it, you'll have no problem seeing it again. And if you've never seen it, you're in for a treat.
(... those last three videos are marked as parts 2, 3 and 4. If anyone ever comes across a part 1, do please let me know!)
"It is either one of the most arcane conspiracy theories in British criminal history, or it’s the truth. By the time you’ve turned the last page, Robinson leaves you in no doubt that it’s the latter."
The Telegraph
"If he’s right, it’s the biggest cover-up in British history. If he’s wrong – well, it’s still a bloody good read."
The Guardian
After at least fifteen years of research and writing Withnail and I creator Bruce Robinson's magnum opusThey All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper is nearly upon us, and the media campaign has begun.
As revealed on this blog many months ago, Robinson's culprit is the singer/songwriter Stephen Adams, aka Michael Maybrick, pictured above. You can bring yourself up to speed reading the previous blog posts about Robinson's adventures in Ripperland HEREand HERE.
Bruce was interviewed at his house by reporter Nicola Stanbridge on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning (at about 8.20, if you want to find it on the iPlayer listen again), and there's a huge article about the book and its author in today's Telegraph, which you can read HERE.
Meanwhile the first review is in, from the Grauniad, which concludes: "If he’s right, it’s the biggest cover-up in British history. If he’s wrong – well, it’s still a bloody good read." You can read the full review HERE.
Robinson is making several appearances over the next few weeks to talk about the book. Click below for more details of:
Lucky theatre-goers in Belfast have just witnessed a two-night-only stage adaptation of Withnail & I, complete with free cake and wine for each audience member!
Background to the production comes via this article in the Belfast Telegraph. Starring Adam Turns as I/Marwood, Xander Duffy as Withnail, Tony Finnegan as Monty and Michael Liebmann as Danny/Everyone Else, it was performed at the Strand Arts Centre on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th September. While I can't find a formal 'review' online yet, comments from satisfied members of the sold-out audiences on the play's Facebook pagesuggest a fine time was had by all. No doubt the invitation to bring your own wine and beer, and play along (responsibly) to the 'Chin Chin' Drinking Game didn't hurt...
It's not the first time Withnail has been adapted for the stage, and it surely won't be the last. Someone should compile a list... A post for another day perhaps.
For now though, here's this latest production's excellent 'American Gothic' inspired poster, and photos from the rehearsals, thanks to Kandu Theatre's Facebook page.
