It started life as a novel, mutating later into a screenplay collecting dust on the shelf until 1986 when Paul Heller, whom Robinson knew from his screenwriting jaunts in LA, read it, loved it and recruited David Wimbury, whose close association with HandMade was instrumental in getting them involved. ‘You’ve got to make this movie,’ Wimbury insisted to O’Brien. ‘This is a film you can’t afford not to make.’
Certainly, it’s hard to imagine any other company other than HandMade taking on such a unique film as Withnail. McGann says, ‘At the time, it was only HandMade, I guess, whose house style was funky enough to touch it. For both its punters and performers, HandMade was the funky alternative. I remember the associated kudos of working for them. It must have been like recording for Stiff Records in 1978. It had that cachet.’
But not everyone at HandMade was so like-minded. Before he resigned, John Kelleher saw a copy of the script and wasn’t keen at all. ‘I thought it was the most horrible thing I’d ever read. I remember it coming in. I think Ray Cooper must have given me the script. Bruce Robinson was hanging around HandMade a lot then because he was part of a group that included Ray and George. Ray said, “We’re thinking of doing this. What do you think, commercially?” The trouble with the Withnail script was it was very hard to get past the beginning in this rat-infested kitchen in Camden Town that Bruce described in incredible detail. And you just couldn’t help being completely turned off by that. It was very hard to get past it.’
Prior to filming, Robinson organised a week’s rehearsal for the cast in a vast wood-panelled drawing room in an old house on the grounds of Shepperton Studios. McGann remembers, ‘It was owned or used by The Who. It was a big open space. In the corner was a kitchen area and a fridge full of booze. And we’d work office hours. We’d arrive at nine and go home at five.’
While at Shepperton, the supporting roles were cast. As the poacher the lads meet on their disastrous holiday break in the Lake District, Michael Elphick, then a big TV star as Boon, agreed to appear as a favour to Bruce, as they’d been at drama school together. They couldn’t afford his rates. ‘But he did it for a few quid and a bottle of scotch,’ Robinson noted. Richard Griffiths, a HandMade stalwart, agreed to play Uncle Monty, a character Robinson had conjured up as being representational of all the people who’d harassed him as a drama student, those ‘artistic gents who were after my bum’.
One important audition was for the part of the drug-dealer Danny, and someone who found himself up for the part was a little-known actor called Ralph Brown. ‘They’d been trying to cast this part for months without success. I hadn’t done any films at that point, so I wasn’t exactly on top of their list of contenders. I think Mary Selway had seen me on stage and got me an audition with Bruce. I remember I sat in a nearby park for about an hour going over my lines before I went in.’
Brown arrived for the audition totally in character, bare-foot with painted black fingernails, long wig, eye shadow and shades. ‘I looked a bit strange.’ It blew everyone away and Robinson all but gave him the part there and then. Modelled partly on someone who worked at a record shop near London’s Central Drama School, who sidelined in selling dope, Brown was given near carte blanche to create his own Danny, basing him on people that he’d grown up with in Lewes in East Sussex. ‘Lewes was the kind of place where punk kind of arrived in 1982... it was still very much a hippie backwater... cider drinking and smoking joints. There were various characters around the town, one used to be in and out of prison for various nefarious activities including drug-dealing, others were in bands. I was only 13 or 14 and these people were really larger than life for me and they were slightly glamorous. One guy called Noddy used to attempt to roll the longest joint ever known to mankind and he had this stoned, serious take on life where he’d tell you something in very serious tones that was absolute bollocks. So I definitely understood Danny in that sense.’
As rehearsals progressed, Grant and McGann grew more familiar with the script and Robinson’s intentions. Earlier, they’d had trouble with some of the lines. Aware they were meant to be funny, both tried too hard to make them funny, telegraphing the jokes almost. Robinson was so opposed to that, repeatedly stressing that the comedy would come from the characters and situations. McGann recalls, ‘Bruce said to us, “There are no punchlines. Boys, get it out of your head now, there are no gags. This film will work because we’ll play it for real. You’ve got to play it for real.”’
Then the bombshell dropped — Grant didn’t drink, he was allergic to the stuff. This was news to Robinson; he hadn’t thought to ask, ‘Oh, by the way, Richard, you do drink, don’t you?’ Taking McGann to one side, a panic-stricken Robinson blurted out, ‘He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t drink.’ Then turning to Grant, ‘There’s nothing worse in films than a bad drunk act. We’re dead.’ And Grant was sitting there, forlorn, saying, ‘I know... I know... I’m so sorry.’
Some quick thinking was called for. It was Robinson who came up with the idea that Grant should have a ‘chemical memory’ of what it was like to be completely poleaxed. He approached the fridge in the corner of the rehearsal room. ‘There were beers and coolers and these airplane miniatures,’ McGann says. ‘I remember it was an airplane miniature of vodka. Bang in a glass. Doused. And he drank it. What a sport. And Bruce is saying, “Richard, we’ve got drivers, if you don’t feel well we’ll call it off and take you home.” And I thought, Bollocks, I’m having a beer. And it was incredible, Richard went through every single stage of being pissed, literally from that lovely moment when you have that first drink and you get that first mellow feeling, and then incrementally the stakes get raised and you get a bit merry, and then you have another one and you start gibbering and flirting and then you start knocking into things. Grant did that, visibly. But it happened in minutes, maybe 20 minutes, to the point where if the police see you they have to have a word with you. I fucking swear this happened.’
Robinson was quick to exploit the situation and got them reading and rehearsing scenes, any scenes with drink in them or scenes under the influence. McGann remembers, ‘We were sitting together and an arm went round my shoulder and Richard looked at me and said, “You’re such a fantastic actor.” It’s like the pub drunk going, “I love you, man.” And he said to Bruce, “Thank you so much.” And Bruce is going to him, “Do the scene, just do the scene.” And I have to say he was great, the things he was doing were great and he was laughing and enjoying himself. And then he started making these noises, involuntary sort of whoops. And then these, like, Navaho sounds. It was absolutely hysterical. Then he stopped whooping and went green and looked for a window and threw up. It was awful, really. They got him out into a car and took him home. His wife was on the phone. “What do you think you’re doing? What have you done to my boy?” And Bruce is wiping tears from his eyes. It was so naughty. As Richard’s leaving, I swear Robinson’s going to him, “Remember. Remember!”’
And the amazing thing is, it did pay off, the chemical memory Robinson was after worked. McGann confirms, ‘He did remember, look at the film, he remembered. It’s the best drunk performance I’ve ever seen. There’s a scene when we’re in the car leaving London and he’s leaning out of the window shouting “Scrubbers” to some schoolgirls. Look at his eyes, that’s acting. How the fuck do you do that? I worked with this guy and, even to this day, I have to marvel at what he did. And he doesn’t drink. He got on it, whatever it was, he got on it. At one point, he looks straight at me and you look at him and you go, “Fucking hell, you are out there, you are miles away.” Remember this is 9.30 on a Sunday morning. Who won the Oscar that year? Nobody was that good. Absolutely magnificent.’
McGann also recalls during shooting how first thing in the morning he’d hear, through the adjoining doors of their hotel rooms, Grant physically psyching himself up to get into character, little wafts of smoke coming under the door from the herbal cigarettes he used instead of tobacco.
The morning after the drinking binge, Grant
woke up with a demon of a hangover and foul-smelling dribble on his clothes. As he later wrote, ‘My stomach is on fire. Tongue stapled to the roof of my mouth, throat scorched and head housing an orchestra of pneumatic drills playing Beethoven’s Ninth. All for art?’ When he finally managed to grope his way downstairs, Robinson had left a message on the answer phone. ‘Granty. You did it. Breakthrough. Gonna make a fucking masterpiece, boy.’
On 1 August 1986, Grant and McGann met at Liverpool Street Station to catch the train up to the Lake District where much of the film was shot amid the picturesque countryside around Penrith. The first scene in the can was the boys’ arrival at an abandoned cottage in the middle of a howling night. McGann recalls, ‘Both Richard and I had never done a film and Bruce had never directed a picture, so we tended to spend a lot of time just staring at each other going, “What do we do now? And, can we do this? Can we get away with this?”’ Sensing that this was their big chance, Grant and McGann really got stuck in and made the most of it. ‘They were both well up to speed,’ Griffiths says. ‘They were like baby sharks, the two of them, and I was just holding my end up, as it were. Richard had landed this part, God knows how because he had not a clue about how to present himself, and it’s probably one of the greatest performances he’ll ever give in his life. And it was all because Bruce was so generous about letting him express himself. And McGann was funny. He was constantly trailing shots. In other words, there’d be two of them in the shot doing the lines and then they’d exit and Grant would just crash out of the door and McGann would leave his face sort of vaguely looking over the top of the camera, and then go. He was getting himself a close-up. And the cameraman would look up at Bruce who knew what was wrong and kept telling McGann to stop trailing his face. “If you get out of the shot, just get out. Don’t stand there looking beautiful and then get out, just get the fuck out.”’
On that very first day of shooting, Bruce Robinson did something quite unique. He assembled the entire crew together inside the cottage, stood on a chair and was man enough to confess that he’d never directed a film before, but that he knew what he wanted, it was all in his head, it was just from a technical standpoint he’d not the first clue and asked everyone that if they saw him make a mistake on the floor not to be afraid to pipe up. It was one of those ‘we’re all in it together’ type speeches, very Henry V at Agincourt, and the crew responded.
Griffiths’ view was that ‘Bruce was truly amazing. He would go into a set-up in a scene, he’d look at it and we’d all stand around and he’d say, “I haven’t got a fucking clue about how to do this. Anybody any ideas?” And you’d stand there in shock. Somebody was not bullshitting you. Because directors always do, they always pretend they know what they’re doing, especially when they don’t. And out would come this fountain of ideas and at the speed of light he would just flicker through them and say, “No, no, no... Ahh, that sounds good, let’s have a look at that.” And then we could rehearse it. And he said, “Yes, that’s good. Let’s shoot this way.” It was so liberating.’
Everyone knew the film was being made on a pittance, a mere £1.5 million, and that in itself created a bond of loyalty and togetherness, coupled with a sense of how special the script was. Brown recalls, ‘It was everyone’s first film — mine, Bruce’s, Paul’s and Richard’s. The crew were fairly experienced. Peter Hammond was certainly an experienced cameraman and he directed the shots pretty much because Bruce didn’t really know where to put the camera and would just say, “Pete, what shall I do with this scene?” And they’d work it out together. It was a really nice atmosphere. There was no tension, everyone was helping each other out. I think we all felt that maybe that’s the way movies were. And, of course, we’ve all made lots of films each since then and they’re not all like that. It was a lovely honeymoon, really.’
Robinson later admitted that shooting Withnail was like playing poker when you don’t know the rules but winning every hand. Pure beginner’s luck. Nervous on the night before shooting, he later spoke of feeling ‘naked, sheer, edible fear’, and confided in David Wimbury who tried reassuring him, ‘It doesn’t matter how good your script is or how good your crew is, if you don’t get luck, you’re fucked.’ And Robinson was blessed with luck, everything fitted, not least in the way Grant and McGann related to each other in exactly the way he hoped they would. Robinson knew so much depended on the actors; if they didn’t play then he was in serious shit.
But the film wasn’t without its problems. Indeed, the first week was almost its last. Denis O’Brien had arrived on the location. Grant described him as ‘a Bilko identikit on a giant scale’. It wasn’t a friendly visit. Soon, he and Robinson were arguing. O’Brien was of the opinion that the film was running behind schedule and suggested that a scene featuring a close encounter with a none-too-friendly bull be cut. Robinson was livid. ‘How can we be behind schedule?’ he exploded. ‘It’s only lunchtime on the first day? Right, fuck you.’ Robinson resigned on the spot, mumbling something about ‘over my dead carcass will we cut the bull’. McGann and Grant, previously so happy to be finally making a movie, were now witness to it crumbling about their ears. ‘It’s just a ploy,’ Wimbury told them. ‘The American is trying to frighten Robinson and Robinson is calling his bluff.’ Sure enough, by four o’clock that afternoon Robinson was back directing and the bull scene had been reinstated. It was a case of Robinson telling HandMade to shut up and trust him, he knew what he was doing. Still, O’Brien and others at Cadogan Square were on edge about the whole project right up until it finished shooting. ‘They were just being a gang of cunts for the first couple of weeks. Fucking nightmare,’ Robinson later ranted. Henceforth the cast and crew referred to their benefactors as Hand-Job Films.
When the first dailies were sent over to HandMade, news of what they thought of them was eagerly awaited. Paul Heller loved what he saw, but O’Brien was horrified. Robinson broke the news. ‘O’Brien says it’s a fucking disaster. He thinks it’s all too dark and funny as cancer.’ Well, it would be dark, wouldn’t it, seeing the first scenes were shot at night!
Robinson tried arguing with O’Brien that this wasn’t Benny Hill, joke-a-minute stuff, that the desperation in the character’s plight was where the comedy would come from. But O’Brien wanted almost drum-roll punchlines. It was humour of the blackest kind and he just couldn’t see that. It was a bitter blow to everyone. McGann says, ‘As a performer, you want the rushes to come in and you want them to go, “Fantastic, absolutely brilliant, no problems, everyone’s chuffed, you look like Marlon Brando, it’s all going to be sweet.” And it didn’t happen. Bruce said to me, “Denis wants the Ministry of Silly Walks. He wants Monty Python.” There were messages coming back saying, “I thought you said these boys could act.” Denis was going, “I thought you said it was going to be funny. It ain’t funny. It didn’t make me laugh. What are they doing? Where are the jokes?” And then you shit yourself.’
O’Brien wanted Grant, for example, to be more like Kenneth Williams, all arms swinging about and screaming at the top of his lungs. ‘He said it should be nostril-pulling camping around,’ Grant later complained. ‘I said he should have stuck to financing.’
O’Brien’s attitude really galvanised a whole ‘us against them’ scenario. ‘After two weeks of filming,’ Cooper remembers, ‘Denis was quite willing to close the film down. He really didn’t get the film at all or its humour, because it wasn’t Pythonesque. Strangely, I didn’t suspect this at the beginning, but Denis had a very limited view of humour and of drama.’
As usual, Ray Cooper found himself flitting like a mad thing between Cadogan Square and a film’s location, trying to appease both camps. McGann observes, ‘I wished that Ray Cooper had been around a bit more. Personality-wise, it would have calmed things down a little. Because Ray’s such a gentleman, whenever he’s around it ups the atmosphere. He’s a calming influence. He’s generous and he’s got a good spirit. We all knew we were working in an atmosphere. Bruce said one day, ‘If
Denis doesn’t let me do what I want to do, I’m walking.’ And we knew that was no veiled threat. He would have done it. That was real.’
Robinson worked himself up into such a paranoid state that even when the crew began reacting favourably to what was going on and picking up favourite lines from the script, he took this as an omen that the film was doomed. ‘Bruce was superstitious,’ McGann believes. ‘During filming, the crew would fall about laughing. I’ve never known this since and probably will never see it again, but we’d be in a hotel or bar after a day’s work and you’d hear the crew going, “What about that bit with the chicken?” And I said to Bruce, “Listen to that, it’s fantastic.” And Bruce sometimes would go, “No it ain’t.” He’d say things like, “If the crew fall about laughing, we’re dead in the water.” And I’d say, “What! Did you get that out of a fucking cracker or something?” And he said, “No, no, they’re laughing, we’re going to die.” And I said, “No we ain’t. They’re laughing because it’s funny. It’s going to be funny.”’
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