Withnail and I

down and out in London and Penrith

THE FILM Withnail and I (1987) is noteworthy, not only for its comic brilliance, but for the stories that run through, around and behind its creation. It was produced by Handmade Films, a production company started in 1978 by George Harrison¹ to finance Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) after the allegedly sacrilegious comedy masterpiece was abandoned by its original backers, EMI. Handmade went on to produce a string of excellent films during a period when the UK film industry was struggling, and Harrison, who loved comedy, showed great faith investing in a labour of love that became actor and screenwriter Bruce Robinson’s directorial debut.

As an actor, Robinson had played Benvolio in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, and appeared in François Truffaut’s The Story of Adèle H. He had written an Academy Award-nominated, BAFTA-winning script for Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields (1984), and for Withnail and I he was allotted a budget of just £1.5 million, with a shooting schedule of thirty days. With such a tiny budget, meticulous preparation was essential, and scenes had to be thoroughly rehearsed before shooting commenced. There was almost no improvisation, with the script shot exactly as written. Funding was so tight that the battered old Jaguar that appears in the film was bought by Robinson’s former partner, the actress Lesley-Anne Down, a gesture for which he remains grateful.²

Bruce Robinson and his one-time partner and Withnail benefactor, Lesley-Anne Down. Attribution: Allan warren, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons