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1 Apr 2004

96 pages

Published/distributed by BFI Publishing

ISBN/EAN: 9781844570355

Price: £9.99

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Withnail and I: BFI Film Classics

Jackson, Kevin

Withnail & I sank almost without a trace when it was first released in 1987. This virtually plot-free story of two out-of-work actors (played by Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann) whose booze-fuelled weekend in the country takes various unexpected turns failed to find an audience. But it did not take long for the film to attract a dedicated cult following which was reinforced by reverential coverage in the 'lad mag' Loaded and a theatrical re-release in 1996.

Financed by HandMade Films, the late George Harrison's production company, Withnail & I was Bruce Robinson's first outing as writer-director. The script draws heavily on Robinson's own experiences in the 1960s. Kevin Jackson recounts that experience in addition to giving a full account of the film's production. But chiefly he analyses the mood and magic of the film, its aesthetics and sensibility, seeking to show, without ever detracting from the film's comic brilliance, just how much more there is to Withnail & I than drunkenness and swearing. 'It is an outstandingly touching yet witheringly unsentimental drama of male friendship,' Jackson writes, 'a bleak up-ending of the English pastoral dream, a piece of ferocious verbal inventiveness' - and, without question, one of the greatest of all British films.

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