BEFORE: I went out this week with a friend from my old pub trivia team, who happens to now be semi-famous because he was on a particular HBO show, which I'm not going to plug here. But let's just say there's been some debate online about whether this person is "real", because it was that kind of show - and it's a bit odd when you see strangers on the internet debating whether a friend of yours is real, trust me on this. But it got me thinking about celebrity, or people who are known in different arenas, and I've encountered a lot of those in the real world.
I've occasionally mentioned here that I've worked in animation or filmmaking for 30 years now, and I've been to Sundance 3 times, to San Diego Comic-Con 15 times, and now I work at a movie theater that is often hosts guild screenings, and is frequently visited by actors and directors doing Q&A panels after the films. What this all adds up to is me having encountered a LOT of famous people over the years - but I've never kept comprehensive notes. So I racked my brains and thought about all my adventures over the decades, from casting films to working on shoots, going to book signings and sitting next to known actors on planes, everything counts, even bands that I've seen in concert. And once I opened up the memory banks, one thing led to another. I saw Bob Dylan play at Letterman's 10th Anniversary show in Radio City, I met Ray Bradbury at the Toronto Film Festival in 1998, I lived in the same NYU dorm as Adam Sandler. I was a P.A. when Leon Redbone and Dr. John shot a music video for "Frosty the Snowman", if you can believe that. I once shared an elevator ride with Alex Winter, and I once grilled a steak for Martha Plimpton.
My point is, I've been places and I've done things and I've met some people, and the process continues, in fact it's been accelerating lately, last week I was within 2 feet of both Guillermo Del Toro and Emma Thompson - on different days. But I want to start keeping a list, and that means flashing back through my photos and my brain, before my brain stops working right. That list is about three pages long right now, and I'm stuck until I can find my Sundance diary notes - but at least I'll have a reference I can check now on my computer.
Richard E. Grant (and several other actors) carry over from "An Accidental Studio". Tonight's film is another production from Handmade Films, and footage from it was used in that documentary. Cheating, kind of, I know, but it's necessary.
THE PLOT: In 1969, two substance-abusing, unemployed actors retreat to the countryside for a holiday that proves disastrous.
AFTER: My wife watches this show called "The Great British Menu", because at this point we've basically run out of food-based competitions to watch on American TV, once we're current on "Hell's Kitchen" and we're waiting for the next season of "Top Chef" to start. I've watched two of the seasons with her, the one where the banquet celebrated Abbey Road Studios and the one that celebrated the heroes of the NHS. Essentially three chefs from a particular UK region compete against each other to get to the finals, where the judges taste the winner's four dishes and curate a menu for the banquet.
But there's a language barrier, to be sure - we have to convert the cooking temperatures from metric, but also they have different food items over there, and different words for the same food items. They call beets "beetroot", and they have weird citrus fruits like sea buckthorns. They call parsley "lovage" for some reason, and they call shrimp "prawns" and zucchinis are "courgettes". (Don't even get me started on how their fries are "chips" but their chips are "crisps".). Look, I've known for years about Scotch Eggs and Toad in the Hole and even Black Pudding, but those are finished dishes, I'm talking about weird ingredients like flax, hop shoots, laverbread, verjuice and zanders. Then one chef will cook with "cobnuts" and I have to stop and look THAT up, only to find out that it's just another word for hazelnuts. So we speak the same language, supposedly, as the Brits, but we really don't.
So that was what I was up against tonight, in a way, watching "Withnail & I". First off, that title, I didn't quite understand it at first, but it's one of the main characters' last name. And it's not pronounced like "with-nail", but more like "withnel". But that's my problem across the board with British names, like "Leicester" really sounds like "Lester" and "Leominster" really sounds like "Lemster". I should be used to this because I grew up in Massachusetts, which shares some of the same town names with the U.K., like Gloucester ("Glos-ter") and Worcester ("Wuh-ster") and even Shrewsbury ('Shroos-bree"). Tonight's film is about two starving drunk actors from London who head out to the countryside of Penrith, or "Pith". JK.
Some other things that I needed to look up - Withnail calls a bunch of school girls "scrubbers", which means he's accusing them of being sexually active, I think. There was another HandMade film called "Scrubbers", but it was about a bunch of girls in a borstal, which is an institution for youthful offenders. In the U.S. we'd call a "borstal" by the name "juvie".)
The other half of the duo (the "And I") is Marwood, and he wants to leave town because someone at the pub is threatening him and calling him a "ponce", which is an offensive term for a homosexual. (The word "fag" over there is reserved for cigarettes...). Later in the film Marwood fears being thought of as a "toilet trader", which is a gay man who frequents bathrooms, it seems.
I also had to look up the word "oomska", which seems to be synonymous with mud and muck, and "polythene", which is just the British name for plastic wrap. Ah so, that's what the Beatles song "Polythene Pam" is about? And finally there's the "saveloy", which is a red British sausage that used to be made from pork brains, but more recently is just made from any and all parts of the animal, so essentially it's just a British hot dog. And in a "saveloy dip" the sausage is sliced in half and put on a bun with butter and peas pudding, with mustard and sage stuffing added before it's dipped in gravy. Yeah, I'd give that a go.
This film is set in 1969 - that took me a while to figure out, because they didn't say it right up front, only at the end, when Danny, the burned-out drug dealer is upset that the decade is ending and there are hippie wigs for sale in Woolworth's. Well, it wasn't going to last forever, but if anything, pot was destined to become more popular in the future, even acceptable. Eventually even Marwood has to realize that his life of drinking and drugging with Withnail in their rat-infested apartment isn't meant to last forever, their whole trip to the country, as ill-fated and disastrous as it is, is also their last blast, their farewell tour.
Both chronologically and thematically, this film fits into British culture somewhere between "The Young Ones" and "Trainspotting", if that makes any sense. And it's not just the man in the bar who thinks Withnail and Marwood might be gay, Withnail's Uncle Monty is gay and thinks they're a couple, so he lends them his cottage so they can go on holiday, but he also shows up there, to maybe cause a rift between them and get with Marwood himself. It becomes not just inconvenient, but downright awkward - especially when it interrupts Withnail's rigorous drinking schedule.
Beyond all that, it's been quite a week for "Star Wars" actors - there was a cameo with Kenny Baker (the very first "Star Wars" actor I ever got an autograph from) and Jack Purvis in "Mona Lisa". Both small actors also played Ewoks in "Return of the Jedi" - and so did all the other dwarf actors who were in "Time Bandits", who appeared in archive footage in "An Accidental Studio", but I think only one of them, Mike Edmonds, is still alive. Ralph Brown, who played Danny the drug dealer, played a spaceship pilot in "Episode I: The Phantom Menace", and Richard E. Grant played an General Pryde in "Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker". I've got Brown's autograph already, I really should look into getting Richard E. Grant's next, as I haven't added to my collection in a while. Meanwhile, Paul McGann played one of the versions of "Doctor Who" for a while, but I don't follow that show, who has that kind of time?
It's also been a LONG time since I crossed another film off the list of the "1,001 Films to See Before You Die", but after this one, my total rises to 438. So there you go, progress is being made after all.
Also starring Paul McGann (also carrying over from "An Accidental Studio"), Richard Griffiths (ditto), Ralph Brown (ditto), Michael Elphick (last seen in "The Elephant Man"), Daragh O'Malley, Michael Wardle, Una Brandon-Jones, Noel Johnson (last seen in "Frenzy"), Irene Sutcliffe, Llewellyn Rees (last seen in "The Dresser" (1983)), Robert Oates, Anthony Wise (last seen in "Justice League"), Eddie Tagoe.
RATING: 6 out of 10 wolves at the zoo
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