Withnail & I

Year 14, Day 350 - 12/16/22 - Movie #4,297

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

An Accidental Studio

Year 14, Day 346 - 12/12/22 - Movie #4,296

BEFORE: Bob Hoskins carries over from "Mona Lisa", and so do the other stars of that film.  This is very sneaky on my part, because this documentary about the studio Handmade Films naturally features footage from their most successful films, one of which was "Mona Lisa", and another of which is tomorrow's film.  I couldn't manage to fit this film into my documentary block this year, though thematically it would have fit very well.  I figured that since watching this film was going to cost me $3.99 on iTunes or YouTube, maybe the universe was trying to save me a few bucks - so I was willing to wait to see if it would run on PBS or BBC-TV, or maybe pop up on some streaming service, so I was willing to sit on it until next year's doc chain.  But, then the need came to find some kind of link to Richard E. Grant because he's in a Christmas-themed movie, so the opportunity came to use it as a vital link, this year instead of next.  

There are so many actors appearing in this documentary, it almost seems a shame to use it here, but I don't want to think of this as going to waste - it's more like it's performing a vital service, connecting my post-Thanksgiving chain, which essentially had run out (OK, not really) to my Christmas movies.  If I'd known about "The Long Good Friday" maybe I could have gotten there another way, through Helen Mirren, but now that ship has sailed. 

Sticking with the program enabled me to watch this film with my BFF Andy, who's been staying over this weekend. I was going to take a few days off after "Mona Lisa" and save this for later in the week, but since both Andy and I are big Monty Python fans, I'd rather watch it earlier with him.  Andy and I once collaborated on a project to get the autographs of all the Monty Python members to sign the same book, which was one of his college textbooks.  Andy kicked it off by meeting Graham Chapman on his college tour, then I had the opportunities to meet John Cleese and Terry Gilliam to get them to sign the book as well. I also met Michael Palin, but Andy wanted to meet him as well, so I only ended up contributing two signatures to the book - and by the time Andy met Eric Idle, word had spread among the Pythons about the book, and then Andy topped it all off by traveling to the UK, and arranging a meeting with Terry Jones in a pub so he could be the last one to sign it.  Andy went above and beyond by then having the book signed by Carol Cleveland and Neil Innes, so that was a fun project to work on together.  I was happy just to meet three of the Pythons in person, and I got my own books signed by Cleese, Gilliam and Palin - just three separate books and not the same one, but that's fine.  

THE PLOT: Charts the early years of HandMade Films, seen through the eyes of the filmmakers, key personnel and the man who started it all: former Beatle George Harrison. 

AFTER: Well, December started off with some very American movies, but it's going to end for me with a bunch of British ones, with a few Germans mixed in. "Lassiter" was about and American stealing from Nazis in London, so there's the pivot point. "Mona Lisa" was pure British, and now a documentary about a British film studio, Handmade Films.  The studio was in business for 11 years, and produced more hits than misses - though they had some stinkers, too.  Honestly, I'd never heard of "Checking Out" or "Powwow Highway" before, or even "Cold Dog Soup", which everyone seems to want to forget.  And of course there's "Water" and "Shanghai Surprise", which are also terrible, but at least I'd heard of those. 

The secret can finally be told - the financier behind HandMade was George Harrison, who had been in some films before as a Beatle, perhaps reluctantly, and was also a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus. (Who wasn't?). But George had a problem, he had too much money - so much that the "Taxman" was liable to take away most of it, unless he could find something to invest it in, preferably a losing operation, with enough expenses to offset his income, and then in a roundabout way, he might be able to keep more of it, thanks to the vagaries of tax law.  Really, the only people who have this unique kind of problem are rock stars, a few of the top movie stars, and tech billionaires.  But the tech guys can set up a foundation to combat a disease, or start a corporation that builds rockets to go into space, and Mr. Harrison didn't have those opportunities, so really, it had to be filmmaking.  No other enterprise could possibly lose enough money to keep a Beatle from paying taxes.  "Wait, you have an screenplay?  Here's five million pounds, go and make that movie."  

It's really genius if you think about it, because if the movie bombs, then George Harrison has a write-off, assuming the director and film crew kept all their receipts.  So his music royalties would be offset by the film production costs, and therefore he's got less income, and pays less taxes.  Keeping half of $100 million is better than keeping 10% of $200 million, right? Look, I don't know how the numbers work exactly, but I know it's better to have a corporation with expenses if you can't have a charitable foundation.  But I just know in my heart that Bill Gates and George Lucas wouldn't give so much to charity unless it benefited them in the long run to do so - at their level they bring in so much money that the majority of it goes to taxes, and the charities they choose to support benefit, for sure, but so do the billionaires who donate at that high level. 

So George Harrison finance the making of "Monty Python's Life of Brian", which unfortunately became a smash hit, and a cult classic - it almost sounds like a real-life version of "The Producers", because they accidentally made too much money.  But fortunately they'd formed a studio with a large payroll and before long they were back in the red, fortunately. Then "Time Bandits" became another international smash hit, so the studio had to quickly release films like "Tattoo", "Venom" and "The Burning" just to balance the books. Films like "The Missionary" and "A Private Function" also turned profits, though, so it wasn't until the 1985 film "Water" that the company really succeeded at failing. Wait - no, that's right. 

Don't get me wrong, I loved "Time Bandits" as a kid, that was probably the gateway drug for me to get into Monty Python movies, I'd heard a few sketches on the Dr. Demento show but I wasn't allowed to watch their TV show, and I CERTAINLY wasn't allowed to watch "Life of Brian", because my parents only let me watch Disney movies and films that were approved by the Catholic newspaper in Boston. If they deemed a film sacrilegious, forget about it. But I got to see "Time Bandits", and I watched the hell out of it.  I watched it so much as a teen that I couldn't watch it for maybe 20 years after, I have it on DVD but the shrink-wrap is still on it.  Some films are like that, you've seen them so many times that you have to walk away for a time, right?  Like "The Wizard of Oz" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark", or "Brazil", those are some of mine. You know every word, every beat, and it's better to leave them be, you can just watch them in your head any time you want. Wait a couple decades and then maybe you can go back. 

We learn in "An Accidental Studio" that the song that closes "Time Bandits", which is called "Dream Away", was written by George Harrison as a secret message to Terry Gilliam, the film's director.  It's a great song, I've loved it since I first heard it, but if you really look at the lyrics, it's the ultimate form of passive-aggressive behavior.  The songwriter, as the film's producer, was telling the director via the lyrics that he wasted too much time and money making the film.  "Greedy feeling wheeling dealing / Losing what you won / See the dream come undone" which is followed by "Lucky you got so far / All you owe is apologies / Measure the mystery and astound / Without taking up time."  Sure, it's a beautiful song about traveling through the centuries, but it's also saying, "Hurry up and finish the film, you god damned hack."

But "Time Bandits" got me to "Brazil" and "The Fisher King" and "12 Monkeys", also "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", and "A Fish Called Wanda", and so many others. Good times. But anyway, back to HandMade films.  I also watched "Mona Lisa" this past week, that's one of theirs, and so is tomorrow's film "Withnail and I".  I tried to block out the clips from tomorrow's film shown in "An Accidental Studio", because I didn't want to spoil anything.  So I'll fill in those gaps tomorrow. 

By 1986 HandMade had become as much of a boutique distributor as an independent film studio, so some directors were bringing finished films to the studio, while others were seeking financing.  While much of the company was struggling with the disaster that became "Shanghai Surprise", Neil Jordan snuck in there and quietly made "Mona Lisa" on a tiny budget, and damn, but it's a work of genius by comparison.  A couple of American movies like "Five Corners" and "Checking Out" just needed distribution, after being turned down by every other Hollywood studio, and Handmade was happy to scoop them up for their slate.  The studio would go on to have one more minor hit, "How to Get Ahead in Advertising", and one more major hit, "Nuns on the Run", but by this point the writing was on the wall, most of the Pythons had moved on to make movies elsewhere, and the studio was set to close up shop. Mission accomplished, I guess?

George Harrison ended up being the executive producer on 23 films, three of which received Oscar nominations.  Harrison also frequently made cameos in those films, like in "Life of Brian" he was in a crowd scene, and in "Shanghai Surprise" he played a nightclub singer, and in "Water" he played - get this - a guitarist in a band!  In the film "Checking Out" he played a janitor, and you wouldn't even see him if you weren't looking. You can do all this and probably have a fun time, if you're the one funding the whole production.  

The general consensus is that Handmade Films was lucky to stay in business for 11 years - perhaps this is because there was usually more money going out the door than coming in, I'll bet. But this makes me feel a little proud of myself, because I've been managing an independent animation studio for almost 30 years now, and so I'm going to just take a moment tonight and pat myself on the back. Now I've jinxed it, the studio could fold next week.  But still, I've kept it going for nearly three times longer than Handmade Films - apparently our secret is we've never had a huge success, that's the kiss of death apparently. I'm kidding, to a certain degree - I produced one animated feature that was in the Dramatic Competition at Sundance in 1998, that film was called "I Married a Strange Person".  That's a pretty big deal, and three years later I was back at Sundance with a film titled "Mutant Aliens" that was in the Midnight Madness section.  Still counts as a Sundance film.  Now a new feature that I was the studio manager on is called "My Love Affair with Marriage", and it's currently burning up the festival circuit, though I'm no longer employed by the production company that made it. But it's won 9 awards already in France and Norway and Romania, and it played in the Tribeca Festival here in NY.  It's not qualified for the Oscars this year, but maybe next year, we'll see - you better believe I'm putting that film on my resumé. 

Also starring Steve Abbott, George Ayoub, Ralph Brown (last seen in "Gemini Man"), Dick Clement, Ray Cooper, Julian Doyle, Mike Edmonds, Terry Gilliam (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), Richard E. Grant (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Terry Ilott, Terry Jones, Neil Jordan, Barrie Keeffe, Ian La Frenais, David Leland, Richard Loncraine, Jonathan Lynn, A Martinez, Denis O'Brien, Michael Palin (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Bruce Robinson, Cathy Tyson (also carrying over from "Mona Lisa"), Brenda Vaccaro (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Ernest Vincze, Jonathan Wacks, Stephen Woolley, 

with archive footage of Kenny Baker (also carrying over from "Mona Lisa"), Michael Caine (ditto), Robbie Coltrane (ditto), Jack Purvis (ditto), Alan Bennett, Humphrey Bogart (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Jim Carter (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Graham Chapman, Eric Clapton (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), George Harrison (ditto), Elton John (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Valerie Perrine (ditto), Gene Shalit (ditto), John Cleese (last heard in "Trolls"), Sean Connery (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Billy Connolly (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "Howl"), Bernard Delfont, Malcolm Dixon, Shelley Duvall (last seen in "The Portrait of a Lady"), Denholm Elliott (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), Gary Farmer, Richard Griffiths (last seen in "About Time"), Ian Holm (last seen in "The Last of the Blonde Bombshells"), Eric Idle, Jon Lord, Joanna Lumley (last seen in "She's Funny That Way") John Mackenzie, Madonna (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Paul McCartney (ditto), Paul McGann, Helen Mirren (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Sean Penn (last seen in "The Gunman"), Pete Postlethwaite (last seen in "The Constant Gardener"), Randy Quaid (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), David Rappaport, Tiny Ross, Peter Sellers (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Maggie Smith (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), Ringo Starr (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Michael Tucker, Craig Warnock, Frank Whaley (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor")

RATING: 7 out of 10 religious protests

Mona Lisa

Year 14, Day 345 - 12/11/22 - Movie #4,295

BEFORE: I've got my BFF Andy staying over for a few days, and usually I would watch a film or two with him, let him in on my process - but that's difficult when the next film on my list is only on HBO Max, and not on HBO On Demand.  Why can't it be in both places?  And what's going on with HBO Max, why do films keep disappearing from that platform before I've had a chance to watch them?  I'm starting to wonder if the giant conglomeration that is HBO/Time Warner/AOL/Warner Bros. really wants me to be able to see movies, or if they're just messing with me.  For the life of me, I can't figure out why some films are available to stream at any given time, and others just aren't.  With the technology we have, and let's assume infinite storage space, why isn't EVERY film available to me at ALL times, not just when it's convenient for the streaming services?  I mean, I'm paying for several different streaming services each month AND premium cable, theoretically the world should be my oyster, and if the next film on my list is suddenly not available anywhere, well then somebody somewhere is losing money, because here I am, willing to pay for it, but where is it?  Doesn't Big Streaming want my money, don't they want me to use their service?  It's a very strange business model, making films available and then taking them away a few months later. 

Bob Hoskins carries over from "Lassiter". 

THE PLOT: A man recently released from prison manages to get a job driving a call girl from customer to customer. 

AFTER: The whole genesis of this film is rooted in the concept that when someone gets out of prison, it might be very hard for them to find an honest job, because who wants to hire an ex-convict?  Most employers might have qualms about this, or have company policies against it, but that former inmate still needs to make a living somehow.  So they might take a job with a less-than-reputable employer, and from there it's a short step to breaking the law yet again. And we wonder why the prison system is overcrowded. 

After seven years in the joint, George tries to make things right with his wife, and also meet the daughter who barley even knows him, but that's a no-go as well. So it's back to his underworld contacts, though the ones he knew before seem to have moved up the chain a bit, and are not hanging out at their old joints. George buys a white rabbit at a pet store, and delivers it to a bar frequented by his old boss Mortwell, and while the old boss has moved on, this does get him work as a driver for Simone, a woman who works as a high-class call girl.  She's got a couple regular customers, but also works the circuit of some mid-range London hotels, and it's handy for her to have a driver who also offers a bit of protection. The problem is, George wears cheap suits and sticks out like a sore thumb in these fancy hotels. He couldn't look more like a pimp, and he's not even trying. 

After some initial friction between the driver and his passenger, they learn to work together and form an uneasy alliance, and George starts to think that maybe there's something there between them. But then after a few fruitless trips to some bridge in London where the cheaper hookers ply their trade, Simone asks for his help in finding Cathy, a teen girl that's somewhere in the system of peep shows and bordellos, who she promised to come back for.  So George starts visiting the seamier parts of London, acting like a client, looking for a blonde named Cathy - but the problem is, any working girl will claim to be named Cathy if that's what the client wants. And the hair color doesn't help either, since any girl can put on a wig. It's a service-based industry, after all. 

George encounters a pimp named Smith, or so he says, but also finds a porn movie that Simone made that co-starred the same guy, only his name's not really Smith, go figure. But George trails him and learns that the real Cathy is one of his girls, but the trail also leads back to his own boss, Mortwell - and Mortwell wants to use Simone to blackmail one of her clients, some rich Arab guy.  Mortwell suspects that Simone does more with him every night than wear lingerie and drink tea, and sure, he's probably right, but poor George is caught in the middle of all of these low-level criminal masterminds. He and Simone take Cathy out of the system, only they don't travel far enough away to matter, they only go to Brighton (only 47 miles south of London, I checked).  

Bob Hoskins got a ton of awards for this film, but lost the Oscar that year to Paul Newman for "The Color of Money".  Still, this may have been the highlight of his career, except of course for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", of which I'm definitely overdue for a re-watch. But then on the other hand, perhaps this film is nothing more than the UK version of "Taxi Driver".  I'm kind of torn on this point. Perhaps I'll have a different perspective on this film after I watch tomorrow's film, which is a documentary about Handmade Films, the studio that made "Mona Lisa", also "Time Bandits", "Monty Python's Life of Brian" and the infamous "Shanghai Surprise". 

Also starring Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Robbie Coltrane (last seen in "Effie Gray"), Clarke Peters (last seen in "Harriet"), Kate Hardie (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Zoe Nathenson, Sammi Davis (last seen in "Four Rooms"), Rod Bedall, Joe Brown, Pauline Melville (last seen in "Shadowlands"), Hossein Karimbeik, John Darling, Raad Rawi (last seen in "Official Secrets"), David Halliwell, Maggie O'Neill (last seen in "Gorillas in the Mist"), Perry Fenwick, Bryan Coleman (last seen in "The Crying Game"), Robert Dorning, with cameos from Kenny Baker (last seen in "I Am Your Father"), Jack Purvis. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 light-up Virgin Marys