Here Hare Here

Like most of my contemporaries who were just a tad too young when it first came out, I first saw Withnail and I during my second year at university. I can’t say I instantly fell in love with it. My good friend Steve had just rented it at the local video store, but my other good friend Phil (with whom Steve shared a house) and I had other ideas. We were all into film, and used to spend Tuesday and Thursday nights watching at least two films a night, accompanied by a ritual consumption of delivery pizza. Not surprisingly, the end of the year saw our combined weights’ approaching that of a hippopotamus.

Anyway, it was two against one, and Phil and I just weren’t in the mood for British comedy, which did not have its best decade in the eighties. Eventually, though, we sat through it, protesting that it was not what people had made it out to be. That half-drunk halfwits in pubs all over the land would quote (and misquote) lines from the film did not help matters either. I remember thinking about the film a lot during the next two days, and watched it again the following week. Slowly, with each viewing, I got more and more hooked. It wasn’t love at first sight, but Withnail and I is now one of my favourite films.

I have written extensively on the film on other blogs and forums over the years, but I wanted to write something to do with the film for my friend’s birthday. As Steve is in China, I decided to post a few frames from some of his favourite scenes. Ironically, Blogger is banned in China. It’s all very Withnail…

“Fork it!”

“I will never play The Dane.”

“Look at my tongue; it's wearing a yellow sock.”

“It's obsessed with its gut - it's like a rugby ball now. It will die, it will die!”

“How do we make it die?”

“Are you the farmer?”

“I shall miss you, Withnail.”

Note: Withnail and I was my contribution to Jim Emerson’s Opening Shots Project, which you can read by clicking here.

(Image Credits: Withnail and I Multimedia Archive )