The Romance of Self-Destruction in “Withnail and I” (1987) – Part 2

0:11 Wes: Welcome to part two of our discussion of With Nail and I. We just got done discussing Danny and some of his commentary and the parallel between the end of the friendship between Withnail and Marwood and the end of the 60s thought we'd move on to the character of Monty and ultimately to a little bit what I want to discuss about romanticism and the urban versus the rural divide. But I thought maybe we should just start with Monty, since he's such a great character. They go, so Monty's with Nail's uncle and they go to his place to get the key to the cottage. Their solution? They're going to solve everything by going out into the country. Little do we know, but behind the scenes, Withnail has actually kind of sold marwood to the uncle, who's promised him some action if they can get the key, which sets up Monty's coming out to the countryside to intrude on them. Yeah, every scene with Monty in it is just fabulous. And some of the dialogue, his pomposity and then, as you mentioned before, double entendre. So, for instance, do you like vegetables? I've always been fond of root crops, but I only started to grow last summer. I happen to think the cauliflower more beautiful than the rose. Withnail mentions geraniums. Monty says, little traitors. I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts, prostitutes for the bees. There is, you will agree, a certain je ne sais quoi, something very special about a firm young carrot do help you anyway.

1:55 Erin: Yeah, what I love about his place is you look around the room and you realize that there's cauliflower in a vase rather than flowers, and then other vegetables are decorating the room in various places.

2:07 Wes: So.

2:07 Erin: Yeah, and it's very old fashioned English looking. So it sort of combines the brocade and the tapestries and the medieval looking England with gardening and having all these vegetables around and stuff. So he's sort of a synthesis of these wonderful English cultural touchstones in this one room. I think that when he says little traitors to Withnail's idea that he grows geraniums, I think he's calling Withnail a traitor for growing flowers.

2:39 Wes: Oh, I thought he was calling the geraniums traitors.

2:42 Erin: I wasn't sure about that. Yeah, the way that he said it, I thought it could be that. That they're traitors for growing geraniums. So there's something traitorous to one's sex about being interested in women.

2:54 Wes: Oh, yeah.

2:55 Erin: You know, that was the symbolic implication I took.

2:58 Wes: No, I think that's a good surmise.

3:01 Erin: One Withnail is going to be a pimp of Marwood just as he's a pimp, you know, over his geranium patch. Or whatever. But there's a lot about root vegetable. You know, I was thinking there's a lot about peeing in the film. There's a lot about time. We've covered all the. All the other drugs and stuff like that. But then there's a good bit about carrots. There will even be a marijuana carrot of sorts. Yeah. And he's cooking onions. He ends up killing the rats with onions. So more root vegetables.

3:29 Wes: Didn't think of that. Yeah. So when Monty comes out to the country, Right. So initially they hear him outside and they're afraid because they're worried about the poacher at this point, little do they know Monty is, at least for Marwood, the one that they should actually be afraid of. And then, of course, the, you know, they find out it's Monty ultimately. And then the next morning, our sense of what the cottage is, is transformed. I think it is almost like a rebirth because when they first get to the cottage, they've come from their swallowed flat in London, Camden Town. And of course, they're telling everyone they're, you know, in the. And the boondocks that they're not. It's not the boondocks. That's not the right term for it. But anyway, in the countryside that they're not actually Londoners, so that they won't be hated for being Londoners. But what I think they would get, thought they would get out of that has turned out to be very disappointing. You get some scenes where Marwood can appreciate the countryside, but that's a very small part of it. They end up at a cottage that there's no heat and there's no water and they're burning fire furniture to get by and they don't have any food. And ultimately the farmer brings them a chicken they have to kill and then cook in the oven seated in a seated position.

4:48 Erin: But like unaccommodated man.

4:50 Wes: Yeah.

4:51 Erin: Poor bare forked animal.

4:54 Wes: Yeah.

4:55 Erin: This is. Again, they're a little shrunken down person. They can deal with it seems they could strangle a chicken.

5:01 Wes: Right. Although Withnail fantasizes about having shot it and then is very fond of the gun while they're there and they go out fishing to shoot fish. It sort of becomes a right. Survival's once again at stake. You get the sense in the beginning of the film it's desperate and their very survival is at stake because of the condition of the flat and the fact that they have no money. And then they get to the countryside and it's the same thing. Although the contrast with how things go once Monty's there. Making them breakfast in the morning gives you the impression that, okay, this is self imposed. They just bring the squalor and the deprivation with them. They're at a perfectly fine cottage. It is what it is. It's in the countryside. But the sense of it having been so dire is really about them. So in the morning, there's Monty making up a really nice breakfast. And they, of course, could have just gone, I guess, grocery shopping at any time.

6:00 Erin: Well, that's. That's the one thing. Yes, definitely, and certainly they could do much better. But I also wondered how much of it had to do with the lack of money and preparation, not understanding what was in the cottage or what wasn't in the cottage. Monty's come up with a bunch of things in the car, it seems, but, yeah, they're just. They're just sort of hopeless when Monty's there. Just immediately becomes really cozy and lovely and. Yeah. And I think there's something too, about. As I mentioned, Monty's apartment in London is. Or his house in London, I guess, is a fantasy of Englishness. And then they come up to the cottage and the cottage has portraits of George V and Mary of Teck on either side of the fireplace. So there's a. It's an older England that they've gone into. They go into the Crow and Crown, I think it is. It's the pub where they meet the. The poacher and the old English army man, who himself is, you know, very much a type similar to the. The guy I love in the Brendan Fraser Mummy, the 1999 mummy, which we should cover on the podcast at some point. It's one of my favorites. You know, the old guy, the old military man who's living out this fantasy, still believing that he's engaged in a war or something like that, who lies

7:12 Wes: about having been in the military.

7:14 Erin: Withnail with nail. Yeah.

7:16 Wes: And he says, oh, yeah, I could tell. And then, yeah. Asks where he's stationed. He's like, Ireland. He's like, oh, crack at the Mick.

7:24 Erin: Crack at the Mick. Which I take to be, you know, there's, you know, Withnail's stories, which he repeatedly invents, do show tremendous aptitude as an actor. He's always playing a role or putting on a kind of a disguise. But then also, the way that Withnail sort of advances the plot or the improvised plot twists that he comes up with do seem very associative. I took that to mean that he or I took the Ireland idea as being Adopted from the Irish guy that had confronted them in the pub in Camden. So that he's getting back at the Irish somehow by imagining this military past where he used to just. Right. So there's a wish fulfillment element to all of his little improvisations, no matter how ridiculous they are. He also says he's currently a journalist and that they're doing a story on the. On the town and small town life.

8:20 Wes: Right, right.

8:20 Erin: And then later he says that they're going to set a movie there, which is, you know, kind of more on the nose wish fulfillment.

8:26 Wes: But we are multi millionaires.

8:29 Erin: We're multimillionaires. Right. Which maybe Withnail is. He just can't access any of the money because his father's alive, withholding it from him.

8:38 Wes: Yeah. We get the sense that he's going to end up all right financially if he's still alive. And in a way, like his uncle. Right. His uncle had aspirations as well when younger and now he's fine, he's gotten his money from somewhere, but.

8:51 Erin: Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah. So maybe Monty is more psychologically, perhaps, just as threatening to Withnail as to Marwood. Not quite, but almost. Oh, yeah. So in the crow and crown, there are pictures of Elizabeth and Philip on the walls and there's an image of her coronation garb. So that would be the 50s. It is like they've stepped back in time. So there's something. If they're flat is the 60s and they have to escape the flat in order to find someplace that hasn't been destroyed by them in some way.

9:24 Wes: And I think that's pre modern. Right. So this is part of the romanticism. It's modernity and the urban are alienated and I'm going to find less alienated situation in the countryside with the simple folk and in being connected to nature and in a way going back in time. Which sounds like the point you're trying to make. Yeah.

9:50 Erin: It's as if the fantasy of the 60s, we're sort of seeing the reality of it. I mean, it could be that this is representative of 69 and therefore the failure of the promise of the 60s. Or this flat represents the entire decade and the fact that it's actually been downhill from the social fabric. And yes, the sort of fanciful or the loose grip on reality that the military guy represents, but still functioning and connected to real life in terms of just active, practical things like farming. That the 60s are being represented maybe as some kind of aberration in all of this.

10:29 Wes: Well, I think that the countryside doesn't turn out to be such a great thing after all. And partly, as I mentioned, I think they bring their problems with them, of course, but also we get the sense that the natural, which is supposed to be better, turns out to have its own sinister undercurrents. So, right, the bull, there's the randy bull. So it's not all great being out there in nature. There's a sexual power to nature which can be persecutory. The natural is about what grows and ultimately about the sexual. Monty is interested in carrots not just because they represent penises and not just because he's obese and likes to eat, but. Right. He's interested in the romantic connection to nature, which is also a kind of connection to sex, I think. So they're going to be just as fearful of, say, the poacher, although he turns out to be more benevolent and initially afraid that the poacher is trying to break into the house and all that stuff. But what I'm trying to say is that. And in the figure of Monty himself, I think you get romanticism as representative as having the sinister exploitative undercurrent. So just to give an example of some of Monty's great speeches, where right in that breakfast in the morning, it seems like everything is now coming up roses. Everything is transformed. It feels like the vacation that they wanted might be coming together because they have a nice breakfast. But then we start to get Monty's stuff. He says the old order changeth, yielding place to new. And God fulfills himself in many ways. And soon, I suppose I shall be swept away by some vulgar little tumor. Some vulgar little tumor. I love that. Oh, my boys, my boys. We're at the end of an age. We live in a land of weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in, shat on by Tories, shoveled up by labor. And here we are, we three, perhaps the last island of beauty in the world. Sounds a little bit Matthew Arnold esque.

12:34 Erin: Let us be true to one another.

12:36 Wes: Right, Right. Yeah, exactly. And he's going to hit on Marwood. What else from the countryside? When they're walking in the countryside and he's talking about they do their thing where they want the finest wines known to humanity of a grapevine. So later at dinner, surrounded by trees in nature, one feels a glorious stirring of the senses, a rejection of the poisonous inhibition and a fecund motion of the soul. All the glorious trials of youth, dear boy. Because Marwood makes a comment about the fact that the squalidness of the cottage interferes with the pleasure. He's like all the glorious trials of youth, dear boy. When I was a lad, I'd rocket off on my tandem with Wrigglesworth and we'd just ride and ride and at night we'd find some barn and fall asleep with the perfumes of nature sighing on our skin. Yeah, just great, great stuff. But in the end, right, all of that, what does Monty represent? He's given up on ambition, he tells us, but he looks at it with a certain kind of nostalgia and resignation. He's nostalgic also about the loves of his youth and he's representative of what might happen to Withnail after giving up. But also I think he's representative of the sinister undercurrent of romanticism and the countryside, which is that it's not all just carrots and roses, carrots and geraniums.

14:08 Erin: It's also stick.

14:09 Wes: There's, you know, the natural world is dangerous, it's violent, it's driven by sexual instinct. All of that stuff comes out in Monty.

14:18 Erin: He's a bit sad, you know, the way that he leaves and all of that. I mean, he's been humiliated kind of because of Withnail. But, you know, when I say, let us be true to one another, he does have a kind of. His singular moral code seems to be faithfulness and so lets Marwood off the hook because he doesn't want Marwood to be unfaithful, untrue.

14:38 Wes: I mean, he does try to rape him, essentially,

14:44 Erin: but he has stopped.

14:45 Wes: I mean, he does have some burglary,

14:48 Erin: he does have some, some more than natural, you know, he has some guardrails. Yeah, I thought, I thought a little bit about, about the fact that they're in the Lake District and what role Capital R Romanticism is playing here. Because one would think that this is a place which historically, for the last couple hundred years anyway, hasn't been totally devoid of artistic types. You know, I love the moment when Withnail yells up at the sky in that kind of Caspar David Friedrich beautiful vista, where he says, I'm gonna be a star. So I don't know what to make of all of that or that, that particular moment where rather than appreciation of the grandeur of nature, he feels defiant and he's going to be part of the cosmos in a purely self serving way, which then the idea of a star comes back in the Hamlet soliloquy at the end of the film where it turns sour for him. But yeah, he has a delusion of grandeur in this moment. That he's going to get the better of all of these men who have been oppressing him, you know, as if, like, you could fight a bully with this idea that you're gonna be a famous actor. But, yeah, I don't know. I was trying to reconcile all of that, what Wordsworth and Coleridge have to do, maybe with Marwood and Withnail, if the two of them are like a degraded version of Wordsworth and Coleridge, who themselves were friends living in the Lake District, who ended up having, you know, sort of difficult at times, artistic relationship. The King Henry in Penrith is another great pub name that they go to. Another historical English emblem of masculinity. If it's Henry VIII or some other Henrys, but especially Henry vii, they've gone into town to buy Wellington's. But then, of course, they take the money and immediately squander it on booze, which seems, you know, really. They really seem beyond help to me in that moment because I realize they want to get away from Monty and just be without him for a while. But he has all that great wine back at the cottage, so why they would need to immediately squander this money on Morbos is. It's a frustrating moment for me. So anyway, they go to this pub, the King Henry. They get kicked out. They go into the Penrith Tea Rooms. And then it's just old people. It's just all these old people that are having tea and want them out and they're trying to stay, saying that they're multi millionaires, that they're working on a film up here. The owner wants to call the police on them and says, we'll keep them here until they arrive. The police arrive. Marwood and Whiffnail just then just walk out. They just get away because they can't possibly be held back by these old guys. So Monty shows up in the.

17:38 Wes: In the car.

17:39 Erin: Yeah, in the Rolls, which, you know, maybe they are multi millionaires. Maybe you should have given them some cakes.

17:47 Wes: Withnail says, we'll be back.

17:49 Erin: Yeah. Have you been to the Lake District?

17:52 Wes: No.

17:53 Erin: I've been to some towns like this in England and in Scotland, and if you go into some of these places, there is. It is just like an older clientele.

18:01 Wes: Dodgy older.

18:03 Erin: They're great for that reason, but I never came roaring drunk into one, so I never had a bad time.

18:10 Wes: Have you ever gone roaring drunk into a stodgy establishment where you shouldn't be roaring drunk?

18:17 Erin: No.

18:18 Wes: Yeah. I can't remember if I. You know, I probably did, but I can't remember.

18:23 Erin: That's a great thing about these things. They take care of themselves. The embarrassment just goes away.

18:29 Wes: I know my friend Lebec and I used to quote that bring us the finest wines known to humanity. Frequently.

18:38 Erin: Yeah. And then this interesting thing with Monty happens where he admonishes Marwood, which I think must be for squandering the money, you know, it must have been.

18:49 Wes: Yeah. Monty's very upset with them.

18:51 Erin: Must be because they're so drunk.

18:52 Wes: Wellingtons and. Yeah, being drunk.

18:54 Erin: Yeah, yeah. Because they were going to tell him the story that. Oh, don't worry, we'll just tell him there was a farmer's conference and there was a run on these Wellingtons or something, so. So we couldn't buy them, so we had to squander the money. But I think when he picks them up, they must be so drunk and so out of it that he could tell what's really gone on. And so, yeah, so the suggestion is that Marwood is leading Withnail astray, which made me wonder if Withnail was leading Marwood astray throughout the film. He's certainly getting him into bad situations because of his big mouth.

19:23 Wes: I see Withnail as the bad, bad influence.

19:26 Erin: He's causing problems for Marwood. But is he actually. He's not successfully leading Marwood astray? I wouldn't say.

19:34 Wes: Well, Marwood says, what about the Wellingtons? And he says, bollocks to the Wellingtons. Right. So, yeah, there are many instances where Marwood is sort of. There's a bit of a survival instinct and you know, from the beginning of the movie to the end. And it's reflected in the fact that he actually gets an acting part. He's the one who comes to realization they can't keep going on this way. And he's going to go out and get tea. And there's a funny. When they get to the cottage, there's a funny point where he's like, okay, we're going to separate into fact finding groups. Groups of one. You'll deal with the water and I'll deal with the fire. Something like that at least has some interest in practical problems and in solving them. But yeah, he frequently just. It seemed to me he'll just do. He's very fearful. And that terror, as I mentioned, comes across from the very beginning of the movie. And you see it. It's a great comic effect in both the them. But like with the guy, the Irishman who calls them ponces, just the level of fear that Morrowood gives off in the bathroom looking at the graffiti, worried about being raped ultimately. But, yeah, it seems to me he operates from the position of fear and is being carried along by Withnail's libertine, debauched attitude towards life, which is something Withnail can probably afford, as you mentioned, in the long run, more than he can from a financial perspective. He's got to do something, right? Withnail, in a way, can go on to be his uncle. Right?

21:13 Erin: Yeah. But I think there's something about Marwood which is really, despite Withnail getting him into scrapes and things, which is constitutionally impervious to Withnail. I mean, remarkably so. And maybe that is ultimately down to the class difference, too, that Marwood has to be more practical, has to be more scientific word he uses, or is more keyed into reality. The thing I really don't get about Marwood is why he smiles so much at Monty, which seems so unnecessary and needlessly encouraging from the beginning, when Monty is reaching around him to get into the bags. Why he doesn't just step away out of Monty's way instead of physically allowing himself to be put in this really compromising position is very.

21:59 Wes: Yeah, Withnail calls him out on this, right?

22:01 Erin: Oh, yes, yes. Yeah.

22:02 Wes: Marwood says, I got a cramp in the mouth from grinning. Stop smiling at him. I can't help it. I'm so uptight with him, I can't stop myself. But he does a lot of that. When the Irish guy comes up to them, I think they both give off. They do that smile of terror, like this terrified smile thing where they're just deer caught in the headlights and they don't know how to do anything but smile.

22:25 Erin: Well, Withnail's way of dealing with that kind of terror seems to be to out submissive himself out, you know, like he's going to go all the way in the submission direction and sort of fawn, like when he says he has a heart condition, you know, he's going to make himself into the wimpiest wimp in the world, you know, to try to get the guy to leave him alone. And then I think Marwood learns from that. He learned something about that tactic, maybe from Withnail, but one would think that he would be a better actor and he would understand. Obviously, Withnail has created a situation where Monty believes something about Marwood, which isn't true. And in the end, Monty's humiliation is all on with Nail's head. And yet, at the same time, Marwood has also been needlessly encouraging him with this, like, weird smiling throughout the entire every single one of his interactions with Bonte. And he doesn't just step out of the way. He doesn't just act as though it would just be a normal thing to step out of the way. And so it's a little frustrating to see his resignation or passivity or when he's complaining about being too high and he gets kind of whiny. It's a moment where, again, I kind of break sympathy with Marwood. I think that for somebody who has gotten an acting part as a. No, I guess not as a soldier. That was the part that he originally went for, was the soldier, but instead he's gonna be the lead, which maybe is, you know, head soldier. But anyway, somebody who was able to successfully get this part, one would think that he would have a little more gumption, is what I'm trying to say. And yet ultimately his passivity doesn't stand in the way of him getting the part.

23:56 Wes: Well, it sounds like. I mean, he wasn't necessarily passive in that aspect of his life. From my point of view, I don't find either of them sympathetic except in a comedic sense throughout the movie. I'm not. They're both so absurdly terrified of everything and everything's an emergency, you know, running out of wine. You know, as Withnail says, we've got some very distressing news. We're out of wine. As he's pouring himself the last cup of wine.

24:26 Erin: Well, but Marwood is the one we're supposed to identify with to a certain extent. Right. We get his interiority. We.

24:31 Wes: Yeah, a bit more. But I think your point is well taken. It's kind of hard to. He's got some of the seeds of more of a more realistic orientation towards the world and towards a bit of a survival instinct and something that's working against self destructiveness. Right. Withnails is a force of pure destructiveness and self destructiveness. And Marwood seems to have been very induced by that and is almost as bad in many ways. Not as angry, not as envious and more passive than. Than Withnail, but in a similar psychologically abject state. Right. We don't see Marwood transformed as a character. We don't get to really see the arc. It all happens behind the scenes. He's planted the seeds with an audition, and in the end he gets the part and cuts his hair and leaves. And so that's the moment where he actually does something that's not completely passive. He's going to leave with nail and he's not going to even let him walk him all the way to the station. That's the first time I think he really genuinely asserts himself in the film.

25:41 Erin: I think there is a slight moment of transformation when Monty leaves and leaves that note for them and Marwood reads it and feels quite sorry for him.

25:50 Wes: Oh, yeah, yeah.

25:51 Erin: He tells Withnail, you'll suffer for this. What you have done will have to be paid for. And then it is immediately paid for by the knock on the door, because it's the telegram telling him, Right. That he's gotten the part.

26:04 Wes: Good point. Yeah. When he tells off. Yeah, that's the big.

26:07 Erin: Yeah, yeah.

26:08 Wes: It's a big deal. When he really, really tells off Withnail. Yeah, that is a big change.

26:13 Erin: Yeah, you're right. Then he cuts his hair and refuses the drink, says that he doesn't have time. Right. This is another return to the time motif because Withnail has been driving furiously to get to London. He keeps saying that he's making time over and over again. Again, this idea that if he speeds in the car, you know, this connection to speeding. But of course, as always happens, you have to pay for it. Just like the description you read in part one of Marwood talking about speed, that eventually it catches up with you and seeps through your pores or something like that. In this, in the same way, Withnail is stopped by the police. And then ultimately, of course, getting arrested takes a lot more time, so you might as well have gone the speaker lament or something.

26:57 Wes: Richard E. Grant had never. I don't know if he had never had a drink, but he had never been drunk and was a teetotaler.

27:03 Erin: Oh, no way. That's so funny.

27:06 Wes: Yeah, so Bruce Robinson, the director, writer and director of the movie, had him, insisted that he experienced being drunk. And so they got him very drunk until he vomited. You can see there's a little 20 minute documentary online if people want to look at it and see the actors talking about all of this. Yeah. So Robinson, in that documentary, talks about what a great job he thought that Grant did, pretending to be drunk and then pretending to be drunk, trying to pretend to not be drunk. Like when they get stopped by the cops. And he gives that look to the. Just the look on his face that he gives to the cops. And when he says, I've only had a few ales, they open the door and he practically falls out of the car because he's leaning so heavily in the door. So sorry to interrupt you, but I wanted to put in that little tidbit about. And Richard E. Grant is so great in this.

27:55 Erin: Yeah, he Is. Yeah, yeah, he says, you know, Marwood says, I'll be late. You know, I have to go to the station. I'll be late. And Withnail says, there's always time for a drink. This is the final part of the film, and Marwood insists that he doesn't have time. So he's gotten out of the tractor beam of. With Nell squandering time or, you know, wasting time. He's been able to not. Not waste time anymore and get out of this cycle or whatever. And then with Nell, ends with a Hamlet soliloquy which begins, I have of late, but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth. So there's this idea of lateness and having run out of time inherent in the beginning of that speech. And then he talks about the roof fretted with golden fire and how that's all nothing, so that he seems to have lost his. This is almost like his parting speech where he, like Monty, knows that he will not play the Dane. And being a star, being the golden fire and the hanging firmament is not going to be possible for him or no longer meaningful to him.

28:54 Wes: It seems man delights not me. No, nor women neither. Nor women neither. Speaking to your point about the lack of women in the film and any romantic interests for that matter, I don't

29:06 Erin: mean to make too fine a point of that, but I think there's something really sinister about that. The lack of interest in women or discussion of women at all.

29:13 Wes: Well, it goes along with drinking lighter fluid. There's a whole collection of related sinister things.

29:20 Erin: Right. What goes along, too with, I think, creative stagnancy. I wanted to talk because him saying this speech, I guess, to the wolves reminds me of the various. Just of the names in the film. So we never get Marwood. Right. It's just on. I looked it up. How come the character's name is Marwood in this script that you sent me and it appears on a telegram. That's the only way that we know that his name is Marwood.

29:47 Wes: So the original screenplay has Marwood as the name, but I don't know if they put that in after the fact. But as you can buy it, like, if you buy the original screenplay, it'll say Marwood. It was on movies and materials related to the film during promotion. I don't know. But, yeah, it's purposefully. It doesn't come up in the movie. Is it really on the telegram?

30:08 Erin: I don't know. It just. That's what AI thinks. So take it, you know, for what it's worth.

30:14 Wes: Yeah, I think that might be a question. But anyway. Yeah. Purposefully. Right. Yeah. We don't. He's just I. Not Marwood.

30:21 Erin: Right. Well, you know, it's interesting because it is a. Like Withnail. You know, it's kind of a compound name. And so it got me thinking about names because the M is, you know, Withnail is, in a way, that upside down version of Marwood, just with the m and the W, I mean to say. And they're both. They're both compound words.

30:40 Wes: And then nail on wood and.

30:42 Erin: Yeah, right, right. Yes, that. And then also the farmer. Remember when they're trying to say, oh, don't you know, Montague Withnail, who lives in this cottage? And he's. He says, no, that guy. I think his name is French. And he calls him Adrian de la Touche, which is really, really good. But anyway, I looked up all of this because I was just interested in. So Montague means pointed mountain. And the transliteration, even in the closed caption on the Criterion Channel's version of With Nail and I, which is how I watched the movie, the transliteration of

31:21 Wes: Sisters with your captions.

31:23 Erin: No, no, I turned. No, I don't watch anything with closed caption. I turned it on to make sure that I got this right. And so he says, I. I seen a fat man, London type, queer sort. I think his name's French, or summit. And it transliterates his accent as S U M M I T. So his name is Montague. Right. Which means pointed mountain. And then the transliteration is Summit, which is really apartment and then I looked up De la Touche. Touch. What would. What's that about? So it means of the touch and touch, or Touche means small patch of trees of the small wood or thicket. So Marwood and Adrienne Delatouche. And, you know, there's some clever things going on with Marwood's relationship with Withnail and with Monty, even this imaginative name that the farmer has given Monty. It seems suggestive of what's going to happen, but only if you know what Marwood's name is. So it's kind of like a little in joke, maybe in the movie. Oh, and the other. Sorry. The reason why I brought this up is because Withnail is also experimenting with different stage names.

32:33 Wes: Oh, yeah.

32:34 Erin: He says at one point, he suggests that Desmond Wolf. And I thought that was indicative. Again, because there's so much symbolic masculinity going on in the various root vegetables and other things that Woolf was a desire to maybe put on A more. More masculine identity, more aggressive, perhaps. Marwood tells him it's too like Donald Wolfit, who was a famous English stage actor. And then later he suggests another name. So he seems to have borrowed Marwood's Donald and suggests Donald Twain. But then I just looked up, I was like, what's the origin of the name Donald? And it turns out that means world ruler, which, there's a lot to be said about that, that I prefer not to go go there. Who knew that Donald Duck, for instance, had to take one, had such a. An imposing meaning to his name. But, yeah, in the end, he's Desmond Wolf would be. Desmond Wolf is giving his soliloquy to the. The caged wolves in the zoo.

33:37 Wes: So in spite of all his rage, he's still just a Desmond Wolf in a cage. To almost quote one of my favorite songs. Are you Smashing Pumpkins fan?

33:49 Erin: I. I appreciate Smashing Pumpkins. I wouldn't call myself a fan. It's not really my cup of tea, but I've had a lot of people try to get me into it, so I've listened to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins, but.

33:59 Wes: Yeah, yeah. Had to be able to embrace your melancholy side.

34:03 Erin: No, I do not by smashing any type of gourd, though, in my own ways.

34:11 Wes: What's the difference between a gourd and a root vegetable?

34:14 Erin: They don't grow underground. They grow on top of the ground.

34:18 Wes: Okay. All right. Well, on that note, that's a suitable place to end the well, to quote with nail. We can't go on like this. We'll have to stop. So.

34:31 Erin: All right, thank you. Thank you.