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

0:11 Wes: It's 1969, and as drug guru Danny tells us, the greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. There will, he says, be many refugees. And the film's implication is that Withnail, who combines self importance and lofty ambition with substance abuse and urban squalor, will not be one of them. Marwood, by contrast, has seen the writing on the wall in the form of the salacious tabloid stories that while they threaten to out compete the world's attention for the arts, ultimately can't be used to excuse the pair's failure to find work as actors. Countering this attentional collapse perhaps requires getting serious, leaving bohemian pretensions behind. And along with them, as Marwood finds out on their jaunt to the countryside, a backward looking romanticism that can be used as a cover not just for artistic paralysis, but upper class predations, both economic and sexual. Today we discuss the cult classic with Nail and I, and whether our capacity for sublimation suffers less from the crisis of modernity than from our attempts to transcend it. This is Wes Alwan. And this is Erin Olonick, and you're listening to Subtext. Okay, Erin, I didn't ask you before I suggested this movie whether you had seen it or not, and I was curious about whether you'd seen it and whether you liked it, but I thought I'd wait until the podcast to learn that. So, yeah. So what's the answer to that?

1:46 Erin: I was trying to figure out if I had seen it before and my memory. I don't think I'm making this up. I think I tried to watch it and got repulsed and stopped watching it because of the whole matter in the sink thing. But I really liked it and I thought it was hilarious. As long as you don't eat anything while you're watching it, I think it's okay. But the curve at the beginning was just getting over the few gross things going on, which all kind of happen at the beginning of the film. But did you see this, like, around the time that it came out, or what's your experience with it?

2:19 Wes: I saw this in the 90s. My friend John Lebec showed it to me. I think we should dedicate this episode to John Lebeck, who liked the character that Withnail is based on, passed away young, and I think in some ways there are situations. I lived with Lebeck and he was my best friend for a long time. There were times in my life where I think we didn't quite reach the level of Withnail and Marwood in terms of squalor and dissolution. But I think we were trying. We were trying to get there. And I think there's a kind of romance in that or there's a romanticization of that, and maybe that has something to do with its association with being a down and out artist. It's much more romantic if you can make the artist part of that work. But otherwise it just becomes, well, what is it they're feeling in the beginning of the movie? You know, terror, I think at least Mara would nail is more angry, I think. But anyway, this kind of story, yeah, it does have an appeal to me. I'm a big fan of Orwell's down and out in Paris and London, for instance. I don't know if you've read that there's another book called Keep the Aspidistras Flying by Orwell, which is the same sort of quality. The down and out story, it's not quite like this, but Bukowski, I think we talked about this before and you're not a fan, but his stories can be very much like this. They're autobiographical and it's about him being a boozer and trying to be a writer.

3:56 Erin: But.

3:56 Wes: Yeah, so I think part of the thing I was trying to think about rewatching this was. And it has been a long time, I think I saw it in the 90s and I saw it again at some point. I think this is the third time, but it's probably more than a decade since I've seen it. But I was trying to think, what is it that's so appealing about a story like this, if it is appealing to people? And then what is it that can appeal to people about putting themselves in this state, in this position? And then the larger question of how this is related to 60s counterculture, because, of course, it's set in 1969 and they've come to an end of an era. And the final stages of this relationship, I think, in a way are meant to represent the end of the 60s and everything, the good and bad of it.

4:44 Erin: Well, what I find appealing about it is just the dialogue. There are just so many funny lines. The hysterical moment where the police officer screams, get in the van.

4:54 Wes: Yeah. That is.

4:59 Erin: I had to pause it because I was laughing so hard.

5:02 Wes: Just completely loses it.

5:04 Erin: Yeah, yeah.

5:05 Wes: In the shrillest. Yeah, the shrillest possible voice. Completely loses control of himself.

5:13 Erin: Good cop, crazy cop or bad cop, crazy cop. I don't know what. What they're doing there, but for me, the film seemed to be less about this idea of what it means to be an artist per se, and instead this hopelessness about becoming a man, that there was no route to maturity, that the future had been foreclosed for Marwood and Withnail in some way. And I think their particular artistic endeavor. So acting is about that same process. It's also about adopting another identity. Of course, they're male actors, so it's a male identity putting on another man or another life or another role, and therefore, perhaps training oneself in what it means to be that other man or in what it means to be a man in general. And then that's played upon, it seems, with these gay jokes that pervade the film with the idea of being maybe subject to other men or under the influence of other men, or even this actorly idea of putting on another man becomes this kind of joke in which they're putting on Monty. Monty himself is a former actor, I suppose. I don't know. Maybe. As I say that, I'm thinking, well, that really is about the artist's life. What probably just characterizes it more than anything is that one is subject to outside approval regard. Very little is under one's control when one is an artist. So. But I was more interested in this idea of manhood, masculinity and feeling like everybody wants to, yeah, screw you over and what that might mean. And kind of turning that into a joke about all the meanings of that phrase, which I'm putting politely, more politely than the film does.

6:58 Wes: Yeah. I think there's something there about the way in which a certain kind of aesthetic relationship to the aesthetic and to artistic ambitions leaves one vulnerable. Right. They get called a ponce. That's a big deal. By the Irishman in the bar. What's the name of the pub again?

7:17 Erin: There are so many great pub names. There's the King Henry, the one with the two Cs.

7:23 Wes: It's the mother black cap. They're called ponces at that point. Jake the poacher says to Marwood that he's a prancing tit and that he wants working on. Although the poacher turns out to be a bit more benevolent than they thought and ends up bringing them a rabbit in the end. So there's a certain amount of paranoia. I mean, there's a lot of paranoia in this, but there's the realistic, what turns out to be persecution by Monty, or at least towards Marwood. Monty turns out, really is after him sexually, even if it's going to mean burglary, as he puts it, which is great. But I Think there's two components there. One is being a bit more upper class. And so being a ponce. That sort of slur is not just about sexuality, although it is. It's about being a limousine liberal. That's actually a very poor way to put it. Or maybe it's more after the times, actually, at least the times in which the movie was made, that sort of accusation. But it's about being effete and not manly. So I think that's the relationship. That's the sort of position that being actors puts them in. It's not a manly thing to do. It's more feminine. I think that's the idea. Part of the movie is about the dangers of the romanticization of that sort of aspiration. You know, when we see Monty in the countryside, he has all these romance, right. The countryside itself, when they take that trip, there's supposed to be something romantic about it, right. In the larger sense, it's getting into the countryside and into a rural scene. Wordsworth and Keats and all that. And Monty himself has all this flowery talk, but it's a cover up for lust. It's a cover up for sexual persecution. And that's what romanticization of this sort potentially opens you. Opens you up to. So I think you're right. Yeah, it's about. There's a lot about masculinity and homosexuality. And I'm relating it here to the larger idea of being a vulnerability created by a more aesthetic attitude rather than practical attitude towards the world.

9:44 Erin: Acting not being a manly thing is doubly implicated here, both because as an artist you're not working with your hands, but also the particular trappings of being an actor. Doing things like putting on makeup, which Monty does at one point. The idea of playing dress up and then this idea of adopting another man's identity somehow almost as if it's like a. I don't know. I was. I was trying to think through that a little bit, this marriage that happens as an actor when you're assuming someone else's identity. So you stay yourself or you're using your own body as the kind of the vessel for maybe another man's identity. And so there's something perhaps inherently homosexual about that. But I think in every single episode in this sort of episodic film, there is some anxiety about male rape or about being bested by a man or in one instance, a bull. In every single part of the film, it happens over and over again. And when they're not explicitly talking about that, it's displaced into carrots and meat and other symbolic terminology. But the movie also has. I mean, we get Dani as someone who's their age, but also predominantly, they're just interacting with older men. Also the farmer. The farmer is sort of more closer to their age than some of the other men in the film, but predominantly they're interacting with older men when they're not interacting with, you know, the Irish guy at the pub or the poacher, like these bigger, scarier, more obviously manly type of guys. And there are no women in the film of their own age whatsoever, which is one of the first things I notice. They yell at those schoolgirls with. With Nell, yells at the schoolgirls out the window, scrubbers. Other than that, you don't see any women of their. I mean, not including that, you don't see any women of their generation. You only see those schoolgirls and then the older women, like, in the tea rooms in Penrith and the farmer's mother. So it's a world devoid of women and they're just really, really scared of the advances of men. And then in the cafe with the first scene where Marwood puts the kettle on and then goes down to the cafe, he's looking at the headlines in the newspaper and the first headline we see is, moment of fulfillment for local boy who became a woman. You know, the pipeline is boy to woman, nude. It's not boy to man. Right. There's no. This is the. This seems to be the crisis. How do you grow up and become. How do you become a man? Is the central idea, maybe, that Marwood and Withnail are struggling with. Are you. You can't really become a Monty. Monty has a whole history of montiness that obviously Marwood and Withnail don't share. You can't become the old drunk military man in the pub, and they're not capable of becoming Jeff Woad or the poacher or the big burly Irish guy. What is their route to manhood? Which is a weird thing because they both look old to be thinking about that, but whatever.

12:56 Wes: Yeah. Well, I want to focus a little bit on this news theme because I think it's the way the film starts and there's a relationship here to art as well, insofar as the news is what competes for attention with the aesthetic from others. People who are reading newspapers are not reading books. And in particular, it has to do with this salacious news. Right. So there's the woman becoming a man. Then there's the nude au pair's secret life. That's another headline These are real headlines apparently from the time and the way Marwood narrates this. And this is one of the great. There's just so much great dialogue, as you said, and some great voiceover as well. He says 13 million Londoners have to wake up to this. The murder and Albran and rape. And I'm sitting in this bloody shack and I can't cope with Withnail. I must be out of my mind. I must go home at once and discuss these problems and discuss his problems in depth. I thought it was these problems. It's written here as his discuss his problems in depth. When he gets home, Withnail is reading the news. And let's see, Curse of the Superman. Yeah, before that. There's just so many great lines in this I hate to skip over, but my thumbs have gone weird. I'm in the middle of a bloody overdose. I feel really dreadful. And then with nails, so do I. So does everyone. Look at my tongue. Gray yellow sock. And then goes on to talk about this curse of the supermen. People taking steroids to win competitions. Athletes like Jeff Woad. So in a world exclusive interview, 33 year old shot putter Jeff Woad, who weighs 317 pounds, admitted taking massive doses of anabolic steroids, drugs banned in sport. He used to get in bad tempers, says his wife. He used to pick on me, but now he's stopped. He's much better. In our sex life and in our general, the sex life of course comes first. And then, Jesus Christ. This huge thatch headed, this huge thatched head with its earlobes and cannonballs is now considered sane. And then Marwa would saying, please, I don't feel good with nail. That's what you'd say. But that wouldn't wash with Jeff. No. He'd like a bit of pleading add spice to it. In fact, he'd probably tell you that he was going to do what he was going to do before he did it. I'm going to pull your head off. No, please don't pull my head off. I'm going to pull your head off because I don't like your head. As you mentioned, this sort of paranoia about it's not just about sexual assault but it's about violence in general towards other men. Comes up quite a bit and this is just one of the instances of it. But it's connected here to this idea of the salacious events of the world. And so I guess I'm trying to draw a parallel. I'm trying to draw a connection here between the idea that being an artist makes you vulnerable to not just criticism, but to violence of some sort. And then the other idea here is that news of the salacious events of the world like this, in a way, is competition for attention. And so there's the potential to write. The real vulnerability for the artist is criticism from an audience or the disinterest, lack of interest from an audience. So that's also the kind of threat

16:34 Erin: that's being described here in this Jeff Wode instance. There's the idea too that you have to be a superman to get ahead. You have to be more than human somehow in order to achieve any kind of success in this world. And also inherent in that is this idea that you have to cheat because he's taking these, these steroids. But he's also already this huge guy, Withnail points out. Imagine the size of his balls. So there's always this, you know, imagine getting into a fight with him and that's then when he says, you know, he sort of does the imaginary dialogue. But this idea of sexual prowess is repeatedly linked with being superhuman somehow, or gargantuan. And Withnail and Marwood are kind of on the losing end of that. It occurs to me that even the poacher has a moment of being literally superhuman when he's, when he's pulling, you know, he pulls the eel out of his pants. And then he also has. He looks bigger than he is because it turns out he has, underneath his jacket, he's being sort of puffed up with the pheasants. It's almost like he has these prostheses that are making him more than human, more than just a normal man. And I. You know what's interesting too, in this, in the scene looking around the flat, they have these kind of Georgian style paintings on the walls. They almost look like Romneys. When Withnail is talking about the imaginary conversation with Jeff Woad, he walks over to the mirror and you see there's an illustration of kind of a medieval king sitting on the mantel that's sort of propped up against the mirror. And then there are also postcards of what look like palaces, probably. And it occurs to me that, you know, as you point out, this is also an anxiety of class. Oddly that though Withnail, not Marwood, I suppose, but though Withnail is upper class, that somehow leaves him vulnerable to the more vital, you know, working class men that could beat him up. And come to think of it, the king as an image of that is. Is also really interesting. This model of this medieval king with a Long sword. You have to be. You have to be at the top of the heap. Right. You have to be the king among aristocrats and therefore superhuman in that kind of way, almost to escape being seen as a feat somehow.

18:51 Wes: Yeah. So I sent you a kind of transcript of the movie, including some scene descriptions. And I don't know who did that. It's of the movie as shot and the original screenplay, as always, is different. But there's a lot of great writing in the original screenplay that doesn't make it into the transcript that we have and can't even be shot. So, for instance, despite the squalor, the room is furnished with antiques, heirlooms and other quality stuff. An indescribable melange of stuff crowds a low table. A large Victorian globe of the world soars above bacon rinds. So, okay, so all this stuff can be shot. I don't remember the bacon rinds. But anyway, objet d' art and breakfast remains compete for space. Then he says Dostoevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it. This room has several chairs. That's the part that can't be shot.

19:46 Erin: That's in the scene description.

19:48 Wes: That's in the. Yeah. So he put it in there knowing, of course, this is supposed to not. You're. If you read a screenplay book, they told. Tell you you're never supposed to write stuff like that. That belongs in a novel. Right. It can't be shot, so it doesn't belong in there. But of course he put it in.

20:03 Erin: Well, it's conveys something to the scene dressers.

20:10 Wes: Yeah. He was also a novelist. Bruce Robinson, the writer and the director. And he was nominated for an Academy Award for adapting the Killing Fields. He wrote and directed how to Get Ahead in Advertising. Have you seen that?

20:25 Erin: I haven't seen it. I've seen the Killing Fields.

20:27 Wes: He worked with Truffaut as an actor. He was also an actor. He was in Romeo and Juliet by Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian director. And part of this movie is based on that because apparently Zeffirelli sexually harassed him on set. I think we were forced to watch that Romeo and Juliet version in high school.

20:48 Erin: Everybody.

20:48 Wes: Yeah. Despite a mysterious topless scene. Yeah, well, Juliet gets topless. Right. It's like the weirdest thing.

20:55 Erin: Stories of, like, teachers just standing in front of the television screen during that. I think that's kind of a universal experience where they, you know, they like. It happens, whatever. Or you get somebody standing in front to try to block the screen for a minute.

21:13 Wes: A Lot is based on his personal life, as I've already mentioned. He really did have a roommate, much like with nail, who did drink lighter fluid at some point. And he said he's basically compressed what went on for two years into a couple of weeks. But I mention all this just because I think you've gotten that the sense in which the talk about Superman has something to do with the idea that they have to be supermen in order to get ahead. I forget how you put it. But in any case, part of this is about ambition. They, like Jeff Woad, are on drugs and they in a sense are pushing themselves to the limit to see the limits of human performance. There's something the Olympics being a bum.

22:03 Erin: Yeah, that's great. That hadn't occurred to me, oddly enough.

22:08 Wes: And once again the news is directly competition. So Withnail says at one point where he says, you've had an audition. Why can't I have an audition? This is a recurring theme with him. He's always envious, you have soup. Where's my soup? Turns out to be coffee that, that Marwood is eating with a spoon. In any case, he'll end up saying, the only program I'm likely to get on is the fucking news. So this is another point where we get this implied competition with salacious events of the world and with these manly supermen who are nevertheless cheating. So how are you going to get ahead under those circumstances? When I was going over my, you know, after, after watching it again and going over the transcript, I thought, yeah, it's really. There's a really interesting feeling of complete desperation and paranoia and imminent catastrophe, like the world is going to end. Which again I think, you know, part of that's meant to capture the end of the 60s, but it's really about ambition. I think, you know, they complain a lot in the movie about where they are with their careers not getting parts and you know, their trying to be actors. But you get the sense that this is kind of a portrait of ambition itself. Regardless of how one is actually doing in the real world with one's aspirations, there's a kind of desperation and potential internal psychological squalor that can crop up in relationship to one's ambitious ideals. Right. So you might neglect yourself and everything practical in life in order to, right, devote yourself to being an actor or an artist or intellectual or something like that. More generally we might neglect our well being in the service of some grandiose self conception of ourself unrealistic aspirations. So the drug addled squalor that they're in is kind of an extreme case of that. But it's sort of. One could take it as representing this real bifurcation that happens within people, even within a psyche between an abject shadow self, as Jung would put it, and more grandiose, manic self related to the idea of the powerful great person that one might be. Or if you're completely psychotic, that you think you are godlike. Yeah.

24:47 Erin: They're taking drugs puts them in something of that kind of position perhaps. Right. Because there's the repeated idea of time in the film and that they're toying with time by taking these drugs that they can throw away a day if they want to. Right. Doesn't Marwood say that at some point we'll go, we'll have a drink and then we'll take some drug. I can't remember what it is. Some kind of antidepressant maybe.

25:12 Wes: Let me read this. It's about Marwoods doing a voiceover. Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane. Time change, you lose, you gain. Makes no difference so long as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you got to get out because it's crashing. And all at once those frozen hours melt through the nervous system and seep out the pores. Is that what you're thinking of? Such a great.

25:36 Erin: I was thinking of that. But as at a contrast to this moment, which I think I found. It's actually Withnail who says it. This is the plan. We'll get in there. This is when they're about to go into the mother black cap. We'll get in there and get wrecked. Then we'll eat a pork pie. Then we'll drop a couple of Sermontill 50s each. Means we'll miss out on Monday but come up smiling Tuesday morning. So they're planning on missing a day and just being. I think that's. That's what's going on there. That they're just going to be blacked out for a day. So there's the speeding up. Slow.

26:07 Wes: Hear about the drinking game associated with.

26:09 Erin: Yes, I did. Yeah. That's like the number one thing that came up on the search for. With nail and eye Lord try to

26:15 Wes: match with Withnail drink for drink. And at one point he orders. What is it? A quadruple whiskey and a pint or something anyway.

26:24 Erin: Right?

26:24 Wes: Yeah. You kill yourself if you really try to do it.

26:26 Erin: Yeah. But this.

26:27 Wes: Sorry.

26:28 Erin: Yeah. This. This idea of. You know. I think part of what you're suggesting about the news also. Also gets at this, right. There's a finite economy of time and attention, and. And you're trying to take a piece of that. And it occurs to me, too, that actors are among the unluckiest artists in that when you're not acting, you really do have nothing to do. You're just killing time between parts. It's not like if you're not being published or you're not getting your painting sold, that you, you know, your paintbrush is taken away from you. You could still keep working. I mean, it's difficult to do because it's difficult to work, you know, when your ego is being destroyed by not getting any kind of recognition whatsoever. But you can technically still keep going and keep working. But if you're not being cast in something, then you just. You can't do anything at all. And so this feeling of things being. I think you said there's a sense of dread hanging over the film and things kind of being over, or the idea that they're running out of time and the suggestion that it's because of the end of the 60s. I think that's true. But there's also the fact that the friendship is over. Right. Like, before the movie even starts, the friendship has basically ended. Because it seems like the dread from Withnail anyway is about knowing somehow that this audition is going to bear fruit for Marwood in some way, and so that has already caused the rift.

27:54 Wes: Did you sense that before the end of the movie? Cause I didn't. Yeah, I wasn't paying enough attention. So the ending caught me unawares, I guess. Yeah.

28:05 Erin: I think this is the tension between them from the beginning and the idea that Marwood is trying to establish sympathy or a connection between them by saying, we're in the same boat. And Withnail rejects that repeatedly. It's not just because Withnail's an egomaniac, though he is, and feels uniquely that he's suffering uniquely and. And uniquely entitled, though he does feel that way. It's also, I think, that he sees the writing on the wall, so he knows that Morwood is going to succeed and is on the way to some sort of success. I think that's part of it. It's like they start a clock on the end of the friendship, starting from the beginning of the movie. And. Oh, and there's also the fact that withnail is turning 30. There's the suggestion that one only has enough time to play Hamlet. Right. And Hamlet is, of course, about. Partially about dithering and wasting time and not dealing with time the way one should. And Monty says there comes a time when you realize you're never going to play the Dane.

29:07 Wes: Do you mind if I read it?

29:08 Erin: Please.

29:09 Wes: It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when one morning he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, I will never play the Dane. When that moment comes, one's ambition ceases. Don't you agree? It's a part I intend to play, Uncle. Which, of course, he does at the very end of the film when he does that speech. But that's a really good. I didn't think about that. Yeah. The relationship to time and dithering and even the irony of Monty saying you wake up and realize you're out of time to play Hamlet.

29:44 Erin: So, yeah, what does that mean? You're never going to get the opportunity, or you've aged out, or both. But really it means both. And with nail is turning 30. When you're far away from somebody up on a stage, you can get away with being a lot older than the part that you're playing. So presumably With Nail does have maybe 10, if not 15, if not 20 more years to play Hamlet, depending on how ridiculous the casting director is. But spiritually, maybe.

30:12 Wes: How old was Branagh when he played Hamlet?

30:15 Erin: Too old.

30:16 Wes: Seemed a bit too old. Yeah.

30:18 Erin: Yeah. Everybody who plays it on. On screen, you know, they. They've established themselves in it, which means they've been playing it for a long time, and by the time the screen adaptation comes up. So there's this idea that you could play with time. You could play with time when you're young and taking all these drugs and drinking all this, all these tremendous quantities seems to go hand in hand with this idea of youth. And youth seems to be something that you have to inherently squander. Something of that, I don't know, quality goes on in youth or is essential to youth that you're squandering it. And the 60s and youth culture and all of that is also running out. So I think, as Danny says, at some point they have to come down from the. From their trip with the end of the decade, and it's over now because they're selling hippie wigs at Woolworths, you know, so there's been some sort of. Some frozen in amber quality that's happening to the 60s, where it's possible to buy the trappings of the decade now in a store almost as a kind of costume, as a Halloween costume, or maybe as a, you know, a costume for an actor to then play the part of the 60s hippie.

31:27 Wes: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about Danny and then this connection that he makes between the end of the friendship and the end of the 60s. Right. So Danny is there. Maybe let's talk about the connection first, and then we'll get more into Dany's character, which is great. So Danny says to Marwood, you got the pirate man? Marwood says, I got a different one. They want me to play the lead. And then Withnail says, congratulations. And then they move on, or Dany moves on. Where exactly have you two been? Marwood Holliday, in the countryside. We don't know at this point that Danny is going to now eulogize the decade, but it's also, of course, a eulogy for the friendship. So Danny says, that's a very good idea. London is a country coming down from its trip. We are 91 days from the end of this decade, and there's going to be a lot of refugees. So of course, Withnail is one of those who's going to get left behind. Not everyone's going to be able to make the transition from. How do you characterize the 60s counterculture and youth culture and the kinds of aspirations it represented? And with, I would say, libertinism, sex, drugs and rock and roll and all that stuff. And in the end, the promise of all that didn't really pan out. And it's a sad moment. Right. Likewise, the end of the friendship of Withnail and Marwood is sad. And those two forms of sadness get connected. Anyway, Danny continues, they'll be going around this town shouting, bring out your dead. Reference to Monty Python. In fact, it's a reference to Monty Python, but It's set in 1969, before the Holy Grail movie was, in any case. Yeah. So going around this town shouting, bring out your dead. Which, of course, is where Withnail is at this point. And then they learn that they're going to be evicted. And it's partly because of what Danny's done with the landlord. Some bald geezer starts coming on really bald with me, it's a callback to the beginning of the film where he has a theory of baldness and uptightness. Is that it for Danny's eulogy? That and the idea when Marwood says he's not going to smoke any more grass, Danny says, that is an unfortunate political decision reflecting these times. And then finally Withnail says, what are you talking about, Danny? And Danny says, politics, man. If you're hanging onto a rising balloon, you're presented with a difficult decision. Let's go before it's too late. Or hang on and keep getting higher, posing the question, how long can you keep a grip on the rope? They're selling hippie wigs and Woolworths men. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. And as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black.

34:20 Erin: I was having trouble reconciling Danny's hatred of bald men with his hatred of wigs. But I guess they're one and the same. You gotta just grow your own hair.

34:30 Wes: Yeah. What does he say about it? It's like the. Let's see. I don't advise a haircut man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hair are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald headed men are uptight. It's funny too, because Robinson based this character actually off a hairdresser. His hairdresser. Yeah.

34:53 Erin: When he calls a judge's wig a far out looking hat and when Withnail tells him it's a wig, he's like, no, no, this was more like a long white hat. It's like, yeah, it does look kind of weird.

35:05 Wes: It's a story about the coal man is what he calls him. Yeah. Where he goes to court and he's wearing. He has a fancy get up and then. Yeah, but that. Yeah, that's a good point. Calling the. Yeah. Not realizing that the judge's wig is actually a wig. But yeah, I just also too wanted to say a bit about Danny because in a way he's representative of.

35:28 Erin: He's a real hippie.

35:29 Wes: Yeah. But he's kind of a sage of sorts or a drug guru. The idea that somehow drugs can enlighten you, which I guess is, you know, it's an idea very much associated with the 60s and give you some special sort of wisdom. But of course, in his character he just comes across the way he's delivering his lines, which are just slow and it's obviously high. He's drug addled. But there's also supposed to be something sage about him. And he has a lot of other great lines of his own. Like St. Peter preached the epistles to the apostles looking like that. Referring to Marwood's not having any clothes on. There are various points where he's acting in a sage like manner, like saying he doesn't advise. Right. When he. That quote I just read about not advising a haircut or his theory of bald men. And then the kind of precision that he uses when he talks about drugs. So, for instance, when he gets in this fight, this fight with Withnail, and says, don't get uptight with me, man, because if you do, I'll have to give you a dose of medicine. And if I spike you, you'll know you've been spoken to. If I'd medicine you, you'd think a brain tumor was a birthday present. And then ultimately challenging Withnail to take this drug, which he calls phenodehydrochloride Benzorax, which I looked up and is not real street named him the embalmer. And then later on, Marwood says, give me some Valium, I'm getting the fear. And he says, you've done something to your brain. You've made it high. If I lay 10 mils of diazepam on you, you'll do something else to your brain. You will make it low. Why trust one drug and not the other? That's politics, isn't it? So all these kind of sage sounding. On the one hand, he's so laid back, it's like Daoism. Yeah, he's a slacker. On the other hand, there's this precision. Talks about the law, gives advice, uses technical name for drugs. It's this interesting synthesis, this interesting combination of those two trends. So I thought. I just wanted to point that out about Danny because he's such a great character.

37:50 Erin: He's also emblematic of the boy at the same time that he is a sage, this sort of 60s youth who. I mean, he does have a lot of pretty insightful things to say sometimes, but he keeps himself in a state of suspended animation almost with these. With these drugs. Like, he talks about retiring and going into business, which I really love that, that phrase, which is paradoxical or. Or eboric or something. And Withnail says, I thought you were in the bottle industry. Which is great because there's this idea that he's going to retire from the drug business, which is he's going to put away childish things like being in the bottle industry, which obviously there's this suggestion of. Of the baby bottle inherent in selling. Whatever. Selling prescription drugs out of bottles or selling contraptions to get yourself out of drunk driving charges by keeping pee in a bottle or. Right. Whatever. Whatever it is that he's involved in. And that. That kind of confusion also comes up later when he talks about papers. And he had just been talking about rolling a joint. So he has joint papers. But then he really is talking about the eviction notice. So there's a kind of double Meaning there. But anyway, he says, no, I'm gonna go into the toy. The toy industry. That's the grown up thing he's going

39:07 Wes: to do with a doll that craps itself. Yeah, yeah, great point.

39:11 Erin: The toy idea is really rich. I mean, there is a. There's a lot in the. In the movie about peeing oddly things. Things happen when people pee first. There's this idea, you know, he also has a voodoo some point that its head comes off and it has pills in it. There's this idea of Marwood and Withnail and Dany of only able to. Only being able to deal with things that are smaller than themselves. Right? So when they're going to fight the rat and they get all charged up about fighting the rat, they have this vigor about that because they're about to confront something that's smaller than them rather than repeatedly encountering, as they do, men who are bigger than them who might fight them. So there, there's this sort of, you know, Russian doll quality where you're picking on whatever is smaller than you. And so this interest in dolls and the shrunken down thing seems to be related to powerlessness and needing to deal with something smaller than oneself. Also there's this really interesting sort of gendered quality to this too because he says, like, oh, little girls love these dolls. They can take care of these things. They can clean up after the messes that these dolls make and they even enjoy it, Right.

40:23 Wes: If they like dolls that pee themselves, how much more are they going to like dolls that crap themselves?

40:30 Erin: Right, Right. But also, Marwood and Withnail have made just a disgusting. Just a shithole of their, of their flat. Right? And they are incapable, it seems, of cleaning up after themselves. And the women that are missing from the movie, is it their job to clean up after these men that are like children that can't clean up after themselves? You know, there's. There's something. Is this a message about why women are missing from the film or what. What role women would be playing in their lives if they had women? Or. I don't know, it's.

41:01 Wes: Would their flat be cleaner if they had girlfriends?

41:04 Erin: Yes, of course. Yeah. I mean, and they would be. And not only because the women are cleaning up after them, but because they would have to. They would, yes, clean up for the sake of the women. Right?

41:13 Wes: They would. They would have to.

41:14 Erin: So, yeah, so there's something. He's not thinking about women his own. Even Danny, right, isn't thinking about women his own age. He's thinking about these little Girls and giving them dolls almost in the interest of training them to grow up to clean after people like that, you know what I mean? Like, there's a strange hole at the center of the film where age appropriate women should be. And everything is geared in one to one extreme or the other. Children or elderly people, or people at least like Monty, a generation older than they are. So in other words, Dany is a sage, but he's also just as stunted as Marwood and Withnail in certain ways.

41:53 Wes: Don't get me wrong, Robinson based him on a hairdresser that he thought of as a complete idiot.

41:58 Erin: Yeah. No, I love Danny.

42:01 Wes: I mean, he's such a great character, but even the way he speaks supposedly is. Right. That's Robinson's direction to the actor who plays Danny to emulate that speech. Exactly. And the slowness of it and the accent and everything.

42:15 Erin: Well, he manages a lot of syllables.

42:18 Wes: Yeah. Seems like it became sort of a trope. Right. I've seen this character now many times in movies, Right. The idiot sage drug addict who's somehow precise and knowledgeable and yet drug addled and idiotic at the same time.

42:39 Erin: I was thinking of this even with Monty, his speech about being a boy and on the tandem bike with his little school chum. I was thinking that. Oh, the character of Gil Chesterton, I think is his name in Frasier. The gourmand who has the cooking or the restaurant review show. And he's always talking about romping with his school chums in Surrey or whatever.

43:02 Wes: Oh, that's funny.

43:03 Erin: That character probably was. You know, couldn't exist without Monty.

43:08 Wes: Well, let's talk about Monty for the second half.

43:11 Erin: Sure.

43:12 Wes: For the first part of the second half. And then you. I think we could use him as a segue into this theme that I raised about city, you know, the urban versus the rural and the romance of going into the countryside and the way that doesn't actually pan out for them. So, yeah, we'll talk about in part two. So we've reached the end of part one. patreon.com subtextpodcast or directly on Apple. If not, you can wait a week for part two. All right, thank you.

43:52 Erin: Thank you.