Withnail and Us

Ralph Brown:
There isn't a crap bit in it. There isn't a bad moment.

Ralph Brown:
[after describing the film's story] It's a lesson to all filmmakers everywhere that you don't need a good plot.

Bruce Robinson:
The reason he's called Withnail is because when I was a little boy I knew this bloke called Jonathan Withnail - N-A-L-L. Cos I can't spell, I called him "nail". And he backed his Aston Martin into a police car coming out of a pub car park, and he was like the coolest guy I'd ever met in my life so consequently that name stayed in my head.

Richard E. Grant:
Bruce Robinson described this character as a lying, mendacious, cowardly, prancing, posing, utterly charming old darling. So, uh... [laughs] you go home with that and think - uh, well, you know, how do I fit all that into saying one line?

Bruce Robinson:
[describing his old friend Vivian MacKerrell who was the main basis for Withnail] He had this pomposity of the thespian. He was a very smart guy, very bright, but he was sad too because he was a jack of all and master of none. He always used to say to me "If I wrote I'd write a f***'s sight better than you ever would" or "If I painted I'd paint a f***'s sight better than you ever would" or "If I was a photographer I'd be a better photographer than Bailey." But the fact is he never did anything, all he ever did was booze. And rant.

Richard E. Grant:
[discussing the cult status of the film] I was in a tiny village in the south of France some years ago and a car drove past and people shouted out "SCRUBBERS!" So I knew that... I had to explain to the people that I was with that this hopefully wasn't a term of abuse.

Joe Cornish:
[during a section of the documentary about everyone's favourite quotes from the film] Well, the key line in the whole movie is the one line that you can't say on television, which is "Monty, you terrible c-*beep*!"

Adam Buxton:
You can't say that!

Joe Cornish:
But you can't say it.

[cuts to Bruce Robinson being interviewed]

Bruce Robinson:
Every now and then someone comes up to me and says "You terrible c-*beep*." And you think they're aggressing you, you don't know whether they're being a fan or whether they think you're a terrible c-*beep*. And normally it's both, isn't it?

[he laughs]

Bruce Robinson:
[talking about the casting process] And then fatty Grant who came in with his great jowls drooping... I had to get him on a diet to make him work in the part because he looked like a sort of fat Dirk Bogarde.

[cuts to Richard E. Grant being interviewed]

Richard E. Grant:
[laughs] I've got pictures to prove it, I've never been fat. But, you know, I think that's part of the auteur self-worship that directors indulge themselves in, that, you know, "I have taken this person who weighed 27 stone and then reduced them to this, and then pulled this performance out of them". Well, bollocks to that.

[after the story of executive producer Denis O'Brien wanting to shut the production down because he thought it wasn't funny is told]

Richard E. Grant:
So, um, the stupid f***er got it all wrong, didn't he?