The movie Anthony Bourdain calls “the funniest goddamn film ever made”
After establishing himself as one of the most promising young cooks on the culinary circuit, Anthony Bourdain moved into the realm of entertainment and then transcended what it meant to be a celebrity chef. After the release of his Kitchen Confidential book in 2000, Bourdain became so much more than a man in a kitchen with a knife and chopping board.
In fact, he practically ascended into the status of a cultural rockstar, especially with his television shows, in which he not only sampled local cuisine and culture but also reflected on the nature of the human condition. In that light, Bourdain was something of a cinematic force in his own right, persistently reinventing the rulebook along the way.
During a feature with Criterion, Bourdain once named his favourite films of all time, giving a varied selection with the likes of David Mamet, Jean-Pierre Melville, Nagisa Oshima and Wong Kar-wai all making an appearance, but there’s also a mention of a classic British film that the chef hero finds more hilarious than any other he’s seen.
He said of Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I, “One of the funniest goddamn films ever made—with an amazing performance by the brilliant Richard E. Grant.” The black comedy film, widely considered one of the funniest British movies ever, arrived in 1987, written by Robinson based loosely on aspects of his own life in London in the late 1960s.
It focuses on two out-of-work actors, Withnail and ‘I’ (played respectively by Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann), who live in Camden at the end of the 1960s. Depressed from life in the city, they decide to treat themselves to a holiday but can only afford the petrol to get to the Lake District, where Withnail’s strange uncle Monty owns a cottage.
However, their trip is more eventful than they had first anticipated and sees the pair realise that they are not made out for country life. When Uncle Monty shows up and makes sexual advances on Marwood (the actual name of ‘I’, which is mentioned in the script, but not the film), things at the cottage get even more tense, and the result is a film filled with hilarity.
Withnail and I is endlessly quotable, and it’s certainly one of Anthony Bourdain’s favourite movies. Though he loves the tender romance of Chungking Express, the strange horror of Eyes Without a Face and the politics of The Battle of Algiers, it’s Robinson’s film, which was also Richard E. Grant’s first movie appearance, that makes the culinary icon laugh the most.
