Did you Know? ‘Unfilmable’ Books Become Cult Classic Films

It may seem obvious but books and films are two very different beasts. What works in the sedentary world of reading, along with your imagination could not be more different to a medium, that delivers short, visuals that dictate the visual to a captive audience. Yet many films start as books, and some of the most extreme of them would never have been expected to make it to celluloid yet they did. Whereas others started to go through the processor being made into a film but never made the full journey. Even some books made it to film yet never got printed to begin with. Find out. more in Did you Know? Unfilmable Books Become Cult Classics Films

Books and the idea of reaching and sharing information have been around for thousands of years. Before we had images created for us, books allowed us to utilise our imaginations. Photography films and TV brought a new dimension to fiction or non-fiction storytelling. Images ended up most of the time being far wilder than most of our imaginations could muster. But interestingly it has been fiction and non-fiction writing that has been the source for so many films over the years.

Some of these books have been so extreme or unusual that you would never imagine they could be made into films. Yet they were.

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.” 

Stanley Kubrick

Sadly some great books never get turned into films, they start on the journey of being turned into a film and even get taken part the way but end up as unrealized productions. Perhaps some adaptations are not so much ‘unfilmable’ but defy conventions and so become a challenging starting point for any production.

Against the Grain, the French director Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière completed an adaptation of the infamous novel by Huysman but Buñuel concluded in the end that the project would be “too difficult.”

A Confederacy of Dunces, in the 1980s the alternative filmmaker John Waters, created an adaptation of the novel by John Kennedy Toole about a corpulent, flatulent, overweight and unemployed thirty-year-old with a degree in Medieval history. The main role was even considered for John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley, all of whom died before anything could be realized. Waters wanted the part for Divine before his death.

Then there are the books that filmmakers are willing to take risks making the films their own. Books that on the surface can’t be seen as easily adaptable from one genre into another, need brave directors.

Think of say A Clockwork Orange Stanley Kubrick’s notorious rendition of Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel, where the spoken words in the book named Nadsat, didn’t even exist as a language in UK, let alone a futuristic society.

A malevolent and morally ambiguous central character, Alex and his Droogs (friends) are impulsive sociopaths. The film follows their diabolical viscous antisocial behaviour. Yet the filmmaker, at the time never shielded away or skirted around anything deemed at that point in polite society as ‘problematic’. The book? A hard read, and harder film to watch but worth it. It is interesting and shocking to know the film was commercially successful.

Did you Know? Unfilmable bookscan can become cult classic films, there are the lesser-known little secrets within the film world. Some books that made it to the world of cinema never were actually published. Take the British black comedy cult classic Withnail and I from 1987. A little irony about this is the words from the film are often quoted yet the book the film was based on never made it to commercial print and was almost lost.

So the story goes. The film is an adaptation of an unpublished novel written by Bruce Robinson in 1969–1970 An Actor friend of his, passed a copy of the manuscript to his friend Mordecai (Mody) Schreiber, who started a film production company and paid Robinson £20,000 to adapt it into a screenplay in 1980.

Robinson, when meeting Schreiber in Los Angeles, expressed concern that he might not be able to continue because the writing broke basic screenplay rules and was hard to make work as a film.

For example, it used colloquial English to which few Americans would connect like

“Give me a tanner (a sixpence) and I’ll give him a bell (call).”

With downtrodden miserable characters in dismal circumstances and a rain-washed UK it didn’t seem to Robinson that the visuals let alone the language would go down well in the USA.

Yet Schreiber told him that that was precisely what he wanted and producer Paul Heller urged Robinson to direct it and found funding for half the film. George Harrison’s Handmade films funded the rest and so the most unexpected unpublished novel became a cult classic.

The original book that became the script was actually loosely based on Robinson’s own life. Whilst struggling as an actor he lived in Camden in London in a run-down house in the late 1960s, with musician David Dundas and actor Michael Feast, and another actor Vivian MacKerrell.

The main character, Withnail was based on MacKerrell portrayed by actor Richard E. Grant whilst the I was Robinson portrayed by actor Paul McGann. Robinson stated he named the character of Withnail after a childhood acquaintance named Jonathan Withnall, who was “the coolest guy I had ever met in my life”

In need of a break from their down-and-out life in London, and to get away from their drug dealer they obtain the key to a country cottage in the Lake District belonging to Withnail’s eccentric uncle Monty and drive there. The weekend holiday proves less recuperative than they expected and the holiday home is even more rundown than their London digs.

The film became career-defining for Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths and Ralph Brown. Slick tragedy/comical dialogue drives the film but the characters, larger than life, make it most remarkable.

Also, notable for its period music and many quotable lines. It has been described as “one of Britain’s ever biggest cult films”

Excitingly for a new generation and those that enjoyed it the first time there is a Brand new 4K restoration from the original negative by Arrow Films, supervised and approved by director of photography Peter Hannan.

4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) with an original lossless mono soundtrack and optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. Added is an archival interview with Bruce Robinson.

Alongside Audio commentary by writer-director Bruce Robinson as well as audio commentary by critic and writer Kevin Jackson, author of the BFI Modern Classic on Withnail & I.

All four original Withnail Weekend documentaries, first screened on Channel 4 in 1999, including The Peculiar Memories of Bruce Robinson, which looks at the director’s career, Withnail & Us, which focuses on the film’s making, and two shorter documentaries, I Demand to Have Some Booze and Withnail on the Pier.

A Limited edition packaging with a reversible sleeve featuring two choices of original artwork and a limited edition perfect-bound book featuring writing on the film by Vic Pratt, Anthony Nield, Martin Jones, Neil Mitchell and Mike Sutton

Nothing quite beats a great time spent with genius films, especially those that shouldn’t ever have been made, because these often turn out to be the best ones.

Buy the new 4K version here at www.arrowfilms.com/withnail-and-i
RRP: £34.99
Director: Bruce Robinson
Cast: Paul McGann, Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths
Language: English
Subtitles: English SDH
Rating: 15

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