onionbagblog
Withnail and Me
A rarity then to find myself on the mean streets of NW1 on a Sunday morning with ten hours sleep already clocked up in reserve. Following an eventful bicycle ride up to North London involving yet more Moulton love and an offer to buy further into my growing Moulton empire, the fragrant mrs onionbagblogger and I were on the trail of everyone's favourite anti-hero, Withnail.
Aye.
Withnail and Me is an exhibition at the Camden Proud Gallery, showcasing the work of Murray Close, a photographer who had a licence to roam all around the set for the 1986 seminal film.
Our Camden days may have been long lost to the grind of meeting mortgage re-payments, but our love of all things Withnail remains. The DVD gets a showing around these parts whenever we get a new delivery for the wine cellar. Which is roughly about once a month.
The basic geographical plot of >london >penrith >london is an all too familiar journey for mrs obb and I. It's a road trip we're making again at the end of month, and one which will no doubt include many drunken moments in Lakeside pubs demanding the finest wines known to humanity.
It's fitting that the photography for the film is being exhibited up in Camden, the spiritual home for Withnail. Camberwell must have come a close second, and it would certainly have been a location better suited for our Sunday morning cycling.
Camden market hasn't changed a lot in the past ten years. It's still Glasto comes to the city, selling the same old tat to the same old washed out faces. This was our first visit to the Proud Gallery in its current form. We were regulars in the old stables, now spruced up to host mini bars in each paddock. I'd rather do my drinking in somewhere more civilised than an old horse stable though.
The exhibition itself was wonderful for any Withnail enthusiasts. Unlike most other cult films that go mainstream, Withnail remains unique in that there hasn't been an entire industry springing up themed around the film.
Sure, there's the video and now DVD, but even this is strangely void of any of the usual extras twaddle. The simple reason is that the film was shot on such a tight timeframe and budget, what you see is more or less all that is available. Which is why the rare behind the scenes photographs of Murray Close are to be treasured.
mrs obb wanted to treasure these slightly more than I did, flashing around her credit card for a £279 signed print. Think of all the finest wine known to humanity that such a sum could buy us back at base, as I reminded her in a last bid to try and talk her out of such excessiveness. But Withnail doesn't do things in half measure, and neither does mrs obb.
'I must say, that represents a level of hypocrisy in you that I'd previously suspected, but not noticed due to highly evasive skills,' commented mrs obb, as we departed Camden with a rather expensive Withnail print and an even more expensive plan hatched to move on to stage II in my Moulton buying master plan.
I'll drink to that.
Chin chin.
All images copyright Murray Close.
reply via twitter
| Sunday 3 May, 2009 |
A rarity then to find myself on the mean streets of NW1 on a Sunday morning with ten hours sleep already clocked up in reserve. Following an eventful bicycle ride up to North London involving yet more Moulton love and an offer to buy further into my growing Moulton empire, the fragrant mrs onionbagblogger and I were on the trail of everyone's favourite anti-hero, Withnail.
Aye.
Withnail and Me is an exhibition at the Camden Proud Gallery, showcasing the work of Murray Close, a photographer who had a licence to roam all around the set for the 1986 seminal film.
Our Camden days may have been long lost to the grind of meeting mortgage re-payments, but our love of all things Withnail remains. The DVD gets a showing around these parts whenever we get a new delivery for the wine cellar. Which is roughly about once a month.
The basic geographical plot of >london >penrith >london is an all too familiar journey for mrs obb and I. It's a road trip we're making again at the end of month, and one which will no doubt include many drunken moments in Lakeside pubs demanding the finest wines known to humanity.
It's fitting that the photography for the film is being exhibited up in Camden, the spiritual home for Withnail. Camberwell must have come a close second, and it would certainly have been a location better suited for our Sunday morning cycling.
Camden market hasn't changed a lot in the past ten years. It's still Glasto comes to the city, selling the same old tat to the same old washed out faces. This was our first visit to the Proud Gallery in its current form. We were regulars in the old stables, now spruced up to host mini bars in each paddock. I'd rather do my drinking in somewhere more civilised than an old horse stable though.
The exhibition itself was wonderful for any Withnail enthusiasts. Unlike most other cult films that go mainstream, Withnail remains unique in that there hasn't been an entire industry springing up themed around the film.
Sure, there's the video and now DVD, but even this is strangely void of any of the usual extras twaddle. The simple reason is that the film was shot on such a tight timeframe and budget, what you see is more or less all that is available. Which is why the rare behind the scenes photographs of Murray Close are to be treasured.
mrs obb wanted to treasure these slightly more than I did, flashing around her credit card for a £279 signed print. Think of all the finest wine known to humanity that such a sum could buy us back at base, as I reminded her in a last bid to try and talk her out of such excessiveness. But Withnail doesn't do things in half measure, and neither does mrs obb.
'I must say, that represents a level of hypocrisy in you that I'd previously suspected, but not noticed due to highly evasive skills,' commented mrs obb, as we departed Camden with a rather expensive Withnail print and an even more expensive plan hatched to move on to stage II in my Moulton buying master plan.
I'll drink to that.
Chin chin.
All images copyright Murray Close.
reply via twitter
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