Withnail & I (1987)

Richard Griffiths: Monty

Photos 

Quotes 

• Monty : Do you like vegetables? I've always been fond of root crops but I only started to grow last summer. I happen to think the cauliflower more beautiful than the rose. Do you grow?

  Withnail : Geraniums.

  Monty : Oh, you little traitors. I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. There is, you'll agree, a certain 'je ne sais quoi' oh so very special about a firm, young carrot.

• [Withnail and Marwood are lying in bed together, listening to a man coming inside the cottage. Withnail is cowering under the covers] 

  Withnail : [whispering]  He's going into your room. It's you he wants. Offer him yourself.

  [the bedroom door slowly opens and the intruder enters with a torch] 

  Withnail : [screwing his eyes shut in terror, moaning]  We mean no harm!

  Monty : Oh, my boys, my boys, forgive me.

  Marwood : [relieved]  Monty! Monty, Monty!

  Withnail : *Monty, you terrible cunt*!

  Monty : Forgive me, it was inconsiderate of me not to have telegrammed.

  Withnail : *What are you doing prowling around in the middle of the fucking night*?

• Withnail : Monty used to act.

  Monty : Well, I'd hardly say that. It's true, I crept the boards in my youth. But I never really had it in my blood, and that's what's so essential, isn't it, theatrical zeal in the veins. Alas I have little more than vintage wine and memories. 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?

  Withnail : It's a part I intend to play, Uncle.

  Monty : And you'd be marvellous. "It's gone. We do it wrong, being so majestical. To offer it the show of violence..."

  [as Monty continues to recite the line from Hamlet, Marwood gets up and whispers in Withnail's ear] 

  Marwood : Please, let's go. He's a madman. Any minute now he's going to rush out and get into his tights.

• Monty : I adore you. Tell him if you must, I no longer care. I mean to have you even if it must be burglary.

• Monty : [shouting at his cat]  You beastly little parasite, how dare you! You little thug! How dare you! Beastly, ungrateful little swine!

• [Jake has left a dead hare hanging on the cottage door, along with a note] 

  Monty : [reading the note]  "Here. Hare. Here."

• Monty : You shouldn't treat each other so badly. This boy's been out there frozen to the marrow and you just sit in here drinking. Now, come along, he's going to revitalise himself and you're going to finish the vegetables.

  Withnail : I don't know how to do them.

  Monty : Well, of course you don't, you are incapable of indulging in anything but pleasure, am I not right? You don't deserve such loyalty. Now, come along, I'm going to teach you how to peel a potato.

• Monty : The older order changeth, yielding place to new. God fulfils himself in many ways. And soon, I suppose, I shall be swept away by some vulgar little tumour. Oh, my boys, my boys, we're at the end of an age. We live in a land of weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in. Shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labour. And here we are, we three, perhaps the last island of beauty in the world.

• Monty : It's all your fault. You lead him astray.

  Marwood : I beg your pardon, Monty?

  Monty : Oh, don't tell me you're not aware of it, I know what you're up to and so do you.

  Withnail : [offering Monty a glass]  Sherry?

  Monty : Sherry? Oh dear, no, no, no, I'd be sucked into his trap. One of us has got to stay on guard. He's so mauve, we don't know what he's planning.

• Monty : I can never touch meat until it's cooked. As a youth I used to weep in butcher's shops.

• Monty : Come on lads, let's get home. The sky's beginning to bruise, night must fall and we shall be forced to camp.

• Monty : Indeed, I remember my first agent. Raymond Duck. This dreadful little Israelite. Four floors up on the Charing Cross road and never a job at the top of them.

• Monty : I'm preparing myself to forgive you.

• Monty : Laisse-moi, respirer, longtemps, longtemps, l'odeur de tes cheveux. Oh, Baudelaire. Brings back such memories of Oxford. Oh, Oxford...

  Marwood : [voiceover]  Followed by yet another anecdote about his sensitive crimes in a punt with a chap called Norman who had red hair and a book of poetry stained with the butter drips from crumpets.

• [Monty's cat jumps onto the sofa] 

  Monty : Get that damned little swine out of here!

  [he lunges at it and it runs off] 

  Monty : It's trying to get itself in with you, it's trying for even more advantage! It's obsessed with its gut, it's like a bloody rugby ball now! It will die, it will die!

  Withnail : Monty, Monty...

  Monty : No, no, no, dear boy, you must leave, you must leave. Yet again that oaf has destroyed my day!

• Monty : Are you a sponge or a stone?

  Marwood : What do you mean?

  Monty : Do you like to experience all facets of life? Or do you shut yourself off from new experience?

  Marwood : I voted Conservative.

• Monty : [to Marwood]  Where did you school?

  Withnail : He went to the other place, Monty.

  Monty : Oh, you went to Eton?

• Monty : I had to come. I tried not to. Oh, how I tried not to.

  Marwood : Listen, Monty, there's something I have to explain to you.

  Monty : You needn't explain, he's told me everything. He told me that first day you came to Chelsea.

  Marwood : What's he told you?

  Monty : He told me about your arrest in the Tottenham Court Road. He told me about your problems. How you feel. Your desires.

  Marwood : Problems? What problems?

  Monty : You are a toilet trader.

• Monty : There can be no true beauty without decay.

  Withnail : Legium pro Britannia.

  Monty : How right you are, how right you are. We live in a kingdom of reigns, where royalty comes in gangs.

• Monty : You mustn't blame him. You mustn't blame yourself. I know how you feel and how difficult it is. And that's why you mustn't hold back, let it ruin your youth as I nearly did over Eric. It's like a tide. Give in to it, boy. Go with it. It's society's crime, not ours.

  Marwood : I'm not homosexual, Monty.

  Monty : Yes, you are! Of course you are! You're simply blackmailing your emotions to avoid the realities of your relationship with him.

  Marwood : What are you talking about?

  Monty : You love him. And it isn't his fault he cannot love you any more than it's mine that I adore you.

• Monty : Now, which of you is going to be a splendid fellow and go down to the Rolls for the rest of the wine?

  Withnail : [getting up]  I will.

  Marwood : [getting up at the same time]  No, I'd better go. I want to see about digging the car out anyway.

  Monty : But we have my car, dear boy.

  Marwood : Yes, but if it rains, we're buggered.

  [realises he's used the wrong word] 

  Marwood : I mean...

  Monty : Stranded!

• Monty : [noticing the plastic bags that Withnail is wearing over his shoes]  What on Earth are those?

  Withnail : We forgot to bring our Wellingtons.

  Monty : Oh, but how dreadful. Do you mean you've been up here in all this beastly mud and oomska without Wellingtons?

• Monty : [picking up an apron]  I brought two of these in case either of you is any good in the kitchen.

  Marwood : I'm not.

  Monty : Oh, of course you are. Cooking's one of the natural instincts.

• Monty : I'll sleep here. It won't be the first time I've been left with the couch.

• Monty : [amorously puts his hand on Marwood's arm as he peels vegetables]  I think you've been punished enough. I think we'd better release you from the légumes and transfer your talents to the meat.

• Monty : Surrounded by trees and nature one feels a *glorious* stirring on the senses, a rejection of *poisonous* inhibition, and a *fecund* motion of the soul.

• Monty : [entering Marwood's room in the dark]  Boy... boy... I know you're not asleep, boy.