With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant
Film fans alert to the immense charm of the under-known British filmWithnail & Iwill certainly enjoy the droll autobiography of the actor who played Withnail. The film--" bittersweet, sweet and sour, like King Curtis' definitive sax version of `A Whiter Shade of Pale,'" says its writer-director--tells the story of poverty-stricken drama school refugees in mid-1960s England. Of the film's script, Grant says "never before or since have I read something that conveys what goes on in my head so accurately." The image of the brusque, hilariously overbearing Withnail fits Grant, who has also appeared inBram Stoker's Dracula,The Age of Innocence, and the Robert Altman filmsThe PlayerandPret-a-Porter. He writes of his passage through the world of the aspiring film stardom wonderfully well, producing a book far superior to the usual movie life story. "Oh up and down and forklifts, this is a dull madness," he says of the process of landing a role, but his book wittily presenting the madness is never dull.Mike Tribby--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.