What cameras did you use?
I was using Nikon FM2s with fast F1.4 lenses as a lot of the scenes particularly Monty’s cottage and the Camden Town flat had very low light levels. In the pre-mirrorless camera age I had to use a sound blimp which resembled an oversized lunchbox to muffle the shutter noise during filming. My film choices were limited due to extreme exposures and in the 1980s I had to shoot colour and black & white in order to supply the press with both.
At the time of filming did you have any inkling that it might become the cult classic it is today?
It is almost impossible during production to forecast the success or failure of any film I have worked on and if I could I wouldn’t be hanging around on rainy mountaintops capturing images. However one thing was certain that the script and characters were something I had never encountered before and the tightly knit creative group together with the dedicated cast made me feel like we were making something unique. Whilst this feeling is great for ones creative juices it does not necessarily mean the cinema going public will reach for their wallets.
People have come to associate your photographs so closely with the film that it is easy to mistakenly remember the film in black & white. Is that something you were conscious about at the time?
To this day I think of Withnail as a black and white film and I am always taken aback when I watch it and it turns out to be in muted colour. I shot a lot of black and white photographs on Withnail as I knew the results would be better due to the faster emulsions and the push developing. I shot an equal amount of colour but Kodak Ektachrome in 1980s had a low ISO number and was prone to a contrast build up when push developed. Given my choice I would always choose black and white Withnail versus colour Withnail but then again I would choose black and white over colour any day.
You exhibited your W&I collection at the BFI in 2007. How did this come about, where were the negatives and did you think there would be such interest in your photos when you eventually exhibited them?
Due to the untimely demise of Handmade Films and the regular reselling of their catalogue I became the defacto source for photographic needs in the 1990s when Withnail & I was not available on VHS or DVD and whilst the film remained dear to many of our hearts a new audience was only introduced to it by watching a scratchy VHS cassette tape made in the late 1980s. With the advent of digital photography, photographic labs were closing every week around the world and when the lab I was using in London was closing down, they reminded me that they still held a lot of my original material including the Withnail negatives and asked If I wanted them back. The answer was yes. By 2007 after Criterion Collection had finally released Withnail and I as a DVD attracting brand new audiences I was persuaded that their would be an interest in an exhibition. I was taken aback with the turnout to see the photographs and reunite with Paul, Richard & Bruce.
