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Smoking in Bed: Conversations With Bruce Robinson
From Withnail and I to Thomas Penman, the inimitable, outrageous and unforgettable writer and director in conversation...
'I've sometimes thought in the dead of night, "Look at your life, Bruce, rip out the writing, and with all these boiling frustrations and opinions what would you be?" I'd be in trouble, wouldn't I? Or I'd be in jail...'
Hard-talking, boisterous, frank and forthright, Bruce Robinson reveals to Alistair Owen the truth about his work and life in a series of exclusive interviews. Talking candidly about his entire career; his acting, writing and directing, and the many tussles he has faced with Hollywood moguls, this is Bruce Robinson as you've never seen or heard him before.
'The most purely likeable book about cinema I have ever read. Robinson talks about his profession in a way that is astonishingly clear-headed, funny and wise' David Hare, Guardian, Books of the Year
'I've sometimes thought in the dead of night, "Look at your life, Bruce, rip out the writing, and with all these boiling frustrations and opinions what would you be?" I'd be in trouble, wouldn't I? Or I'd be in jail...'
Hard-talking, boisterous, frank and forthright, Bruce Robinson reveals to Alistair Owen the truth about his work and life in a series of exclusive interviews. Talking candidly about his entire career; his acting, writing and directing, and the many tussles he has faced with Hollywood moguls, this is Bruce Robinson as you've never seen or heard him before.
'The most purely likeable book about cinema I have ever read. Robinson talks about his profession in a way that is astonishingly clear-headed, funny and wise' David Hare, Guardian, Books of the Year
288 pages, Paperback
First published November 20, 2000
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108 people want to read
About the author
Alistair Owen
6 books3 followersALISTAIR OWEN is the author of five acclaimed books of interviews with British writers, including two Guardian and Observer books of the year. He has written screenplays, stage plays and arts journalism, and chaired writer Q&As at events, festivals and online. His first novel, The Vetting Officer, is available on Kindle and in paperback.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
December 20, 2015
This isn't the review that used to be here, liked by seven people and commented on by two. I removed that quite a while ago, because rawness or something, but now the easiest way to sum up the way I feel about this book comes from Minna Needs Rehearsal Space by Danish author Dorthe Nors (which, in fairness, most visitors to this page won't have read. My long review of the collection it's in is here). For months this book was to me what Bergman's Images is to Minna, except with extra crushiness, because well, obviously. It's still one of the few books I won't part with after many rounds of clearing out.
May 8, 2014
An excellent book of beautifully constructed and compiled interviews with sometime actor, screenwriter, film director and novelist Bruce Robinson. It is also a very honest and revealing account of just how difficult it is to research and pitch that 'great idea' for a film, and how little of a successful film's glory is attributed to the writer. Robinson goes into fascinating detail about his work on The Killing Fields; his forensic and scholarly research into the atomic bomb, which demolished the myth that the Nazis were on the cusp of creating one during the Second World War. Robinson's most widely known and acclaimed work is the hilarious comedy about two struggling actors in London at the end of the 1960s, 'Withnail and I'. We learn a great deal about the inspiration for Withnail and the joys and difficulties of making this film. There are also some quite touching accounts of his troubled childhood and his early life as an actor. A great book that sheds much insight into the tough world of the film industry that shatters the many illusions of the cynics or the fainthearted, who might think it to be a life of ease or great luxury. Brilliant book!
October 12, 2013
Free-wheeling, sometimes vitriolic, reminiscences and opinions from the writer of The Killing Fields and Withnail and I (which he also directed). In fact he started off as an actor, one of his first roles being one of Ava Gardner's lovers in Tam-Lin. He recalls thinking, after a pre-shoot drinking session with her "'This is the key to brilliant acting. A couple of vodkas and you can play Hamlet.' Wrong."
There are some wonderfully acerbic memories - "I was at some crummy party somewhere, and here's my agent talking, and he says, 'So what do you do?' I said, 'You're my agent!'" - and some useful lessons. He wrote a children's film for David Puttnam which ended with the protagonist parading down a wartime street with three elephants. "Puttnam said, 'I love it. But fuck me, can't we have just _one_ elephant?'"
With reference to How to Get Ahead in Advertising: "Sophie says the first time I took her out to dinner I made an hour and a half speech about Margaret Thatcher. That was our first date. She told me that after twenty minutes she just cut off and started nodding. And that's what became of the film: most of the audience just cut off and nodded." Ostensibly, he's come to the view that film can do nothing but entertain, asking rhetorically what film has ever changed anything. Elsewhere he answers what's perhaps a better question, talking about his film Fat Man and Little Boy, when he says, in relation to Nazi Germany getting close to an atomic bomb, that "One hasn't really busted the myth around this thing at all", ie this is a more realistic and feasible aim for filmmakers (embraced explicitly by Oliver Stone for example). Although functionally he seems to have become a member of the rural squirearchy, with daughter fox hunting and complaining that "To fill our Range Rover is forty quid, and thirty-six of that is tax" (albeit in the course of arguing that more of the North Sea oil revenue should've stayed in the public purse).
There are some wonderfully acerbic memories - "I was at some crummy party somewhere, and here's my agent talking, and he says, 'So what do you do?' I said, 'You're my agent!'" - and some useful lessons. He wrote a children's film for David Puttnam which ended with the protagonist parading down a wartime street with three elephants. "Puttnam said, 'I love it. But fuck me, can't we have just _one_ elephant?'"
With reference to How to Get Ahead in Advertising: "Sophie says the first time I took her out to dinner I made an hour and a half speech about Margaret Thatcher. That was our first date. She told me that after twenty minutes she just cut off and started nodding. And that's what became of the film: most of the audience just cut off and nodded." Ostensibly, he's come to the view that film can do nothing but entertain, asking rhetorically what film has ever changed anything. Elsewhere he answers what's perhaps a better question, talking about his film Fat Man and Little Boy, when he says, in relation to Nazi Germany getting close to an atomic bomb, that "One hasn't really busted the myth around this thing at all", ie this is a more realistic and feasible aim for filmmakers (embraced explicitly by Oliver Stone for example). Although functionally he seems to have become a member of the rural squirearchy, with daughter fox hunting and complaining that "To fill our Range Rover is forty quid, and thirty-six of that is tax" (albeit in the course of arguing that more of the North Sea oil revenue should've stayed in the public purse).
February 9, 2017
An amazing overview of a brilliant career that has been characterized by failure: to this point, Robinson had directed three movies, one of which was a masterpiece (Withnail & I), one a decent film (How To Get Ahead In Advertising), and one that was eviscerated by the Hollywood studio (Jennifer 8). He had an equally spotty record with his screenplays (my friend Bald Richard, aka Joe Ruben, directed one of them, Return To Paradise). He has had one novel published, The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman, which was both painfully autobiographical and pretty funny.
I would appreciate a coda to this book, in which Robinson and Owen discuss The Rum Diaries, which Robinson wrote and which he directed after Benicio Del Toro quit the project.
I would appreciate a coda to this book, in which Robinson and Owen discuss The Rum Diaries, which Robinson wrote and which he directed after Benicio Del Toro quit the project.
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February 13, 2022It's a wonderful format, this – a series of chats, combining a sort of skeletal (auto)biography with behind-the-scenes thinking on the too-few films and books Robinson had put out at the time. It'd be lovely if there were one of these for everyone interesting – not even just famous and interesting, but anyone with the stories to make it worthwhile. Anyone with more than a passing interest in Robinson probably knows the outline of the life – an unhappy childhood which formed the basis for his novel, Thomas Penman; a spell as the beautiful boy actor, "always the bum-boy round the back"*, before a less successful spell when he kept getting thrown out of auditions after pointing out the problems with the script, subsequently immortalised as Withnail & I; then into screenwriting and occasional directing. But there are so many fabulous little details here! Hell, only from the intro did I learn that Robinson has a son called Willoughby - the same name as the Withnail/John Constantine knock-off in Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, which I can't imagine Robinson has ever read, but of course that detail would filter through anyway, just like Robinson's script for The Killing Fields invented details which one of the guys on whom the film was based subsequently thought were real. I've heard plenty of Withnail stories, but never the one where Richard E Grant, dressed as Withnail, was yelling, re: Paul McGann, "I'm not working with that drunken fuck!" Though admittedly I'm still no nearer to understanding why the novel from which the screenplay was adapted has never been published – surely that would be a tidy payday for very little work? There are the various abandoned projects, from the hilariously terrible thriller pitch Colour Blind to an adaptation of High Rise which sounds considerably less faithful than Wheatley's, but then maybe wouldn't have so comprehensively fucked the ending. Also, of course, the projects which did happen, but which were to a greater or lesser extent buggered up. The Manhattan Project script, discussing which brings out Robinson's more wild-eyed, strings on the wall side, offering a precursor of sorts to his recent swerve into Ripperology; the regrets over How To Get Ahead In Advertising; the even more thorough regrets over Jennifer Eight. And as for In Dreams... Obviously it would have been lovely if he'd actually been able to put out more stuff with which he was happy. But in the absence of that, at least we have this.
*I can't hold the choice of words against him when one of Robinson's first film experiences was being pursued by Zeffireli, in many respects the inspiration for Uncle Monty – the sponge/stone line was apparently verbatim - though by the sound of it not half so magnanimous in how he took refusal. But it may be worth noting more generally that, while Robinson's sympathies are generally with the oppressed, the language he uses to express that can be a bit old-fashioned even by the standards of when the book came out, let alone now. Not that I imagine he'd give a fuck if anyone tried to cancel him, but if that's going to be a problem then you'll be reading a lot of this from behind your hands.
*I can't hold the choice of words against him when one of Robinson's first film experiences was being pursued by Zeffireli, in many respects the inspiration for Uncle Monty – the sponge/stone line was apparently verbatim - though by the sound of it not half so magnanimous in how he took refusal. But it may be worth noting more generally that, while Robinson's sympathies are generally with the oppressed, the language he uses to express that can be a bit old-fashioned even by the standards of when the book came out, let alone now. Not that I imagine he'd give a fuck if anyone tried to cancel him, but if that's going to be a problem then you'll be reading a lot of this from behind your hands.
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January 9, 2011“There’s a guy who wants to do a biography of me, and I can’t think of anything worse than raking through all those miserable years and having them in print, even if it’s done right.” – Bruce Robinson – director, writer, and actor
Q: How many studio executives does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Does it have to be a lightbulb?
- Popular Hollywood cliché that Robinson described as a truthful cliché
As editor Alistair Owen writes in the Smoking In Bed introduction, “This is not a biography. It is an edited transcript of roughly thirty hours of interviews, complete with the inevitable omissions, repetitions, contradictions and highly subjective opinions . . . .” Bruce Robinson covers the ups and downs of his career as a writer, director, and actor. He started his film career as an actor, portraying Benvolio in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. We follow Robinson’s trajectory from actor to writer (he wrote The Killing Fields, for example) to writer/director (he wrote and directed Withnail & I, which would become a modern) to the 1992 disaster that was Jennifer 8 (Robinson’s last directing credit, at least until the long-delayed adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary gets released, hopefully this year). In the years that followed Jennifer 8, Robinson wrote some scripts for money, wrote a biographical novel (The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman), co-authored a children’s book with his wife Sophie Windham, and smoked, drank and read a lot. And it is all very entertaining as relayed in the conversations between Robinson and Owen. Writers will find the book especially entertaining, as Robinson spends a lot of the book discussing the writing process and his wrangling with not only the studios, producers, actors, and directors but also himself. Below you will find some highlights from Smoking in Bed that focus on one of my Netflix Instant selections: Withnail & I.
"When [David] Puttnam asked me to do The Killing Fields the studio did not want an unknown, untried writer on a big project like that. They didn’t want me. They wanted William Goldman, or somebody. I shall be eternally grateful to Puttnam for holding out for me and saying, “No, I think this bloke can do it.” But had he not, had he acquiesced to the studio, I may never have had anything done even now . . . Without The Killing Fields, naturally I’d never have got a shot at Withnail." (pg 30-31)
"The two most potent characters that I’ve ever heard as a writer, one was Withnail – he was just going in my head like Tchaikovsky: “Take this music out of my brain” – and one was Robert Oppenheimer, talking all day at me. And Groves. I could hear him clear as day." (pg 92 – Oppenheimer and General Groves were the main characters of the Robinson scripted Fat Man and Little Boy)
"They [Robinson's roommates] filtered away through 1968 and into 1969, until there was just Viv and I left, which was the genesis of Withnail, this intense two years that he and I spent together." (pg 99)
"Withnail is basically me and Viv, an amalgamation of the two, but I didn’t sit there with a tape recorder and a notepad writing down what Viv said. I just took his acidity, his pompous cowardice, and his very pungent sense of humor, and wrote the character." (pg 104)
"So if my memory is right and the book was written in the winter of 1969/70 – and I’ve got to think that’s right – it was seventeen years later that it got made into a film. That’s what’s so bizarre about it: it’s thirty-one years old and it’s still playing. By accident rather than design it has a timeless quality that all writers love to have built into their work." (pg 107)
"When you’re directing a film you’ve got 75 to 150 people standing around you . . . As a writer you’re totally on your own. There’s you, the ashtray and a piece of paper." (pg 115)
"What is the point of Withnail? It’s not a political film, it’s a film to get people laughing for a hundred-plus minutes. That’s all I care about." (pg 123)
"Withnail and Penman are the only things I feel I’ve totally controlled as an artist, and I’m happy with those because they’re mine. I really believe that’s my stuff." (pg 228)
And a Hunter S. Thompson-esque preview in anticipation of The Rum Diary…
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I liked very much when I first read it. It’s very dated now. Withnail does have elements of Fear and Loathing; it’s not dissimilar. Two blokes taking off to go somewhere and then coming back. That’s the plot of his book and that’s the plot of mine." (pg 132)
Q: How many studio executives does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Does it have to be a lightbulb?
- Popular Hollywood cliché that Robinson described as a truthful cliché
As editor Alistair Owen writes in the Smoking In Bed introduction, “This is not a biography. It is an edited transcript of roughly thirty hours of interviews, complete with the inevitable omissions, repetitions, contradictions and highly subjective opinions . . . .” Bruce Robinson covers the ups and downs of his career as a writer, director, and actor. He started his film career as an actor, portraying Benvolio in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. We follow Robinson’s trajectory from actor to writer (he wrote The Killing Fields, for example) to writer/director (he wrote and directed Withnail & I, which would become a modern) to the 1992 disaster that was Jennifer 8 (Robinson’s last directing credit, at least until the long-delayed adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary gets released, hopefully this year). In the years that followed Jennifer 8, Robinson wrote some scripts for money, wrote a biographical novel (The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman), co-authored a children’s book with his wife Sophie Windham, and smoked, drank and read a lot. And it is all very entertaining as relayed in the conversations between Robinson and Owen. Writers will find the book especially entertaining, as Robinson spends a lot of the book discussing the writing process and his wrangling with not only the studios, producers, actors, and directors but also himself. Below you will find some highlights from Smoking in Bed that focus on one of my Netflix Instant selections: Withnail & I.
"When [David] Puttnam asked me to do The Killing Fields the studio did not want an unknown, untried writer on a big project like that. They didn’t want me. They wanted William Goldman, or somebody. I shall be eternally grateful to Puttnam for holding out for me and saying, “No, I think this bloke can do it.” But had he not, had he acquiesced to the studio, I may never have had anything done even now . . . Without The Killing Fields, naturally I’d never have got a shot at Withnail." (pg 30-31)
"The two most potent characters that I’ve ever heard as a writer, one was Withnail – he was just going in my head like Tchaikovsky: “Take this music out of my brain” – and one was Robert Oppenheimer, talking all day at me. And Groves. I could hear him clear as day." (pg 92 – Oppenheimer and General Groves were the main characters of the Robinson scripted Fat Man and Little Boy)
"They [Robinson's roommates] filtered away through 1968 and into 1969, until there was just Viv and I left, which was the genesis of Withnail, this intense two years that he and I spent together." (pg 99)
"Withnail is basically me and Viv, an amalgamation of the two, but I didn’t sit there with a tape recorder and a notepad writing down what Viv said. I just took his acidity, his pompous cowardice, and his very pungent sense of humor, and wrote the character." (pg 104)
"So if my memory is right and the book was written in the winter of 1969/70 – and I’ve got to think that’s right – it was seventeen years later that it got made into a film. That’s what’s so bizarre about it: it’s thirty-one years old and it’s still playing. By accident rather than design it has a timeless quality that all writers love to have built into their work." (pg 107)
"When you’re directing a film you’ve got 75 to 150 people standing around you . . . As a writer you’re totally on your own. There’s you, the ashtray and a piece of paper." (pg 115)
"What is the point of Withnail? It’s not a political film, it’s a film to get people laughing for a hundred-plus minutes. That’s all I care about." (pg 123)
"Withnail and Penman are the only things I feel I’ve totally controlled as an artist, and I’m happy with those because they’re mine. I really believe that’s my stuff." (pg 228)
And a Hunter S. Thompson-esque preview in anticipation of The Rum Diary…
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I liked very much when I first read it. It’s very dated now. Withnail does have elements of Fear and Loathing; it’s not dissimilar. Two blokes taking off to go somewhere and then coming back. That’s the plot of his book and that’s the plot of mine." (pg 132)
February 5, 2012
I picked up this book about five years ago following the Creative Screenwriting magazine (R.I.P.) Screenwriting Expo in Los Angeles, autumn 2006. It was recommended by screenwriter Shane Salerno ("Armageddon", "Shaft" w/Samuel L. Jackson) in his keynote speech on the first day of the Expo, along with a number of other books. [Of his recommendations, I'd stick with the "Backstory" series, which collects interviews with screenwriters throughout the decade.]
As fate would have it, I watched Bruce Robinson's "Withnail & I" about a week before I opened this book, not knowing that the subject of the book was the writer/director of "Withnail", so the movie was very fresh in my head when I read Smoking in Bed. I'd hoped that the book would provide greater insight into the craft of screenwriting (at least from Robinson's perspective), but it wasn't as educational as I'd hoped. The one thing Robinson says repeatedly is that you have to work at it, which comes as no surprise (the 10,000 hour rule, which anyone familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers will recognize).
Still, Robinson is a gifted storyteller and somewhat compelling, even for someone unfamiliar with most of his film output. If you've seen "The Killing Fields," "Fat Man & Little Boy", "Jennifer 8", and/or "How to Get Ahead in Advertising," you might get more from this book than I did. As I was only familiar with "Withnail & I", it didn't engage me as much.
As fate would have it, I watched Bruce Robinson's "Withnail & I" about a week before I opened this book, not knowing that the subject of the book was the writer/director of "Withnail", so the movie was very fresh in my head when I read Smoking in Bed. I'd hoped that the book would provide greater insight into the craft of screenwriting (at least from Robinson's perspective), but it wasn't as educational as I'd hoped. The one thing Robinson says repeatedly is that you have to work at it, which comes as no surprise (the 10,000 hour rule, which anyone familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers will recognize).
Still, Robinson is a gifted storyteller and somewhat compelling, even for someone unfamiliar with most of his film output. If you've seen "The Killing Fields," "Fat Man & Little Boy", "Jennifer 8", and/or "How to Get Ahead in Advertising," you might get more from this book than I did. As I was only familiar with "Withnail & I", it didn't engage me as much.
May 15, 2018
A comprehensive and wide-ranging series of interviews with a film industry veteran. Both amusingly and sometimes uncomfortably frank. Perhaps a bit too much navel gazing from Robinson whenever the talk veers away from his film work, but nevertheless a fascinating look at the inner workings of the movie biz, as well as the subject's writing process. Good stuff, overall.
January 9, 2012
A lively book-length conversation with the creator of Withnail and I, The Killing Fields, and a bunch of other films not as good as Withnail and I and The Killing Fields. Exhibit A in both why we need him to make more movies and why it's probably better that he doesn't make more movies.
January 15, 2011
"Cooking and masturbation are the only things I'm really good at."
Well, he's one up on me.
Well, he's one up on me.
April 27, 2011
Bruce Robinson is so smart and funny! He has so many great things to say, so I'm totally glad this book was thought of and subsequently published.
August 11, 2013
A great insight into the mind of a brilliant writer, director and wit
May 18, 2024
Having laughed my way through his movie Withnail and I and his novel The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman, I was looking forward to reading this interview with Bruce Robinson, and it didn’t disappoint. He gives fascinating insights into his early life, his writing process and his embattled relationship with Hollywood, all told with his trademark dark humour. Highly recommended for fans of his work.
February 2, 2024
Probably best known as the writer/director of English cult comedy classic movie “Withnail & I”, Bruce Robinson was also the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of “The Killing Fields”, but spent his early years as an actor in the 1960s and 70s for directors as distinguished as Franco Zeffirelli, Ken Russell and Francois Truffaut amongst others.
As the book’s subtitle suggests, this is very much “the world according to Bruce Robinson,” holding court and putting the world to rights. Fortunately, Robinson is the perfect raconteur – voluble, opinionated, articulate and passionate, with great stories to tell, and he is happy to vent his spleen and name names when the occasion arises, an entertaining corrective to more circumspect memoirs.
As you’d expect, the bulk of the book covers his writing and directing work and travails in Hollywood, and by default, the book also functions as a “rough guide” to being a screenwriter (the stories of his failed projects are almost as interesting as those that came to fruition) as he takes us through the nightmares of “Fat Man And Little Boy”, “In Dreams” and “Jennifer Eight”, before ending with his latest project (at time of publication), the successful semi-autobiographical novel, “The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman.”
Robinson is excellent company throughout, though very politically incorrect (a warning or a recommendation depending on your point of view), and this is a very enjoyable read, but in all honesty probably only of interest to fans, especially those of “Withnail…”
As the book’s subtitle suggests, this is very much “the world according to Bruce Robinson,” holding court and putting the world to rights. Fortunately, Robinson is the perfect raconteur – voluble, opinionated, articulate and passionate, with great stories to tell, and he is happy to vent his spleen and name names when the occasion arises, an entertaining corrective to more circumspect memoirs.
As you’d expect, the bulk of the book covers his writing and directing work and travails in Hollywood, and by default, the book also functions as a “rough guide” to being a screenwriter (the stories of his failed projects are almost as interesting as those that came to fruition) as he takes us through the nightmares of “Fat Man And Little Boy”, “In Dreams” and “Jennifer Eight”, before ending with his latest project (at time of publication), the successful semi-autobiographical novel, “The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman.”
Robinson is excellent company throughout, though very politically incorrect (a warning or a recommendation depending on your point of view), and this is a very enjoyable read, but in all honesty probably only of interest to fans, especially those of “Withnail…”
June 14, 2008
Remarkably well informed interviewer, with insightful questions and observations too.
The answers given are often surprising - both for their candour and polemics. Would never have thought of BR as a green-wellied, Landrover-driving, bring-back-hanging, Telegraph reader. Mainly because he's not – a Telegraph reader that is - but all the rest is true - only he takes the Guardian of a morning. And sometimes a bottle of red wine by way of breakfast.
But then it would be unreasonable to expect consistency from a character who's artistic output has been so variable.
Still, well worth a gander.
The answers given are often surprising - both for their candour and polemics. Would never have thought of BR as a green-wellied, Landrover-driving, bring-back-hanging, Telegraph reader. Mainly because he's not – a Telegraph reader that is - but all the rest is true - only he takes the Guardian of a morning. And sometimes a bottle of red wine by way of breakfast.
But then it would be unreasonable to expect consistency from a character who's artistic output has been so variable.
Still, well worth a gander.
December 4, 2008
Love LOVE this book but it's primarily going to entertain people fascinated with screenwriting and the behind the scenes goings-on of the movie business. However, when explained by an attractive, witty, sarcastic British writer...who wouldn't be interested?
January 13, 2009
This man is special.
March 11, 2010
The master of screenwriting speaks. Compelling extended interview.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews