Vainglorious, jealous, spiteful and devoid of empathy. The eponymous anti-hero of the 1987 movie Withnail and I (played by the incomparable Richard E. Grant) seems the opposite of what a good intelligence officer should be. And, yet, he manages to get his own way, using the techniques that I explore in Think Like a Spy. He deploys them to recruit his Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) as an ally.
His goal, cooked up with sidekick Marwood (Paul McGann) is simple: persuade someone else to stump up for a ‘delightful weekend in the country’. Once their goal has been defined, we see the two men set about an initial targeting exercise, aimed at identifying the person who can and will fund their break.
‘Why don’t you ask your father for some money?’ asks Marwood. ‘If my father was loaded, I’d ask him for some money,’ to which Withnail retorts, ‘if your father was my father, you wouldn’t get it’. Marwood ponders further, as they down ciders and chasers – ‘ice in the ciders’ – eventually lighting on Withnail’s ‘relative with the house in the country’. Uncle Monty. It is a succinct but successful exercise, yielding a target with the very thing they want. All that is required thereafter is for Withnail to persuade Monty to give it to them.
Later, we see the cultivation phase in action, as Withnail and Marwood visit Uncle Monty at home. It soon becomes clear that Monty is gay, and a failed thespian of unexplained wealth. So, Withnail adopts a cover designed to appeal to professional frustration and snobbery: that of a smartly dressed, sophisticated, successful young actor, whose ‘agent is attempting to edge [him] towards Royal Shakespeare Company again’. He goes further, designing and imposing a cover on Marwood, implying to Monty that he is an Old Etonian. Later, challenged by Marwood as to why he did this, Withnail explains that ‘I’m just trying to establish you in some sort of context he’d understand’. This is the very definition of ‘offensive cover’, as I explain in Think Like a Spy: ‘it is created to draw a target to a spy and to hold their interest […] Offensive cover is designed according to the dictates of the target’s position, personality and circumstances’ (pp 32-33).
The cultivation techniques (pp 70-75) deployed by Withnail include:
Making himself (and, crucially, Marwood) attractive to Monty (pp 70-71). In Marwood’s case, as he and the viewer learn later in the movie, this involves presenting him as actively gay.
Flattery: ‘Monty used to act’.
Mirroring: ‘It’s a part I intend to play, Uncle’.
Making it all about the target: throughout this scene, Monty has about 75% of the lines, with Withnail confining himself to the occasional prompt and Marwood mortified into near-silence.
The scene also demonstrates that Withnail is naturally effective at elicitation. He establishes commonality (pp 107-108) by presenting all three men as actors. He uses reciprocity (pp 108-109), by – off-screen – portraying Marwood as tormented by his sexuality. And he appeals to Monty’s ego (pp 109-110) by suggesting that he and Marwood are socially worthy of Monty’s indulgence: ‘free to those who can afford it. Very expensive to those that can’t’, he says to Marwood, as he dangles the key to Monty’s house in the country.
Monty’s motivations, ignoble as they are, become clear. There is a dollop of ego (pp 144-145) involved. He wishes to impress the two younger men, as he perceives them to be successful in the field that he failed in. But, much more important, there is a desire to please (p147), driven by his sexual attraction to Marwood. We don’t see the recruitment pitch (pp 175-210) itself but the implicit (or maybe explicit, offscreen) deal is later voiced by Marwood: Withnail is ‘gonna have a weekend's indulgence at his [Monty’s] expense, which means him having a weekend's indulgence at my expense’. This is effective - albeit nefarious - as far as it goes but such a pitch was always at risk of failing at the point of delivery. As it threatens to when Monty arrives unannounced at his country-residence, apparently determined to win Marwood’s affections. To keep things on track, Withnail must exercise the ‘keeping power of influence’.
He sets about this task with alacrity, partly because it entails joining Uncle Monty as he indulges in the pleasures of the gourmand and oenophile. And he listens in silence to Monty’s reminiscences and meandering reflections on life. This helps to make him likeable (p217). He nods along as Monty takes the younger men’s hands, to say ‘and here we are... we three... perhaps the last island of beauty in the world’. The power of unity at work (pp 219-221).
I noted in my previous Substack about Schindler's List that ‘delivery of that to which the recruit has agreed’ is equivalent to a spy debriefing her agent to obtain actionable intelligence. Withnail’s ‘plagiarised’ toast ‘to a delightful weekend in the country’ is met with an enthusiastic response from Monty, clearing the way to continued delivery of his promise. Much to Marwood’s horror. So, all that remains for Withnail is to master the ninth of the skills that I cover in Think Like a Spy: Controlling the Environment (pp 270-296).
This requires an appraisal of threats to continued enjoyment of his weekend. These are from his friend Marwood, who objects to being used as Withnail’s bait, and from the local poacher, Jake, who appears to bear hostile intentions towards them. The first of these, he approaches with a combination of cajolery and mendacity: ‘Listen, I know what you're thinking, but I had no alternative. The old bugger's come a long way, and I didn't want to put the wind up him’; and ‘I give you my word. We'll leave first thing tomorrow morning […] He’s not going to try anything’. The second he simply downplays to Uncle Monty: ‘Well, there's this local type hanging about. A poacher. We got into a tiff, and he threatened me with a dead fish. Yes, it was rather amusing, actually’. The tone here is strikingly different to his previous, cowardly responses to Jake and the imagined threat that he poses, probably because he calculates that Monty himself will keep Jake at bay.
Withnail’s insouciance during this scene, alongside his readiness to fob off Marwood with airy assurances that he is safe from Uncle Monty’s advances, suggests that he feels fully in command of the situation. With some justification. He has exercised situational awareness to control the environment, others-awareness to influence (or, rather, manipulate) those around him; and self-awareness to hide the less likeable aspects of his personality when dealing with his target, Uncle Monty. That is the tripod of awareness on which all successful recruitments must stand. And Withnail has done it well.
When I started thinking about this article, I did not expect to conclude by praising Withnail for his self-awareness. It is not a characteristic I would previously have associated with him, after innumerable viewings. It just goes to show, once again, the movie’s apparently endless capacity to surprise.
(Numbers in brackets refer to page numbers in Think Like a Spy where I expand on the techniques, themes or events referred to.)