HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING
UK, 1989, 94 minutes, Colour.
Richard E. Grant, Rachel Ward, Richard Wilson.
Directed by Bruce Robinson.
How To Get Ahead In Advertising is an acidic comedy which makes its point instantly. The ironic title and the hero's vigorously sardonic opening speech ensures it. The audience is then invited to experience the point through 90 minutes of zany British comedy.
Written and directed by Bruce Robinson (the eccentric Withnail and 1, The Killing Fields), it is part spoof, part parody of the avaricious kitsch world of the commercial. It is also a Monty Python style pessimistic fantasy (in the vein of Terry Gilliam's Brazil). The hero's phobia is boils. And that is also his campaign product. He grows a boil on his neck. As it swells, with a mean personality embodying the hero's shadow side, it takes over his life completely.
Richard E. Grant (Withnail and I) makes the hero's plight credible with articulate British precision - both as the manic and depressed executive and as the callously debonair boil. Rachel Ward appears to advantage as his strong, supportive wife. A cleverly bleak satire on how advertising consumes consumer society.
1. Effective satire? Target advertising? British style?
2. The advertising agencies, homes? The special effects for the boil? The music: classics, songs, the final British hymn?
3. The title, echoes of How To Succeed In Business ..., its tone, ultimate ironies?
4. The perspective of the writer-director: on advertising, the initial sardonic speech, contempt for the consumer, the nature of advertising creativity and its leading to mania? Deadlines, pressures? The nature of the products, consumer wants rather than needs or cures, consumer guilt in buying, addiction? Advertising possessing the advertiser, disrupting life, the shadow side emerging, taking over and voicing opinions, torment and persecution, complete identIty? The finale with its sardonic rules and hymn - like an advertising British Empire?
5. The character of Bagley: his initial lecture and his leer, cynicism, passionate promotion of his idea? The pimple creativity, imitation of advertising styles: gung-ho, Barbara Simpson? Julia and the meal, the boss and the deadline? At home,dinner, his attack on Penny as a vegan, etc., the insults? The next day, nude with the apron and throwing out the kitchen goods? The boil growing, panic, reactions, fear? The doctor and the chase through the fields? The boil becoming enormous, its face, talking, talking to Julia? The breathing, the advertising, fighting Dennis? His visit to Sullivan and hearing how he was almost becoming a fire, had a vacation and returned to normal? Dennis and the box around his head, making the video for Julia? Concealing it from the boil? The psychiatrist and his theories, the interview? Dennis's collapse, hospital, the nurse? The boil growing and its behaviour in the hospital ward, mutilating Dennis, the boil emerging? The arrival at the party, Penny and her eating habits, Monica and the sexual advance, his plan for Julia and the child? Julia watching the video? His manic triumph and the boil's final rules to the music of 'Jerusalem'?
6. Julia as the loving wife, model of common sense, the lunch, the dinner party and her friendship with Penny, demanding his apology, his sulking in the kitchen? The aftermath? The morning, the apron, throwing out the goods? Her shopping, the doctor and his collapse, the psychiatrist? Getting worse, at night, the arguments with the boil? In the hospital, the final party, watching the video? Sullivan, the advertising executives, interviews and phone calls, deadlines, smart and smooth talk, boils, the fire, sardonic?
7. The range of staff, the pressures, the interviews, the campaigns?
9. Penny as a friend, her eccentricities, vegan diet, gossiping, going back onto meat?
10. Monica, the guest, the sexual advance, upset?
11. The sketch of the doctor, his concern and care, the psychiatrist and his theoretical interpretations?
12. The importance of words, the dialogue, rhetoric and speeches, Pythonesque comedy and the bizarre boil?
