How to Get Ahead in Advertising (talking boil film)

[St_Eddie]

Following a conversation with madhair60 within the Gremlins 3 thread, I figured that the 1989 Bruce Robinson film, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, deserved its own thread.

It's a great film and one which I feel deserves a lot more praise (in the vein of Bruce Robinson's better known film Withnail & I).  I think that the film acts as a decent allegory for the soulless nature of advertising and the inner struggle between human decency and decadence.  One of the things which I often ponder, whenever I watch it, is 'is the boil entirely within Denis' mind, or is it a living, sentient being?  I lean more towards the former because during Denis' session with the psychiatrist, he looks in the mirror and sees the boil and hears it talking but the psychiatrist doesn't see or hear anything unusual.  What are your thoughts on the matter?

FUN FACT: The film's director, Bruce Robinson, provides the voice of the boil.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Got this free years ago in the paper.

For some reason I have it filed in my brain as related to A Fish Called Wanda, but I don't know why.

[madhair60]

Haven't seen it mate.

[Blumf]

Ahh, been ages since I saw it. One of those films that gets completely overlooked despite it being pretty good (I assume whoever controls the rights is very lazy)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ad_qk6r_eU

Wow!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Robinson

His parents were Mabel Robinson and American lawyer Carl Casriel, who had a short-term relationship during World War II. His father was a Lithuanian Jew. As a child, Robinson was constantly brutally abused by his stepfather Rob (an ex RAF navigator and a wholesale newsagent), who knew the boy wasn't his son.

Talk about bleak.

[Shit Good Nose]

As someone who has never liked and always struggled with Withnail (some of you know I've tried SO many times, but it has just never gelled with me at all), I've always thought this was his best film, at least as director (The Killing Fields, which he wrote, gets the top spot by a LONG stretch).

Also worth reminding that he started out as a proper actor and wanted to carve out a career as a British screen heartthrob, but chucked it in after spending nearly ten years with no job offers and living on the breadline.

[Bad Ambassador]

Did a podcast on this last year, very good film.

[rasta-spouse]

I like this film too. I think it's a lot better than Withnail.

Robinson's career is quite a hodgepodge, those two films, Jennifer 8 and a big book on the Ripper. 

[Sin Agog]

He did have an interesting sort of parallel career to Terrence Stamp earlier on, appearing in prominent roles in Zeffirelli, Truffaut and Ken Russell films, and BFI put out his angry young man kitchen sinker Private Road a few years ago.  Guess things dried up for him when that temporary scrabble of early '70s we'll put out anything arthouse cinema died off, but his early acting career yielded some cool stuff.

[mothman]

He has a virtual cameo in Still Crazy in which he doesn't seem to display much in the way of actual acting ability, which struck me as a bit odd and might explain why his screen heart-throb phase might have been unsuccessful.

[St_Eddie]

Also worth reminding that he started out as a proper actor and wanted to carve out a career as a British screen heartthrob, but chucked it in after spending nearly ten years with no job offers and living on the breadline.

Thank goodness for that, as his experiences gave us the semi-autobiographical Withnail & I.

[McChesney Duntz]

Heh, funny - after having not seen this for nearly thirty damn years, the DVD turned up at a library sale a week or so ago for 50 cents and I snapped the thing up post-haste, got home, watched it, and found it as grimly entertaining (if a touch pedantic - a lot of speechifying here, which in hands lesser than REG*'s, could have been unbearable) as I did when I first viddied it back in '90. Grant is so convincingly crazed/frightened/insane/malevolent - it's all in those grey eyes of his, I guess. And I just realized that I still haven't seen Withnail. Hm.

* I think he may win the title of Most English-Monikered Actor over, say, Cumberbatch - even his initials are Anglo!

[a duncandisorderly]

For some reason I have it filed in my brain as related to A Fish Called Wanda, but I don't know why.

'withnail' & 'get ahead' were both made by handmade; 'wanda' might've been too if the MP boys hadn't got so royally fucked off with denis o'brien, who was robbing poor george harrsion soft throughout the life of the company.

I don't have a lot of time for 'withnail' but having recently read the saga of handmade (which should really have been called "the handmade tale" but wasn't) I feel inclined to revisit it. apparently robinson cast mcgann quite early on & used him during the auditions for withnail, during which eddy tenpole tried out, amongst others. having cast grant, robinson promptly sacked mcgann, who then had to plead to be allowed to audition for his role again. interesting book, though not a long read. made me want to find denis o'brien & kill him.

[Kelvin]

Got this free years ago in the paper.

Same.

I remember thinking it was quite good, but that Grant was - as always - fairly shit.

I wish I could remember more about it now. Could you not have started this thread 12 years ago?

[the ouch cube]

One of my favourite films, and I don't think there has been a so-called comedy as dark and sick since, apart from "Being John Malkovich." Even Alan B'Stard isn't quite as much a savage attack on Thatcherism as Dennis Bagley.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Same.

I remember thinking it was quite good, but that Grant was - as always - fairly shit.

I wish I could remember more about it now. Could you not have started this thread 12 years ago?

Another time we got Children of the Corn. A film so dull we snapped the disc to make sure no-one else in the house share might have to endure it.

Grant does strike me as a bit of a bell. A bit shit but also has a chip on his shoulder about being remembered for withnail.

[St_Eddie]

Well, I think that Richard E. Grant's bloody sexy, so what are you gonna do about that?