"Yes! I want to go to the bathroom!"

[dianeduane]

So who else remembers that great line from the film Crazy People? It featured Dudley Moore as an off-the-rails, burnt-or-burning-out ad exec who is chucked into a psychiatric hospital and then winds up (with the assistance of some of his fellow patients, one of them played by Darryl Hannah) doing something absolutely unthinkable: basing print and TV ad campaigns on the truth.

There are some hilarious fake ads in the film. “Buy Volvo! It’s boxy, but it’s good!”, one urges. Or: “Porsche! It’s a little too small for you to get laid inside. But you’ll get laid as soon as you get out!”  And at the end of the film, there’s also this wildly un-PC fake Sony commercial that explains why Eastern electronics are so superior to Western ones.

But the ad from the movie that sticks most in my mind is a Metamucil ad. It says straightforwardly that if you don’t take Metamucil so that you can move your bowels regularly, you’ll get cancer and die. The next thing you see is a shot of a pharmacy being mobbed (and cleaned out of Metamucil) by middle-aged-and-older people frantically waving promotional coupons that say, “Yes! I want to go to the bathroom!”

For some reason, that was the line that flickered immediately through my mind when I ran into this (and thanks to Mark Evanier for the link: )

The Imodium Bathroom Finder

…Brought to you by a company that specializes in OTC antidiarrheal preparations. This would seem at first glimpse like a really useful online resource.

However, alas, there’s a catch. It appears that if you are anywhere but in the continental US, you are (so to speak: forgive me if the idiom suggests itself…) s**t out of luck. I guess the rest of us are all just going to have to hold it in. 

Tags: Crazy+People, Imodium, Immodium, bathroom, toilet, finder, USA, bathroom, Dudley+Moore, Darryl+Hannah, diarrhea, diarrhoea, Metamucil

Comments

[readinggeek451]

It's also not complete. In my (small) town, it listed two Starbucks, one of them in the next town over, but not the public library.

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

I can't help but be a little disturbed that there are apparently only nine bathrooms in my entire city.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I didn't remember the Sony commercial. I always loved the Volvo one, and have a special fondness for, "Visit Tahiti! Get laid!" :)

[dinpik.livejournal.com]

I remember that movie!

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

"Sure you love him. But if he dies, we'll pay off the mortgage, and also send the kids to college. And wouldn't that be nice too?" - life insurance ad from the movie

[mhaithaca.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, the system shows Andy's Third Street Cafe (http://belmikey.livejournal.com/380140.html) as one of the bathrooms. Andy's closed eight and a half years ago, and then Andy died eight years ago this weekend.

[alawston.livejournal.com]

My God, I remember seeing the trailer for that film on one of my first trips to the cinema that wasn't Disney-based. I think it might have been for Star Trek V. I was thinking about it the other day and desperately trying to remember the title after we were talking about advertising in the pub. The trailer started with Dudley throwing someone's car phone from a bridge, which I loved even at the age of seven or eight.

I've never seen the full film. Perhaps I should.

[posicat.livejournal.com]

It misses some of our public park washrooms, and several of the obvious stores. It looks like it just has a database of companies that are known to have public washrooms, and it bases the list off of that.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

The ad agency that committed him trying to reproduce his results was hilarious too.

"Tell the truth."

"I like... small boys."

::lean forward, glare:: "About the product."

No. 1 Reference Question

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

It's also less accurate than one might expect: type in "98019" and you'll fail to pull up the most popular Free. Clean. Bathroom available in that locale: the public library on main street.