‘How to Get Ahead in Advertising’ (1989), director Bruce Robinson
Released in 1989, How to Get Ahead in Advertising was Robinson’s follow-up to his debut classic Withnail and I. The drunken misadventures of Withnail and the nameless “I” has earned a cult following in no small part due to the film’s hilarious quips and one-liners coupled with Richard E. Grant’s heavily histrionic performance. How to Get Ahead in Advertising contains both of these elements within its biting satire of advertising and consumer culture that still feels so relevant over two decades later.
Grant stars as Denis Dimbleby Bagley, an ad executive who is exceptional at his job. The film opens with him giving a speech around a boardroom table. Far removed from the glamour and cool of Mad Men, this scene takes place in a dingy, dark room with depressed admen being berated by the smarmy, cynical Bagley for getting the target audience wrong. They’ve gone with a model in her twenties, when what they want is “a taut slob, something on foot deodorisers in a brassiere.” Bagley tells them to go with an average housewife, one he describes precisely: “She’s 37 years-old. She has 2.3 children, 1.6 of which will be girls…”
Bagley’s excellence in being able to sell anything to anyone is currently being tested as he struggles with a product he has never been able to stomach: acne cream. The deadline for the campaign is fast approaching and he still doesn’t have anything of value to offer his clients.
The stress is starting to get to him and while travelling by train, he has somewhat of a breakdown. A person across from him is reading part of the newspaper concerning a “drug orgy” aloud to Bagley and the carriage’s other two occupants (one of whom is a priest). We’re told the police took away a bag containing cannabis resin that “may also have contained a quantity of heroin.” “It may also have contained a pork pie,” replies the cynical Bagley, before explaining that the word “may” really doesn’t tell us anything beyond mere speculation. The passengers are less than enthusiastic to take this stranger’s advice on the matter and Bagley starts berating them for being so blind to these underhand tactics, before berating himself for perpetuating them. The other men all flee the train at the next station, Bagley shouting at them the entire time.
With Bagley’s nervous breakdown gathering momentum (he’s destroying everything in his house that is tainted with advertising), his wife points out that he’s so stressed over the acne cream, that he has developed a large boil of his own on his neck. A couple of days later, he looks at himself in the mirror and gets the shock of his life when he discovers that the boil has grown so large – it now has a face. “Hiya, handsome!” it says, before Bagley collapses in a heap.
Yes, things take a turn for the surreal. The boil can speak, and continues to do so whenever nobody is looking, thus giving the impression that Bagley is merely saying these things himself, and then blaming the boil. It’s certainly a bizarre premise, but the film isn’t through testing the audience’s limits. The boil grows so large it soon replaces Bagley’s head, while Bagley himself becomes the boil.
The new Bagley, complete with pencil moustache to tell him apart from the old, has no interest in leaving advertising – in fact he has more radical ideas than the previous incarnation. Everyone merely assumes that Bagley has finally worked through his breakdown, with only his wife suspecting that something more sinister may be afoot.
Richard E. Grant gives what I think is his greatest performance – even surpassing his iconic portrayal of Withnail. He’s essentially playing two roles, both Bagley and the boil, and he throws himself completely into both portrayals. Much like Withnail and I, this film is built around some absolutely fantastic speeches, particularly ones heavy in acerbic wit. Just as the prior film ends with Grant delivering a powerful monologue to no immediate audience, How to Get Ahead in Advertising has him shouting at the heavens as the music swells and the bittersweet climax hits home.
The film is a comic masterpiece with a grotesque twist. It’s easy to see why an audience might shun its unpleasant portrayal of both the boil and consumerism itself. Bagley argues that the television is the greatest invention of the last century, but it has become corrupted by capitalist greed and consumer culture. A solid case for both these points is presented with the film, and I strongly encourage you to explore these issues yourself by using your hard-earned cash to purchase a copy of How to Get Ahead in Advertising and watching it on your television.
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