How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989)

Richard E. Grant is a tyro of bile in Bruce Robinson's stunningly abrasive satire How To Get Ahead in Advertising. Grant plays Dennis Bagley, a belligerent and dynamic advertising executive who suffers a creative block when he is unable to figure out how to market a new pimple and boil remedy. As he points out, "Everybody knows that there is no product on the market which can cure a boil except the person who has one." Living at a country estate with his beautiful and caring wife Julia (Rachel Ward), Bagley ponders the pimple account over a weekend in which a dinner party is planned for a group of shallow acquaintances. At the dinner party, Bagley goes off the deep end -- ranting against his guests and the base money-lust of the advertising world. After Bagley's breakdown, he develops a physical manifestation of his mental turmoil -- a boil on his shoulder. The boil grows bigger and bigger until it sprouts eyes, teeth and a mustache and begins to lecture him in a surly and clipped tone of voice. It grows as big as Bagley's own head and it gets to the point where Bagley can't tell which is the head and which is the boil.