How to Get Ahead in Advertising

Tagline : The Career Where Two Heads Are Better Than One

How to Get Ahead in Advertising is a 1989 British film written and directed by Bruce Robinson and starring Richard E. Grant and Rachel Ward. The title is a pun and can be literally taken as "How to Get a Head in Advertising".

Synopsis

The movie is a farce about a mentally unstable advertising executive, Denis Dimbleby Bagley (played by Grant), who suffers a nervous breakdown while working a campaign for pimple cream. Ward plays his long-suffering but sympathetic wife. Richard Wilson plays John Bristol, Bagley's boss.

Bagley has a crisis of conscience about the ethics of advertising. He develops a boil on his right shoulder that he imagines comes to life with a face and voice. The boil takes a ruthless and unscrupulous view of the advertising profession in contrast to Bagley's new-found ethical concerns. Eventually, Bagley decides to have the boil removed in hospital but moments before he is taken into the operating room, the boil quickly grows into a replica of Bagley's head (only with a moustache) and covers Bagley's original head, asking doctors to remove it. Bagley, now with the boil head, returns home to celebrate his wedding anniversary, with the original head merely resembling a boil on his left shoulder. The 'boil' eventually withers and supposedly dies, leaving Bagley to resume his advertising career rejuvenated and cynical, although without his wife, who decides to leave his new cruel persona.

Tagline :

Richard E. Grant - Denis Dimbleby Bagley

Rachel Ward - Julia Bagley
Richard Wilson - John Bristol, Bagley's Boss
Jacqueline Tong - Penny Wheelstock
John Shrapnel - Psychiatrist
Susan Wooldridge - Monica
Hugh Armstrong - Harry Wax
Mick Ford - Richard
Jacqueline Pearce - Maud

Christopher Simon - Waiter
Gino Melvazzi - Waiter
Victor Lucas - Tweedy Man
Dawn Keeler - Tweedy Woman
Kerryann White - Girl in Elevator (as Kerry Ann White)
Vivienne McKone - Sullivan Bristol Receptionist