Themes: Mental Illness, Fighting the System, Success is the Best Revenge
Main Cast: Dudley Moore, Daryl Hannah, Paul Reiser, Mercedes Ruehl, J.T. Walsh
Release Year: 1990
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Dudley Moore stars as Emory Lesson, an advertising genius whose finds himself committed to an insane asylum in Tony Bill's Crazy People. Emory becomes tired with creating phony ad campaigns and decides to create his own campaigns that tell the brutal truth. Since sex sells, Emory designs an explicit ad campaign consisting of unadorned sexuality. The campaign is so offensive that his colleagues have Emory put in a mental institution. At first Emory resists, but under the tutelage of a concerned psychiatrist, Dr. Liz Baylor (Mercedes Ruehl) and the tender love of Kathy (Daryl Hannah) a beautiful patient, Emory begins to like it in the mental home. Befriending the cute and lovable patients in the mental ward, Emory discovers that the crazy people are natural-born advertising geniuses and Emory utilizes their genius for a new ad campaign. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
Vastly underrated director Tony Bill reunites with Dudley Moore, the star of his film Six Weeks (1982), for this memorable comedy that relies too much on its genuinely funny central idea and not enough on developing its hilarious ensemble of wacky supporting characters. What works phenomenally well in this box-office bust is the concept of literal truth in advertising. Not only are the brutally honest ad campaigns dreamed up by screenwriter Mitch Markowitz scathingly funny, they remind the audience of just how overwhelmingly disingenuous are the corporate messages with which they are endlessly barraged. Much to the film's detriment, though, the lead role of Emory (Moore) is woefully unexplored, as are the delightful supporting players he meets in the insane asylum, particularly George (David Paymer) (the "Hello" guy), around whom much more comic business should have been built. If the rest of Crazy People (1990) had been as wickedly subversive as the picture's high-concept pitch, the final product might have been a comedy classic. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Ben Hammer - Dr. Horace Koch; David Paymer - George Cartelli; Dick Cusack - Mort Powell; Alan North - Judge; Danton Stone - Saabs; Doug Yasuda - Hsu; Bill Smitrovich - Bruce Concannon; Paul Bates - Manuel Robles; Floyd Vivino - Eddie Avis; John Terlesky - Adam Burgess; David Packer - Mark Olander; Larry King - Himself; John Blythe Barrymore; Julian Bell - TV Anchor; John Bennes - Pharmacist; Corey Carrier; Lynda A. Clark - Executive #1; Maggie Han - Connie Vega-Margolis; Alan Haufrect - Hit and Run Victim; J. Michael Hunter - Eric the Orderly; Robert Ito - Yamashita's Aide; J.J. - Montesque; John Marshall Jones; Mark Joy - Executive #2; Lloyd Kino - Mr. Yamashita; Mick McGovern - Rig Driver; Ann Pierce - William Holden; Jill Pierce - Heavy Daughter; Cliff Eidelman; Mitch Markowitz - Utility Nut; David Muir - Continental Express Driver; Robert Weiss - Outraged Movie Patron; Pam La Testa - Heavy Woman; Kim Clark - Very Large Man; Randell Haynes - Powell; Lorri Lindberg - Stephen's Secretary; Bob Martana - Heavy Man; Allison Caine; Ed Lillard - Senior Executive Matthews; Christine Larson - Operator #1
Credit
Steven Schwartz - Art Director, Lynn Stalmaster - Casting, Mary Vogt - Costume Designer, Christine Larson - First Assistant Director, Tony Bill - Director, Mia Goldman - Editor, Cliff Eidelman - Composer (Music Score), Cliff Eidelman - Musical Direction/Supervision, Robert Ryan - Makeup, Lou Barlia - Camera Operator, John J. Lloyd - Production Designer, Alan North - Cinematographer, Victor J. Kemper - Cinematographer, Tom Barad - Producer, Michael Ewing - Producer, Robert Weiss - Producer, Rick T. Gentz - Set Designer, Mitch Markowitz - Screenwriter
Emory Leeson is an advertising executive who experiences a nervous breakdown. He designs a series of "truthful" advertisements, blunt and bawdy and of no use to his boss Drucker's firm.
One of his colleagues, Stephen Bachman, checks him into a psychiatric hospital. Emory goes into group therapy under the care of Dr. Liz Baylor and meets other voluntary patients, such as the lovely and vulnerable Kathy Burgess. There is also George, who can only speak one word: "Hello."
By mistake, the advertisements made by Emory get printed and the new campaign turns out to be a tremendous success. Campagins like: "Jaguar -- the car for men who want handjobs from beautiful women" and "Volvo -- they're boxy but they're good."
Drucker grabs credit for the ads. He assigns Stephen and the rest of his employees to design similar new ad campaigns featuring so-called honesty in advertising, but nothing works.
Emory is approached in the sanitarium about creating new ads himself. He insists that his fellow mental patients also be involved and suitably rewarded for their work, transforming the sanitarium into a branch of the advertising industry.
They come up with wild advertising slogans, like one for a Greek travel agency that goes: "Forget Paris. The French can be annoying. Come to Greece. We're nicer." And another one called "Come ... IN the Bahamas" for that island's national tourism board. For a new horror movie called The Freak, the ad campaign states: "It won't just scare you, it will fuck you up for life!"
The patients experience happiness at being needed and improve from their various illnesses. The evil Drucker and the doctor in charge of the hospital get greedy and try to separate the team. But it doesn't work. Dr. Baylor defies her boss and Emory negotiates to get new automobiles for all of the patients. He also manages to track down the long absent brother of Kathy, with whom he has fallen in love.
The story closes with another commercial created by Emory and his new helpers, this one with a Sony executive claiming the secret of the success of the Japanese in the electronics market to be due to the fact that the Japanese are in general short, and thus are closer to the circuits while working, making them pay closer attention. The tagline of the commercial is: "Sony – because Caucasians are just too damn tall."
The movie was released on VHS and Laserdisc (now out of print) in late 1990, and on widescreen DVD in 2004. The soundtrack featured the song "Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)" by Mötley Crüe.
Trivia
The movie was directed by Tony Bill but the commercials featured in it were directed by Barry L. Young.
