There was a time when I hated movies. It’s true, I absolutely despised them.

I argued passionately that they were all just pretend and not real. And the reason I pointed to as proof of my argument was that no one ever went to the bathroom in a movie.

I was four years-old.


A sight rarely seen in any movie... the toilet.

I learned to read before entering kindergarten, or at least well enough to scan the TV listings in the newspaper for what films were playing on television so that I could plan my busy schedule – playing with toys, movie, snack time, movie, nap time, movie, and so on. I fell in love with the fantasy world of the movies, but I was bothered that not once had I seen any of the characters take a break to hit the john. Sure, I’d hardly seen many flicks as a li’l punk, but I still found this to be troubling. The fact that much of a child’s life early on is centered upon going potty, either in one’s pants, or at night, or by accident, probably led the pint-sized version of me to make this observation.

I was a stubborn little kid and I didn’t know much, but I knew one thing for sure – everyone pees and everyone poops. (There’s even a popular children’s book on the topic.) I was dismayed that an activity that occupied much of my time, the mastery of the correct use of the toilet, was never actually seen in a movie. This became a colossal disappointment to me as a child because it was proof positive that everything I saw in a film was only make-believe. I remember feeling betrayed and lied to. Movies were a lie. It was truly devastating. The absence of bathroom breaks in movies rocked my teeny foundation, kind of like when Neo discovered that his entire life was a lie and that all of his experiences were not genuine at all, but resided inside computer world of the Matrix.

My parents were highly amused by my strong views regarding truth in movies probably because I was a movie-obsessed kid who spoke articulately about film experiences while wearing training pants. Whenever a friend or family member mentioned a movie they liked, I would chime in to point out the false nature of films due to the lack of scenes in which Mother Nature plays a role.

“Movies are fake. No one ever goes to the bathroom,” I said as a four year-old.

“Funny kid,” is how most dumbfounded adults responded.

Looking back on my thoughts as a tyke, I knew exactly where I was coming from – I just wanted to believe that movies were real. I so wanted the stories and the characters to exist somewhere. I wanted to believe that the Jets and the Sharks sang and danced and fought with knives in New York; that Batman and Robin fought the Joker in Gotham City; that Moses did part the Red Sea; that Frankenstein and the Wolf-man had met Abbot & Costello and that there actually was a Dorothy Gale who went to the Emerald City to see the wizard and returned safely to her farm in Kansas via ruby slippers.

I really wanted to believe.

But the noticeable exclusion of a very basic human function – pooping and peeing – meant that none of it was real. If a complex emotion such as depression could exist in a preschool child, I felt it over my dilemma with movies.

But all of that changed at the age of five, which is my first memory of seeing a movie in a theater. My dad took me to a retrospective screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I sat quietly in a second run theater in Berkley, Michigan. The screen was enormous, I had to look up and turn my head to see the entire screen. As this very adult science fiction movie un-spooled before my eyes, it rocked my senses. The experience was overwhelming… it felt so real, almost too real. Like the apes looking in awe at the monolith... I was entranced.

And then, it happened.

Following the spectacular opening with the apes, we see Dr. Heywood R. Floyd on a shuttle trip to the moon. On this trip through outer space, the likes of which I’ve never seen, he also goes… to the bathroom. I stood up in my seat. I couldn’t believe what I just saw. I was floored. While Dr. Floyd isn’t shown actually “going,” he does read a long list of instructions guiding him through the process in outer space. This sequence resulted in perhaps the only laugh from the audience during 2001. I was frozen. I wasn’t disappointed that Kubrick chose to conceal the going part, the mere acknowledgement that a character in a film had to go, was like a release itself. 2001 was already spectacularly real in its presentation of scenes set in space, but this scene added to the realism of as a whole by grounding the characters in this display of a very human urge… the urge to take a pee. My sensibilities were further blown away by the ending, which was confusing to the adults in the audience, much less a five year-old kid. I didn’t know what it meant then, but my father’s helpful explanation taken from the book served only to scare the living crap out of me… that weird re-birthed astronaut Dave Bowman returns to destroy the earth. Not very comforting to a kid especially because this film felt more real than any other movie I had seen up to that point.


Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968 was the first movie I saw to feature a character using the toilet.

As a filmmaker, Kubrick insisted on realism which can always be found in the details. For the curious, here is the complete text from the unreadable type from the bathroom scene in 2001, just read the

If the “555” phone number is something that breaks the illusion of reality in a movie, then a trip to the bathroom is something that grounds a movie in reality. Since the release of 2001 in 1968, countless other films have gone to the restroom for inspiration. Michael Corleone goes to the toilet to obtain a well hidden gun in The Godfather. Austin Powers awoke from hibernation to take a very long pee. In Trainspotting, Ewan McGregor takes a trip deep inside a toilet. And there’s plenty of urination in Fight Club.


Tom Hanks has gone to the bathroom in more films than any other actor.

Tom Hanks seems to have an obsession with choosing films which require a bathroom appearance. Hanks has made more trips to the loo in more movies than any other actor. For reasons we may never understand, he either hits the head or makes mention of having to pee in movies such as Forest Gump, The Green Mile (in which painful urination is a plotline) and Castaway.

You might find it surprising that so many mainstream films contain scenes of this nature, but isn’t the bathroom the place where many claim to do their best thinking? I could recount more famous scenes, but oddly enough, I’m not the only one who keeps track. One web site has dedicated its mission to creating a database of movie moments involving the urge to go. The Movie Poop Scene Database currently has the most complete list of bathroom scenes anywhere on the web and it's conveniently alphabetized. Yet again the internet has proven to be a useful tool for things I never imagined needing.


Kubrick returned to prime form with 1999's Eyes Wide Shut in which Nicole Kidman pees in front of Tom Cruise.

For the most part, critics and film snobs recoil when a toilet hits the screen. They see it as being vulgar or in poor taste or even as “potty humor.” When I see someone like Nicole Kidman sit down to pee in Eyes Wide Shut, I’m reminded of the first time that Stanley Kubrick made me confront reality in 2001. I applaud filmmakers who humanize characters by showing them urinating or defecating. I prefer to celebrate the act of “going” at the movies because it is real.

Although, seeing one pee on screen often makes me want to go as well.

Gore going... going... gone.

Chris_Gore is an author, a filmmaker and the creator of Film Threat. Chris rarely sees movies without a bathroom break. For this reason, he always takes an aisle seat.