Male Restroom Etiquette
Encyclopedia
Male Restroom Etiquette is a 2006 American short subject
created by Phil Rice
and produced by his company Zarathustra Studios. The film is a mockumentary
about unwritten rules of behavior in male restrooms and is intended to be a parody
of educational
and social guidance film
s. Narrated by Rice, Male Restroom Etiquette states restroom customs to be followed and depicts a scenario of social chaos if they are violated. The film was made using the machinima
technique of recording video footage from computer games, namely The Sims 2
and SimCity 4
. Male Restroom Etiquette won multiple awards and was listed by Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition
in 2009 as the most popular Sims video uploaded to YouTube
.
has necessitated the exposition of previously unwritten rules regarding the use of male restroom
s. According to these rules, males should use restrooms as quickly as possible, maximize physical separation from each other when using urinals, flush urinals when they contain concentrated urine, avoid stalls with unflushed toilet
s, and avoid eye contact
and communication with others. The film depicts a scenario in which excess communication leads to a mess in the restroom and thus deficient hygiene
and homeostasis
, the latter of which is in the lowest tier in Maslow's hierarchy of needs
. As the scenario continues, the restroom occupants turn to violence, leading to police and biological hazard
team involvement that closes the restroom. Forced to go elsewhere, other men repeat the scenario, eventually leading to complete societal breakdown.
, Phil Rice stated that the ideas in Male Restroom Etiquette were based on observational humor that he had first seen in 2000 on the collaborative Internet site Everything2
. In 2006, he decided to take a temporary hiatus from making machinima and to produce a short humorous work when he returned. He felt that the ideas about restroom behavior on Everything2 were well-suited for visual humor and adapted them into a screenplay. According to Rice, the film "is rooted in the Juvenile humor that most men retain a secret fondness for, but don't get many opportunities to celebrate[, ...] but if the movie is too focused on that kind of humor, you'd lose the intelligent audience that I wrote the film for." Intending to make a parody
of educational
and social guidance film
s, Rice considered distributing the film in black-and-white
, but decided against it.
Rice originally started to film using id Software
's 1997 first-person shooter
(FPS) video game Quake II
but, after three months of pre-production, was dissatisfied with the game's visual quality. After experimenting, he chose The Sims 2
, a 2004 life simulation game
published by Electronic Arts
. His audio work for Strange Company
's 2006 film BloodSpell
delayed the start of Male Restroom Etiquettes production. However, after he was able to start, he finished after about two weeks of work. He recorded himself for the narration, and a friend for background voices. He edited audio in Steinberg Cubase
SX3 and video footage from the game in Sony Vegas
6.
, where, after being featured on the front page in early October 2006, it was viewed 2 million times by December 2006, 3.2 million times by February 2007, and 5 million times . According to the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition
, it is the most viewed Sims film on YouTube. Citing this popularity, Elijah Horwatt credits the work with increasing public interest in machinima. The film has won awards, including Best Writing at the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
' 2006 Machinima Festival, and Best of the Web from Animation World Network
(AWN) in 2007. Television networks were interested in airing Male Restroom Etiquette, but the work uses game-provided content, and Rice was unable to obtain the required permission from Electronic Arts
, the copyright owner of that content.
Writing for machinima.com
, Grove praised Rice's decision to base Male Restroom Etiquette on educational films because Male Restroom Etiquette shows truthfully and parodies male customs in restrooms. Grove also stated that the music, an original soundtrack, fits well. In highlighting the film in their Best of the Web showcase, AWN stated that the it "shows that a skilled filmmaker can create compelling performances and stories in machinima". Grove stated that, for many, the work served as their introduction to machinima.
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
created by Phil Rice
Phil Rice
Phil Rice is a platinum-selling songwriter, piano and keyboard player, and teacher. He is part of a successful songwriting and performing partnership with Rick Guard...
and produced by his company Zarathustra Studios. The film is a mockumentary
Mockumentary
A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...
about unwritten rules of behavior in male restrooms and is intended to be a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of educational
Educational film
An educational film is a film or movie whose primary purpose is to educate. Educational films have been used in classrooms as an alternative to other teaching methods.-Cultural significance:...
and social guidance film
Social guidance film
Social guidance films constitute a genre of films attempting to guide children and adults to behave in certain ways. Typically shown in school classrooms in the USA from the 1950s through the 1970s, the films covered topics including courtesy, responsibility, sexuality, drug use, and driver...
s. Narrated by Rice, Male Restroom Etiquette states restroom customs to be followed and depicts a scenario of social chaos if they are violated. The film was made using the machinima
Machinima
Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation...
technique of recording video footage from computer games, namely The Sims 2
The Sims 2
The Sims 2 is a strategic life simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to the best-selling computer game, The Sims, which debuted on February 4, 2000. It was first released on September 14, 2004 for Microsoft Windows. A port to Apple Mac OS X...
and SimCity 4
SimCity 4
SimCity 4 is a city-building/urban planning simulation computer game developed by Maxis, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. It was released on January 14, 2003. It is the fourth installment in the SimCity series. SimCity 4 has a single expansion pack called Rush Hour which adds features to the game...
. Male Restroom Etiquette won multiple awards and was listed by Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition
Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition
Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition is a Guinness World Records book dedicated to video games. The first edition was released in February 2008 in association with the video games world records' tracking organization Twin Galaxies. The second edition was released in 2009...
in 2009 as the most popular Sims video uploaded to YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
Synopsis
The narrator (Phil Rice) states that increased cultural diversityCultural diversity
Cultural diversity is having different cultures respect each other's differences. It could also mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole...
has necessitated the exposition of previously unwritten rules regarding the use of male restroom
Washroom
A public toilet is a room or small building containing one or more toilets and possibly also urinals which is available for use by the general public, or in a broader meaning of "public", by customers of other...
s. According to these rules, males should use restrooms as quickly as possible, maximize physical separation from each other when using urinals, flush urinals when they contain concentrated urine, avoid stalls with unflushed toilet
Toilet
A toilet is a sanitation fixture used primarily for the disposal of human excrement, often found in a small room referred to as a toilet/bathroom/lavatory...
s, and avoid eye contact
Eye contact
Eye contact is a meeting of the eyes between two individuals.In human beings, eye contact is a form of nonverbal communication and is thought to have a large influence on social behavior. Coined in the early to mid-1960s, the term has come in the West to often define the act as a meaningful and...
and communication with others. The film depicts a scenario in which excess communication leads to a mess in the restroom and thus deficient hygiene
Hygiene
Hygiene refers to the set of practices perceived by a community to be associated with the preservation of health and healthy living. While in modern medical sciences there is a set of standards of hygiene recommended for different situations, what is considered hygienic or not can vary between...
and homeostasis
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
, the latter of which is in the lowest tier in Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity...
. As the scenario continues, the restroom occupants turn to violence, leading to police and biological hazard
Biological hazard
Biological hazards, refer to biological substances that pose a threat to the health of living organisms, primarily that of humans. This can include medical waste or samples of a microorganism, virus or toxin that can impact human health. It can also include substances harmful to animals...
team involvement that closes the restroom. Forced to go elsewhere, other men repeat the scenario, eventually leading to complete societal breakdown.
Background and production
In an interview with The Sydney Morning HeraldThe Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...
, Phil Rice stated that the ideas in Male Restroom Etiquette were based on observational humor that he had first seen in 2000 on the collaborative Internet site Everything2
Everything2
Everything2, Everything2, or E2 for short is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter...
. In 2006, he decided to take a temporary hiatus from making machinima and to produce a short humorous work when he returned. He felt that the ideas about restroom behavior on Everything2 were well-suited for visual humor and adapted them into a screenplay. According to Rice, the film "is rooted in the Juvenile humor that most men retain a secret fondness for, but don't get many opportunities to celebrate[, ...] but if the movie is too focused on that kind of humor, you'd lose the intelligent audience that I wrote the film for." Intending to make a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of educational
Educational film
An educational film is a film or movie whose primary purpose is to educate. Educational films have been used in classrooms as an alternative to other teaching methods.-Cultural significance:...
and social guidance film
Social guidance film
Social guidance films constitute a genre of films attempting to guide children and adults to behave in certain ways. Typically shown in school classrooms in the USA from the 1950s through the 1970s, the films covered topics including courtesy, responsibility, sexuality, drug use, and driver...
s, Rice considered distributing the film in black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
, but decided against it.
Rice originally started to film using id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
's 1997 first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
(FPS) video game Quake II
Quake II
Quake II, released on December 9, 1997, is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Id Software and distributed by Activision. It is not a sequel to Quake; it merely uses the name of the former game due to Id's difficulties in coming up with alternative names.The soundtrack for Quake II...
but, after three months of pre-production, was dissatisfied with the game's visual quality. After experimenting, he chose The Sims 2
The Sims 2
The Sims 2 is a strategic life simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to the best-selling computer game, The Sims, which debuted on February 4, 2000. It was first released on September 14, 2004 for Microsoft Windows. A port to Apple Mac OS X...
, a 2004 life simulation game
Life simulation game
Life simulation games is a sub-genre of simulation video games in which the player lives or controls one or more virtual lifeforms...
published by Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
. His audio work for Strange Company
Strange Company
Strange Company is a group of machinima creators and distributors based in Edinburgh, Scotland. They are known in the medium as the longest-standing machinima production company, having produced machinima films since 1997, and for creating the Machinima.com website, which distributes such films on...
's 2006 film BloodSpell
BloodSpell
BloodSpell is a 2006 fantasy film produced by Strange Company. BloodSpell employs filming techniques known as machinima, and is the first feature-length production to use BioWare's Aurora Engine, developed for the computer role-playing game Neverwinter Nights, to generate the video portion of the...
delayed the start of Male Restroom Etiquettes production. However, after he was able to start, he finished after about two weeks of work. He recorded himself for the narration, and a friend for background voices. He edited audio in Steinberg Cubase
Steinberg Cubase
Cubase is a music software product developed by Steinberg for music recording, arranging and editing as part of a Digital Audio Workstation. It is one of the oldest DAWs to still enjoy widespread use...
SX3 and video footage from the game in Sony Vegas
Sony Vegas
Sony Vegas is a professional video editing software package for non-linear editing systems originally published by Sonic Foundry, now owned and run by Sony Creative Software. Originally developed as an audio editor, it eventually developed into an NLE for video and audio from version 2.0...
6.
Reception and impact
Although Rice hosts Male Restroom Etiquette on his own site and uploaded it elsewhere, the film became popular on YouTubeYouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, where, after being featured on the front page in early October 2006, it was viewed 2 million times by December 2006, 3.2 million times by February 2007, and 5 million times . According to the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition
Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition
Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition is a Guinness World Records book dedicated to video games. The first edition was released in February 2008 in association with the video games world records' tracking organization Twin Galaxies. The second edition was released in 2009...
, it is the most viewed Sims film on YouTube. Citing this popularity, Elijah Horwatt credits the work with increasing public interest in machinima. The film has won awards, including Best Writing at the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
This is a list of film festivals dedicated to machinima, the use of real-time 3-D engines in filmmaking. The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences regularly holds such festivals, and recognizes exemplary machinima works through awards nicknamed the Mackies.-Machinima Expo:The is an annual...
' 2006 Machinima Festival, and Best of the Web from Animation World Network
Animation World Network
Animation World Network is an organization for animators, with an extensive website with news, articles and links for professional animators and animation fans. AWN also publishes a printed journal, "Animation World"....
(AWN) in 2007. Television networks were interested in airing Male Restroom Etiquette, but the work uses game-provided content, and Rice was unable to obtain the required permission from Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
, the copyright owner of that content.
Writing for machinima.com
Machinima.com
Machinima.com is a gaming and media streaming website, that aims to be a hub for machinima, the art of creating animated videos in real-time virtual 3-D environments. The site features machinima-related articles, and news. Machinima productions can be submitted for possible redistribution after...
, Grove praised Rice's decision to base Male Restroom Etiquette on educational films because Male Restroom Etiquette shows truthfully and parodies male customs in restrooms. Grove also stated that the music, an original soundtrack, fits well. In highlighting the film in their Best of the Web showcase, AWN stated that the it "shows that a skilled filmmaker can create compelling performances and stories in machinima". Grove stated that, for many, the work served as their introduction to machinima.