I Don't Like Shitting In Public

Let’s be honest – nobody likes having to use public toilets. It’s not like it was in the olden days, when everything was made of tile and marble and brass, and there was a gentleman in suit and tie ready with a flannel and a spritz of eau de cologne to buoy you back up before you re-entered whichever public space you had graciously exited from. Nowadays it’s all plastic-coated cubicles which are invariably filthy and smelly and which harbour an unknown amount of seriously gnarly germs. You’re lucky if there’s any toilet paper in the holder, without it being unravelled all over the floor or stuffed down the pan, and even luckier if the paper itself is useable and holds together enough for your fingers not to punch holes through it. You also have to deal with the fact that some people don’t seem to know how to work a flush, and if you’re a guy, that everything, and I mean everything whether it’s wet or not, is covered in piss.

It’s no wonder then, that some people develop an aversion to doing their business in public restrooms. For some it’s not even about all of that other stuff above, but more about their own noises and smells and shame which means that they develop ‘shy bowel syndrome’ or ‘psychogenic faecal retention’ or ‘parcopresis’ if we are to give it its proper name. Obviously though, this is an area of the human condition which is ripe for the picking when it comes to a little bit of comedy, and as such writer/director Ken Abalos has decided to go there for his new short, I Don’t Like Shitting In Public.

With it being just over four minutes long, you can get most of what you need to know about Abalos’ short film from its title. As such, we follow an unnamed protagonist as he goes about his day at work, having his lunch at his desk, getting weirded out by the slippery slurpings and cacophony of crunching which surrounds him like a bad ASMR recording. Pretty soon our guy feels the familiar rumblings in his tummy and realises that he might not get a chance to finish his lunch as something more pressing this way comes. Cue, a quick dash to the loos, some cowering in the cubicles, some peeking out from behind the door and a very unsatisfying result which offers no relief. So, there’s nothing else for it, our guy then decides he’s got to go home and crimp one off there, so he makes his excuses, lies to his work colleagues and heads off to find the only porcelain throne which meets his standards – until….

And so, there’s a nice little twist towards the end of I Don’t Like Shitting In Public which, in truth, rounds off and saves the story from being rather banal and empty of character. The minimal dialogue offers rather few chances for laughs and while Nathan Jonathan does well at portraying the very real fear of pooping your own pants, he is in no way a Mr Bean or Lee Evans in terms of his silent, physical comedy. There’s not enough in the four minutes of I Don’t Like Shitting In Public to really grab the viewer and certainly nothing new, as it’s an old joke we’ve seen plenty of times on TV. The ending does bolster things slightly though, and the rest of the production is put together nicely, so if like Leslie Nielsen at eighty-four, you’re still childish enough to laugh at a good bit of toilet humour, this may well be the short film for you.