Number One is a 1976 short film (really more of a featurette, 45 minutes) written and directed by Dyan Cannon.
It starts at an elementary school where a teacher is giving lessons in a kindergarten classroom. A little girl named Molly asks to be excused to go to the bathroom; her friend Chrissy asks to go to, not because she has to but really to tag along. After Molly pees, the adventurous Chrissy gets her to go into the boys' bathroom. They are wondering over the mechanics of how a urinal works when two boys, Phillip and Matt, come into the bathroom.
At first the girls hide in the stall, but soon their giggling alerts the boys to their presence. The talk soon soon goes into an "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" conversation. The kids are partially or mostly naked when the principal (Allen Garfield) comes into the restroom, sees them, and grossly overreacts.
Gary Lockwood plays Phillip's father. Nan Martin is the teacher. Keep Circulating the Tapes, as the negative of this film was lost in a fire at Dyan Cannon's house and it exists today only in a low-quality video transfer.
Tropes:
- Appearance Angst: When Matt the fat kid is reluctant to take all his clothes off (he pokes his penis through his fly), the girls say that he won't strip because he's fat.
- Awful Wedded Life: Matt's parents are in a horribly dysfunctional marriage. Dinner is a non-stop argument where they snipe and scream at each other, and Matt, until the boy bursts into tears. (The mother is played by Dyan Cannon.)
- Creative Closing Credits: The opening credits and closing credits are both written on the blackboard of the classroom.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Shot in sepia tones for that art-house look.
- Extremely Short Timespan: An unfortunate visit to a men's room, and the aftermath at home that evening.
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: After taking off his clothes Phillip hides his privates with his hand, although he eventually stops.
- Moral Guardians: The principal, who could handle the four naked kids in a low key manner, telling them to put their clothes on and go back to class. Instead he grossly overreacts, yelling and screaming at the kids. Part of the reason he does so is that he's morally offended, yelling "Do you know that's a sin?" at the kids.
- Playing Doctor: Without the "playing doctor" excuse, as the kids cut straight to "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
- Precision F-Strike: Matt is asked to sing a song in class. He responds with a ditty about Daniel Boone that ends with "such a big cocksucker and a mean motherfucker was he." The teacher, who maybe has a better sense of when to make something an issue than the principal, keeps a stone face and ignores him.
- Toxic Friend Influence: A pretty mild example, but it's Chrissy that goads Molly into going into the boys' room, and it's Chrissy who starts the "I'll show you mine" discussion.
- The Voice:
- Molly's parents are heard having a nasty argument offscreen about the incident.
- As Phillip's father gently questions him about how he feels after seeing the girls' private parts, Phillip's mom can be heard offscreen wondering why they've been in the bathroom so long.
- Matt's parents are only heard as the camera stays focused on Matt at dinner. They aren't specifically that upset by the incident, but it seems like something else for them to bicker about, as the whole scene is one long argument.
- Wondrous Ladies Room: Gender-flipped, as sheer curiosity sends Chrissy and Molly into the men's room. Molly has no idea what the odd objects mounted on the wall are. Chrissy correctly identifies them as urinals and knows that boys use them to pee, but isn't sure quite how.
