61

I know that this was really just meant to be a joke in the movie, but that makes me wonder: why seashells, and how are they supposed to work?

Three Shells

Did the writers just pick out an absurd word at random, or did they actually have something in mind that got cut from the final version?

Valorum
  • 689,072
  • 162
  • 4,636
  • 4,873
Frank Pierce
  • 3,907
  • 2
  • 24
  • 38
  • 70
    Haha, he doesn't know about the three seashells. – user1129682 Jan 07 '15 at 18:46
  • 1
    I always just assumed that they were noodle implements: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoodleImplements – Paul Johnson Jun 30 '16 at 19:14
  • 1
    Hmm. I've edited this to reflect the answer the OP accepted (e.g. how did they work) but on closer inspection, no part of the answer actually addresses what was originally asked (e.g. why seashells and not some other object). Hmm. Possibly worthy of a new question. – Valorum Oct 23 '16 at 19:30
  • 2
    @Valorum well, the "why seashells" is explained here. TL;DR - the story writer himself revealed the source being one of his friends having "a bag of seashells on his toilet as a decoration". :-) – Shadow Wizard Love Zelda Jan 22 '17 at 13:55
  • 1
    I'll admit I get a giggle out of this every time I visit my mother-in-law's because along the windowsill in the bathroom are, you guessed it, three seashells, all lined up. She's never seen the film, but a friend brought them back from a trip and told her that that was how you lined them up in the bathroom, so she does so. – FuzzyBoots Jun 18 '21 at 18:07

2 Answers2

54

Any description here is going to border on the crude and will offend at least one person out there, so here it is, in spoiler notation (don't blame me if you mouse-over it!):

The original idea the writers had was you use two shells to pull and gently extract fecal matter from your body and use the third to scrape and remove what's left. Stallone explained it here: Round Two With Stallone: Rocky, Beverly Hills Cop, Rambo 4, Elvis, Poe, Horror, Incredibles 2 & Seashells... (See question 9). If one really doesn't get it, there's a diagram:

imockery.com presents "how to use the three seashells." Step 1: take two of the three seashells and place them between your fingers to be used like chopsticks. Step 2: Using the two seashells, gently pull on the feces to remove them from your posterior until your bowels have been completely emptied. Step 3: Using the third seashell, scrape away any fecal remnants from your posterior. Step 4: Dispose of all three seashells in toilet and flush.

I have to add that I was disappointed with this, since it didn't use any kind of future technology. Before I read this, I always thought it would have something to do with ionic charges and attracting/repelling anything in the area that wasn't attached (such as skin and hair).

A recent interview also revealed a (rather gross) origin of the idea out-of-universe: DEMOLITION MAN Screenwriter Reveals "Three Seashells" Origin.

Laurel
  • 22,998
  • 4
  • 81
  • 114
Tango
  • 107,123
  • 86
  • 479
  • 752
  • 3
    Wow, this is a way more comprehensive answer than I imagined. – Frank Pierce Nov 04 '11 at 20:10
  • 29
    Also, at the risk of being even more crude, I feel that I have to add that I would certainly have no need of an implement to extract such matter if all of the restaurants in the world were Taco Bell. – Frank Pierce Nov 04 '11 at 20:17
  • 1
    Yeah, sometimes I think search engines now allow us to know too much. But I still don't know how the shells were supposed to be sanitized and cleaned between uses. – Tango Nov 04 '11 at 20:17
  • Indeed :) I like to save these kinds of questions for Fridays. This kind of silliness really feels like a weekend thing to me! – Frank Pierce Nov 04 '11 at 20:35
  • I still say he was talking out of his...seashells. – Jeff Nov 05 '11 at 00:11
  • 3
    They borrowed the idea from the Flintstones. Each one has a big ol' fly inside to keep it tidy. – Major Stackings May 15 '12 at 00:37
  • 4
    @MajorStackings: Uh, thanks....Brain bleach, please? – Tango May 15 '12 at 02:12
  • Lol. I don't remember anything like seashells in Brave New World. – VISQL May 15 '12 at 18:41
  • I have a feeling the explanation was originally closer to something we all might imagine, but that the answer given was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, in response to the multitude of questions on the subject. – K-H-W Jul 03 '12 at 15:09
  • 4
    Reusable seashells?! Yuck. I thought the shells were controls. One for soap, one for rinse and one for air dry. – Kyle Jones Mar 29 '13 at 04:14
  • @KyleJones: My original guess was that it might have something to do with static electricity - that it might use some kind of charge to break up the cohesion in some way so everything just fell into the water. I was extremely disappointed when I saw the real explanation. – Tango Mar 29 '13 at 18:00
  • @K-H-W For the record, I also suspect that Stallone was either joking or had been told a joke by the writers. – Valorum Jan 07 '15 at 17:04
  • 1
    @Richard - Oh, I agree; I suspect the writers made the joke, and told it to him. If for no other reason than that they look like metal seashells, and don't seem to have an obvious replacement method (via the image we see.) – K-H-W Jan 07 '15 at 17:16
  • I like to think that the seashells aren't supposed to have an explanation that's available to us, and that is what makes it funny. The explanation given here is to make sure you regret trying to ruin the joke by asking about it. – Misha R Jan 09 '20 at 07:27
  • @MishaR: I agree. Once you know this explanation, you'd really rather you didn't. – Tango Jan 10 '20 at 15:46
  • If you dispose the seashells, I don't see how they are any better than TP. Maybe put them into a disinfectant bin to be thoroughly cleansed for re-use. – user3015682 Mar 18 '20 at 22:48
22

At December 2014, Daniel Waters (one of the screenplay writers of the movie) was asked about the seashells in Demolition Man and gave a decent reply: (warning: graphic language used!)

"There's a scene where Stallone has to use a restroom. I'm trying to come up with futuristic things you'd find in there. I was having trouble, so I called my buddy, another screenwriter across town, asked him if he had any ideas. Ironically enough that guy was taking a dump when he answered the phone, looked around his bathroom and said 'I have a bag of seashells on my toilet as a decoration?' I said 'Okay, I'll make something out of that'".

source

So, to sum this up nicely: the reason why seashells are used, and not something else, has two levels:

  1. The writer has a friend who had (maybe still have) a bag of seashells on his toilet as a decoration.
  2. When the writer called that friend to ask for ideas about future things in toilets, he was just using the toilets, thus the seashells caught his attention and he mentioned them.

Without any of those, we would have most likely gotten some boring thing like fancy bidet, which would be the obvious choice and wouldn't have raised any questions or discussions. :)

Shadow Wizard Love Zelda
  • 1,413
  • 2
  • 12
  • 24
  • "taking a dump" is "graphic language"? – OrangeDog Aug 26 '22 at 16:56
  • @OrangeDog for me it is, yes. And not something I'd expect an SE answer to contain, hence the warning. – Shadow Wizard Love Zelda Aug 26 '22 at 16:59
  • https://twitter.com/Karaszewski/status/1711404251497533603?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1711404251497533603%7Ctwgr%5Ee126db2eb1eb59ddce8881c6065822ffbe82cd1b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgizmodo.com%2Fembed%2Finset%2Fiframe%3Fid%3Dtwitter-1711404251497533603autosize%3D1 – Valorum Oct 12 '23 at 10:36