Demolition Man: the origins of the three sea shells revealed

It's not quite a mystery solved, but screenwriter Daniel Waters has explained where Demolition Man's three sea shells came from...



There's an argument that suggests the closest Sylvester Stallone ever really came to playing Judge Dredd wasn't in the 1995 film of the same name, but in his earlier sci-fi action film, Demolition Man. It's not a brilliant argument, but it's an argument nonetheless.

We've an awful lot of time for Demolition Man, which co-starred Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock and the late Nigel Hawthorne (a man who was less of a fan of the movie, using it as a stepping stone to get The Madness Of King George made). But one of the residing mysteries of it centres on, well, the toilet. More specifically, the three sea shells that have replaced toilet paper in the future.

Whilst we're no closer to working out how the three sea shells work, we do now know where the idea came from. They were the creation of screenwriter Daniel Waters, and at a recent Q&A, he was asked about them.

And his paraphrased reply? "I won't tell you the actual secret, but I'll tell you where it came from", he told the crowd after a screening of The Adventures Of Ford Farlaine.

"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'".

And that, friends, is that. It's not quite a mystery solved, but it's a step in the right direction...

OK, this may be bordering on the grotesque, but the way it was explained to me by the writer is you hold two seashells like chopsticks, pull gently and scrape what’s left with the third. You asked for it…. Be careful what you ask for, sorry.