As we all know, private detectives can have bad guys gunning for them. And since there’s a movie called The Big Sleep, I thought it might make for a fun sleep aid ad. And since Intermezzo is being marketed to help people fall back asleep after being woken up in the middle of the night, I thought it might make for a good scenario, seeing as how in The Maltese Falcon, some character is said to sleep with crumpled up newspapers around his bed just in case someone tries to sneak up on him while he’s sleeping. So here’s how this commercial would work:
It is during the investigation of some dastardly case, and Philip Marlowe is in need of getting some sleep, but he knows some guys are after him. So he puts crumpled up newspapers around his bed and booby-traps all his doors and windows to make loud noises of they’re disturbed. Well, a little while after he falls asleep, some nefarious malefactors appear to bump him off this mortal coil while he sleeps upon his mattress coils, but as they try to sneak in, they trip his traps, producing a loud racket, waking up our heroic gumshoe. Well, once aroused from his slumber, our stalwart hero grabs his gun from under his pillow and pops off a few rounds into the villains, saving himself from an even bigger sleep. And so the cops come and clean up the scene, but after they leave, he can’t get back to sleep, so he takes an Intermezzo, and he is finally able to get the big sleep he needs to brave the danger and solve the case.
But you know, perhaps this is too complicated, and the idea of using The Big Sleep movie for an ad would work better for a sleep aid that just konks you out when you’re pooped but can’t sleep because you’re rattled. And so in this version, it is directly after the events of the movie The Big Sleep, where Philip Marlowe solved the case and had a shootout with the bad guys, killing them. Well, after all this, he kisses Lauren Bacall goodnight, and he goes home exhausted, ready for some badly-needed sleep. Oh, but he’s still so rattled and pumped full of adrenaline from the shootout that he can’t fall asleep. And so he takes a (whatever brand of sleeping pharmaceutical: it can’t be over the counter, because those don’t work in such cases, and Intermezzo is being marketed as a go-back-to-sleep-after-you’ve-been-woken-up medication, so maybe Lunesta instead this time?), and finally he gets the big sleep he needs to recuperate from the gritty hardboiledness of the case, and get the strength he needs for the next case, as well as his blossoming romance with Lauren Bacall’s character: Mrs. Rutledge. And this is why the story is really called The Big Sleep: because he needed a big sleep after such a tough job. And so Lunesta is how you get your happy Hollywood ending when you need a good night’s big sleep and you just can’t fall asleep from feeling anxious and rattled.
