"Fifteen minutes later we had our first taste of whiskey
There was uncles givin' lectures on ancient Irish hist'ry
The men all started tellin' jokes and the women, they got frisky
By five o'clock in the evenin' every bastard there was pisky!"
There was uncles givin' lectures on ancient Irish hist'ry
The men all started tellin' jokes and the women, they got frisky
By five o'clock in the evenin' every bastard there was pisky!"
— The Pogues, "Body of an American"
Several characters get drunk, wasted and frisky over the course of a night, often portrayed in alternating slow and fast motion at wild camera angles, with heavy dance music over the top. Dizzy Cam, Jitter Cam and Facecam will be much in evidence. Someone free-pouring spirits into/onto himself or someone else is obligatory, alongside other assorted Alcohol-Induced Idiocy. Most likely there will be stronger drugs involved as well, which may be explicitly shown or just implied.
Sometimes shown as a still-frames montage, perhaps imitating either the Missing Time such parties tend to leave one with the following morning, or the effect of browsing a Facebook photo album.
A trendy modern variation on Drunken Montage;
- Similarities: Jitter Cam, Dutch Angle, simulation of Beer Goggles, ambiguous passing of time, disorientation.
- Differences: Drunken Montage is when a character is drinking alone, lonely and depressed; Binge Montage features hordes of other people and is, if not happy, at least hedonistic and fun.
See Wild Teen Party and A Party, Also Known as an Orgy, common settings for the technique. For a montage where one pigs out rather than get drunk, see Gluttony Montage.
Examples:
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Advertising
- The "Don't Turn a Night Out into a Nightmare" series of Australian PSAs make heavy use of this.
Comic Books
- Gets used in the Finder story "Voice" when Rachel gatecrashes an Ascian wake, gets drunk and high, and is implied to end up having group sex with several men.
Film — Animation
- The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie uses ice cream for a Drunk on Milk variant.
Film — Live Action
- In 68 Kill, Monica and her gang binge on drugs and alcohol while they torture Chip preparatory to killing him. The binge is seen through Chip's bleary eyes as he passes in and out of consciousness.
- In Adele Hasn't Had Her Dinner Yet, when Nick Carter (America's Greatest Detective Famed in Story) arrives in Prague, he wants to go sights-seeing and get to known the city. Police commissioner Ledvina shows him Charles Bridge and other sights and tells him the history; however, they end up touring pubs in a beer drinking montage which ends early in the morning.
- In Angels with Dirty Faces, the last bit of the gangster protagonist's introductory montage shows his decadence past-times like drinking champagne with beautiful women and attending fabulous casinos. We also see him blowing up storefronts with Molotov cocktails, just so you know how he affords such luxuries.
- Aquaman (2018). Some tough-looking bikers start hassling Arthur Curry in a bar, but instead of the expected Bar Brawl it turns out they're fans of Aquaman who just want to take some selfies with him. Their photos are then shown in a montage. Arthur at first looks unimpressed but as he shares some beers with them, he gets progressively happier with each photo.
- Beyond the Valley of the Dolls has one set to The Sorcerer's Apprentice (!).
- The sequel to The Blair Witch Project features a group of characters that get drunk, wasted and frisky over the course of a night, portrayed in alternating slow and fast motion at wild camera angles, with heavy dance music over the top. Dizzy Cam, Jitter Cam and Facecam are much in evidence. Someone free-pours spirits into/onto oneself and someone else, alongside other assorted Alcohol-Induced Idiocy. There are stronger drugs involved as well. This leads to Missing Time and lots of What Did I Do Last Night?.
- Garden State combines this with Alone in a Crowd, as a spaced out Zach Braff sits stationary on a couch and the party carries on around him.
- The Hangover: One of the characters finds their phone, with pictures on it from the previous night that they can't remember. It's shown while the end credits play.
- The bar scene in The Heat, in which the uptight Ashburn lets her hair down and the Odd Couple finally forge a connection.
- High and Tight opens with a home movie depicting a Halloween party - with everyone getting steadily drunker as the clips go on.
- In Kid Detective 2002, Abe's drug and alcohol use spirals out of control in the middle of the movie when he realizes that he can't solve the case and really is the washed-up failure that other people think he is.
- Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets is possibly the Trope Maker.
- The bullet time bar montage (set to Imma Be) in The Other Guys is awesome. An unusual version — Rather than a Time-Compression Montage, there's a fake continuous shot in which the camera weaves through the slow-mo antics going on over the course of the evening (including a worrying number of incidences of Juggling Loaded Guns).
- Happens in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, with disastrous results.
- The film version of Percy Jackson featured this when the titular character and friends became ensnared by the Lotus-Eaters, only with lotuses in place of drugs.
- This trope is used heavily throughout Requiem for a Dream as drug use/addiction is central to the film's plot.
- The "pikey funeral" in Snatch., and the premature heist celebration in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. Guy Ritchie likes this one.
- Human Traffic, along with several other 1990s rave movies.
- There's a great one in The Salton Sea.
- The bachelor party in Very Bad Things. A bridegroom, Kyle, and four middle-class jock friends check into a Las Vegas hotel, and proceed to whoop it up on booze and cocaine. The mood of piggish debauchery suddenly goes very sober when their romp ends with a call-girl dead on the bathroom floor.
- Parodied, like everything else, in Wet Hot American Summer. Several of the teenage camp counselors get a ride into town with their boss and the musical montage kicks off: first they are sneaking some cigarettes, then buying some beer, then weed, and before long they (and their boss) are shooting up heroin and smoking crack in a dilapidated house full of junkies. The next cut has them returning to the summer camp none the worse for wear:
J.J.: "It's nice to get into town, even it's only for a half hour!"
Live Action TV
- Breaking Bad had Jesse taking the money Walt gave him to buy an RV, and spending it all on strippers.
- In a later episode, he deals with committing his first murder by throwing a three-day drugs-and-booze orgy.
- In the second episode of Broad City, Abbi smokes pot in a dentist's bathroom, which leads to one of this.
- One episode of Community has a montage of Jeff and Abed getting drunk, complete with odd costume switches and Breakfast Club style dancing.
- Cougartown once featured a binge Photo Montage.
- Misfits: Nathan and Ruth enjoy one of these in the second episode, with the two of them getting completely smashed on everything vaguely alcoholic left in the community centre, trying on costumes in the supply cupboards, and clowning around in wheelchairs.
- On Murdoch Mysteries, Constable George Crabtree's role in one investigation (that happens to take place in his hometown) is to get drunk with locals so that they can steal him a part of a treasure map and expose themselves to Detective Murdoch. George drinks, dances, sings and is forced to kiss a fish. Good times.
- In Parks and Recreation Season 3, the episode called "The Fight" where all the Parks employees get drunk on Snake Juice. It also features Ron Swanson doing a completely hilarious dance
.
- Phoneshop portrayed a Klatchian Coffee binge this way, with the salesmen hypercaffeinating themselves in order to hit a sales target.
- Subverted in Sherlock. Sherlock takes John out on his stag night, and despite his meticulous planning both end up drinking too much. We get this trope, ending in both of them collapsed in a heap on the stairs at 221b Baker Street - only for Mrs. Hudson to wander past and exclaim that they've only been out for two hours.
- One of the Cold Opens on Six Feet Under involved a montage of a young actress at a movie opening ingesting a truly epic amount of cocaine over the course of the evening. Given the show, it was not terribly shocking how that ended for her.
- Skins, especially the (in)famous trailers for it.
- The episode of Spaced where Tim and Daisy go out for the evening (and get into a finger-gunfight with a bunch of yobs).
- Several times in Threesome, despite the fact that it was one such binge that led to the awkward pregnancy that gives the series its premise, and the characters all swore to give up drink and drugs as a result.
- Parodied in Norwegian 80s dramedy Våre Beste År, where two preteen boys go on a wild soda binge after the following exchange:
Preben: You've never had Coke?Ole Martin: My mom says it's toxic.Preben: But what do you even drink?Ole Martin: ...water?Preben: Water tastes like toe jam.
- Happens several times on The Windsors, usually with Harry being the one partying. One occasion has him starting the party in England, but somehow waking up in a Latvian mental institution. Another has him and Pippa pouring shots into their eyes and playing Russian Roulette.
- During the episode "Dry Guys" of Workaholics, the guys take a break from drinking, and realize some of their underlying, non-substance abuse issues. However, this is all 'too real' for them, and after going through a Sober Montage earlier in the episode (where everything they do seems extra stupid/creepy in the sober light of day), at the end they go through a montage of the same kind of stuff, only now that they're drunk again, its all a lot of fun.
- In a later episode of The Wonder Years Kevin is supposed to get with a girl he met at wedding with a bottle of champagne he managed to score from Wayne, but she never shows up. So he ends up sitting there with the champagne bottle, "waiting... pouring... sipping... slurping... guzzling... chugging... sprawling..." as "How Dry I Am" plays in the background. By the end of the montage, Kevin is three sheets to the wind, and examining his hand.
Music
- "One Night In Hackney" by Dynamo City. After the narrator takes some extacy and ketamine:
So I took it, and then I took some cocaine, and then some speed,
And then some acid and then I drank 15 cans of stella
15 CANS OF STELLA
Music Videos
- This music video for Jonathan Coulton's song I Feel Fantastic includes a Binge Montage when he's stood up by his date, culminating in him falling into his bed. Though he's not just drunk, he's also hopped up on a variety of different pills.
Video Games
- Alan Wake II: The first time Alan meets the Filmmaker in person, the Filmmaker launches the two of them into a flashback that combines both a Binge and a Good-Times Montage, showing how they created the novel that Alan has no memory of writing, but also partying, dancing, drinking excessive amounts of liquor, snorting cocaine, and Alan puking his guts up in the toilet.
- The first time you let Johnny Silverhand have control of your body in Cyberpunk 2077 in order to talk to Rogue, he proceeds to go on an all-night bender involving lots of booze, sex and drugs, and which even has him wrecking a car.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda: At a party hosted by Sloane Kelly, Ryder can choose to partake of some of the bartender's special brew, a mix of ryncol (krogan booze, radioactive and goes through humans "like ground glass") and angaran wine (slow to kick in, but when it does...). What follows is a cutscene of Ryder making a fool of themselves, until the booze wears off.
- In Rock Band 3, once your band reaches a certain level of fame you'll be treated to a cutscene of them attending a party on the roof of a skyscraper. The video depicts them uncorking a bottle of champagne, acting intoxicated while partying, and it ends the next morning with them all passed out.
Webcomics
- Questionable Content #1521.
- Schlock Mercenary: The 'still-frame' montage version; Schlock gets drunk after a wedding, and the ship's doctor openly wonders how. Given that at one point he cleaned out a base's PX/supply store, including "concentrated solvent" and the only effect was a misdemeanor "distribution of narcotics" charge... when he burped next to a squad mate... It's a good question.
- In Tiger, Tiger, the scene at The Forty Elephants ends like this, with the night dissolving into a blurry montage of Ludovica drinking and partying with Honeyfoot and the waitresses. This includes a moment where one of them kisses Ludo.
- The first season finale of The Word Weary.
Web Original
- Frame by Frame analyses a binge montage from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in this episode.
Web Video
- Lawn Justice: What do three 27-year-olds do with fifty bucks? Body shots, twerking, and making out with random passers-by, apparently.
Western Animation
- Seen several times in "The Ghost", an episode of The Amazing World of Gumball: Each time Carrie possesses Gumball's body, she takes it on an eating rampage, with Gumball waking up the morning after in a pile of leftovers. The scenes themselves are a parody of the music video for The Prodigy’s "Smack My Bitch Up".
- Archer, finding out he has cancer, uses it to guilt Woodhouse out of tickets to a Vegas vacation he'd planned all year with his brother. Cut to Archer and Woodhouse's brother in a still-picture montage of a serious Vegas bender.
- Futurama: Bender in the short story where he is turned human. At one point, he wanders out of the bar at closing time to enter a doughnut shop as it opens. He then leaves the doughnut shop at closing time and heads back to the bar. This time with two sexy bakers in tow.
- Life's a Zoo: In "Self Helpless", Jake binges himself on the other houseguests' vices that had been taken away from them, and there's a sequence in which he rapidly goes back-and-forth between chugging coffee, cigarettes, booze, and donuts. He ends up hospitalized, and almost dies (he gets better, though).
Chi Chi: Oh no, he totally crazy.
- One of these scenes was storyboarded for an unproduced episode of Mission Hill on which Andy, Jim and a coworker go on a tequila binge. Notable is Jim inexplicably changing into a shirt that reads "One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor" halfway through the montage. A tequila binge that doesn't result in inexplicable clothing exchange is no tequila binge at all...
- Metalocalypse:
- Pickles, unsurprisingly, has one of these in the episode "Hateredy".
- The whole band does in "Dethhealth" - during a vacation they took to get clean for a physical.
Ofdensen: Well, judging by the way you look, and smell, I'd say you spent the whole week binge-drinking and doing drugs.
Nathan: Ummm... oops?
- The Milky Way: Much of the cartoon is this, as the kittens go to town binging on milk up in the Milky Way.
- Krusty did this once in The Simpsons (of course). Especially one episode where he was booed off a comedy routine for his awful, dated jokes. Cue montage where he drinks at various bars from mugs, a wineskin, glass slippers, leather boots, and the Stanley Cup.
Krusty: I'm going on the bender to end all benders.
- Also spoofed when Bart and Milhouse overdosed on Apu's super-concentrated Squishees, complete with a What Did I Do Last Night? followup.
- Happened at least once in Tom And Jerry, namely when Jerry gets drunk during a fight between Tom and another cat that had a bottle of champagne dropping its contents on the mouse.