Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers
For example, Grand pays the actor playing a surgeon in a live television soap opera to deviate from the script, comment in drastic terms on the bad quality of the show, and walk off the set. In another episode, he secretly buys a respectable New York advertising agency, installs a pygmy as its president and has him "scurry about the offices like a squirrel and chatter raucously in his native tongue" in front of all the top executive staff and their prominent clients. In a third, he buys a cosmetics company and launches a big promotional campaign for a new shampoo which, as it turns out in the end, has a very detrimental effect on those who happen to use it. He also shows up at a safari in Africa with three natives carrying a howitzer. Grandīs final adventure takes place on board the S.S. Magic Christian.
McGrathīs film adaptation differs considerably from Southernīs novel. Relocated to 60s London, it also introduces an orphan (Starr) whom Grand picks up in a park and whom, on a whim, he decides to adopt. The movie is usually remembered for its soundtrack by Badfinger, a British rock band promoted by Paul McCartney. McCartney also wrote "Come and Get It", the filmīs most popular song whose lyrics refer to Guy Grandīs schemes of handing out money to strangers if they do as he pleases ("If you want it, here it is, come and get it").