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PHONE BOOTH

PHONE BOOTH
By Larry Cohen

Reviewed by: Christopher Wehner

WARNING: SPOILERS!

(4/26/02)

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NOTE: The screenplays we review are often in development and may experience many rewrites, some could end up being completely different than what is reviewed here. It is our hope that our reviews generate more interest in the film. Thank you.

Larry Cohen's script has received a lot hype and praise. So when I picked up the script to review it I had high expectations. Cohen's breezy 97-page suspense-thriller was an incredibly fast read. His writing style reminded me a lot of David Koepp's The Panic Room, though Phone Booth doesn't move near as quickly. However, it's clearly the prose of a good screenwriter.

Phone Booth centers on Stuart ("Stu") Shepard, a "snappily dressed" person of shallow character, but well groomed. He's a sleaze ball. He's a PR guy, a media consultant of sorts. According to Stu, "[I] plant items in the paper and on the tube. More important sometimes, keep stuff out." He doesn't have time for the little people. He's a mover and a shaker.

He's also cheating on his wife, which is where the phone booth part comes in. He uses the same phone booth almost every day to call his girlfriend. Though he has a cell phone, he uses the pay phone to avoid paper trails as his wife (Kelly) is extremely paranoid due to her last husband cheating on her. She's unfortunately just one of those girls who attracts bad husbands.

Stu has just finished his call to arrange a meeting with his girlfriend, and is about to leave the booth when the phone rings. He answers it.

"Don't even think about leaving that booth."

"What?"

"Stay exactly where you are and listen carefully."

Though it doesn't develop fast enough, Stu is eventually convinced he'd better not leave the booth. First his "Mystery Caller" calls back the girlfriend and messes with her while Stu listens, powerless to intervene. Next a phone call to Stu's wife. Stu pleads with the Mystery Caller to leave her out of it, but to no avail. But this time he forces Stu to talk to her and cancel their lunch together, among other things. (It was going to be lunch with the wife and dinner and sex with the girlfriend for Stu.)

What I liked about the script is that it takes some chances. First, having the protagonist be thoroughly unlikable in the beginning is a bold move. The guy plays people, that's his job. Only he can't let it go and he plays with the lives of the people closest to him, like his wife. You loathe this guy at first. Second, almost the entire story takes place in or around the phone booth. That's an interesting premise and risky. It's risky because how do you keep your audience's attention for almost 2 hours when all of the action takes place in such a confined area? David Koepp's Panic Room is similar in this regard as the action takes place in a home, and for a suspense-thriller that's tough to pull off. Now take it down several notches and have all the action take place in a phone booth. Stu's character is nicely realized and has a clearly recognizable character arc that serve the story well. At first he doesn't seem to care about much of anything, and by the end he has been humbled and is clearly a changed man. I applaud the script for this.

However, the script ultimately fails because there were several things that will distract the audience immensely along the way.

First distraction: During the opening sequence a narrator goes on and on about phone booths, and how many there are in New York, and then we focus in on the one that Stu will be trapped in. We're told at least "100 calls a day" from that phone booth alone. I wasn't sure what the connection was to the story, and as I thought about it, page after page, I was just frustrated with it. Also, there's supposed to be 100 people using this phone booth every day. Guess how many come up to the booth while Stu is in it all day? Three, and only one of them gets pissed off. And by the time the story was over, I still haven't figured out the relevance of the opening narrative to the rest of it.

Second distraction: Attention span, you're going to have people incredibly board. As the script stands now, the first act doesn't work. I needed to feel more afraid for Stu, and earlier in the script. Conflict is hard to come by early on in the story, and when you have all the action taking place in a phone booth, it places heavy restrictions on a writer's creative ability. Creating more conflict and making sure the audience feels and understands the true danger Stu is in has to be upgraded from this draft script. Towards the end of the story, Stu is surrounded by police and the Mystery Caller shoots someone, and of course the police think Stu did it---that's when I was truly afraid for Stu. Unfortunately, this action comes way too late in the script. Your audience is gone by then. Like I said in the beginning, this script takes serious risks in the story and I commend Cohen for that. Not a lot of writers are willing to take these kinds of risks.

Third distraction: Plausibility, or as Catherine Tramell says in Basic Instinct, "It's called suspension of disbelief." As screenwriters our job is to present the story in such a way that the audience willingly suspends its disbelief. After all, it's a movie and it's not real. But that's why we go to movies. We want to be swept away to another place. Film is a visceral medium. The screenwriter must not break this rule. First of all, I don't think Stu, as he is presented in those first 10 pages, would have even answered the phone. But for our discussion here, lets assume he would. When the Mystery Caller tells him, "Don't even think about leaving that booth," I could see Stu saying, "fuck you" and hanging up. But then we're back to having no movie again, which is really a problem for this script. Stu does of course stay on the line, his curiosity gets the better of him. He says a few things and then is ready to hang up, but the Mystery Caller tells him, "Love the gray suit." Stu is taken back by this. It's obvious that this psycho is watching him from a nearby high rise apartment. Stu can't tell from where as they're all over the place.

Now the Mystery Caller starts messing with Stu. Calling his girlfriend and making Stu call his wife. Once again, to make a guy endure this you've got to have motivation for him, and there isn't enough motivation at this point. All this guy so far has proven is that he could mess up Stu's fling and get him in trouble with his wife. Stu tells the guy that he's ruining his life, and that he should leave his wife out of it. We do finally realize he does still love her. This gets us connected with Stu's character, which is important. Kelly then tells him she wants to talk to him about something, but can't tell him what. Which seems to imply that she already suspects his involvement, or has been told about the girlfriend by the Mystery Caller. So what little motivation Stu had early on, is now gone. Stu should feel his life is in danger sooner in the story. But up to this point that kind of danger has not materialized.

It's not until over 30 pages into the script when the stakes are truly raised. Stu threatens to leave the booth and is told by the Mystery Caller that there is a high power rifle aimed at him. And then for effect the little red laser dot appears on Stu's body. He has been in the scope the whole time. This is where the story picks it up, and it's about time.

Fourth and final distraction: The Mystery Caller. Who is this guy? We never get a real explanation for why he does this to Stu, or anyone. At one point Stu asks "why me?" The Mystery Caller tells him:

"For plenty of reasons For years I've hated people hanging up on me. Ex-girlfriends Women I didn't even know I worked for a month getting people to switch to MCI"

Not a very imaginative explanation. This did not help the resolution of the story as there really isn't any closure. The central question of the story is never answered. That's a serious flaw. In real life even psychotics have motivation. As the script stands now, you'll leave the theater feeling cheated. What to do? I have some thoughts: make the Mystery Caller/Sniper an ex-boyfriend of Kelly, Stu's wife. That would provide for some motivation and would open up a lot in terms of possible storylines. Another idea, have this all be a setup by Stu's current girlfriend for money. Another manageable way to offer some motivation and add another element to the narrative. That would be interesting.

This script has a lot promise, and if subsequent rewrites have fixed these problems, it could work out to be a very popular and satisfying movie. The premise on the surface does seem very "Hitchcockian." So as you can imagine, the story is being compared to Hitchcock's Rear Window, which makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up a bit. Not so much because this will be an inferior movie, which is quite obvious. But the fact that it is being compared thematically to Rear Window is incorrect. First, you can't compare them conceptually. The idea that there is a connection between them because both stories appear to take place in an isolated area. In Rear Window, all of the action is happening outside the window (the apartment is more of an observatory.). In Phone Booth, it's all happening to a single person inside the phone booth, big difference. Hitchcock would never have allowed himself to be hamstrung by such creative limitations.

One final thought. This story really lends itself to a nice, medium budget independent film where I think it would better find an audience. As an independent film with a couple million-dollar budget, the story would be handled much differently. The approach would be more character-driven, which might take care of some of the issues I had with the script.

Final question: How do you market this film? You'll have to lie about it. You can't even hint to people in the trailer that the entire movie takes place in a phone booth. I mean, do you want to spend two hours in Movie Theater watching a guy in a phone booth? I don't care what they have him doing.

Movie Release date: Nov 15, 2002

-- Chris

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