Phone Booth (film)
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| Phone Booth | |
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 Phone Booth film poster |
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| Directed by | Joel Schumacher |
| Produced by | Gil Netter, David Zucker |
| Written by | Larry Cohen |
| Starring | Colin Farrell Forest Whitaker Kiefer Sutherland Katie Holmes Radha Mitchell |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | September 10, 2002 |
| Running time | 81 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$ 10,000,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
Phone Booth is a 2002 movie about a man who is trapped in a telephone booth by a sniper. It stars Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, Radha Mitchell and Katie Holmes, and was directed by Joel Schumacher. The film was originally scheduled to be released in the fall of 2002, but was delayed until April 4, 2003 due to the Beltway sniper attacks.
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[edit] Plot
The movie starts with an overview of New York City, and the narrator tells us of all the phone calls made there every day. Enter Stu Shepard (Farrell), an arrogant, selfish, lying, foul-mouthed publicist who cheats on his wife (Mitchell). Every day after work he calls his girlfriend, Pam (Holmes) from the phone booth between 53rd and 8th. This day, for some reason, a pizza guy tries to deliver him a pizza while he's in the booth. Stu rudely dismisses him; telling him to "fuck off", and the pizza guy walks away.
Stu calls Pam, an actress who he pretends to be making a star out off—but he's in fact only interested in sleeping with her. Stu says that he'd love her to come over to the hotel, so he can introduce her to some important people there. She says she doesn't have time. After the phone call, the phone rings. Without thinking, Stu puts the phone to his ear.
In the other end of the phone is a man (Sutherland) who says that he should've accepted the pizza, and also that he should not leave the booth. When Stu asks who it is, the man says "Someone who enjoys watching you". Stu soon realizes that the man he's talking to can see him. He must be in one of the hundreds of windows around him. The man says that he'll say hi to his wife Kelly from him, then hangs up. The phone soon rings again—it's the same man. He tells Stu that he must tell Kelly and Pam the truth; that he's cheating. The man calls Pam and puts Stu on speaker phone, and tells her that Stu is married, that he doesn't want anything with Pam except to sleep with her. He then tells Stu to call his wife and tell her the truth. An angry Stu does so.
His wife, Kelly, says that she just got a call from a guy who said he'd call her from a booth to tell her something important. Stu is distracted by two prostitutes who want to use the phone. He becomes so confused that he finally hangs up on his wife and yells to the hookers to "get the fuck outta here". He then tells the man he's had enough—only to learn that if he hangs up, the man will shoot him with his sniper rifle. Stu doesn't believe him, but when the man cocks his gun, he knows he's serious. Stu gets scared, and warns him that if he shoots, there'll be cops all over the place. However, the sniper proves him to be wrong by shooting a toy robot next to the booth. No one notices.
The whole situation gets even worse when the hookers tell their pimp, Leon, to get rid of Stu. Leon tries to ask Stu nicely to step out of the booth, but the terrified Stu refuses. It ends with Leon attacking Stu—and gettting shot in the back by the sniper. He soon dies, and shortly afterwards the police arrives. Everyone thinks that Stu is responsible. Captain Ed Ramey (Whitaker) tries to make Stu step out of the booth, but Stu refuses. Ramey then asks him who he's talking to, and Stu answers "My psychiatrist". The police thinks that Stu is armed, and aim at him with their weapons. Soon, newsreporters arrive, and the sniper says that Stu should be glad for all the attention he's getting.
Soon, Kelly arrives, and the sniper makes him confess to her about his infidelity. Then Pam shows up, and the sniper says that one of them can take Stu's place. Stu pleads with the sniper, and manages to secretly inform Captain Ramey of his situation by calling with his cellphone to call his wife on her cellphone. She hands the phone to Ramey, who hears Stu making conversa- tion with the sniper—who soon makes Stu confessall the sins he's ever made in front of all the people around him.
Afterwards, the police, who've been trying to trace the call, finally find the sniper. Ramey manages to tell Stu through a cryptic message that they have done so. Stu triumphantically informs the sniper that the cops are coming to kill him, but then the sniper says that if that's true, he has to take someone with him. He chooses Kelly, but Stu picks out a gun from the cealing panel of the booth, that the sniper had placed their earlier, runs out of the booth and yells "It's me you want!". A cop shoots him with a rubber bullet at the same time as the police officers reach the hotel room where the sniper is. There they find a corpse. It's the pizza guy that tried to deliver Stu some pizza at the start of he film. Apparently, he was the sniper all along, but he committed suicide when he heard the cops coming.
When Stu is falling asleep in an ambulance minutes later due to a morphine dose, a man in a coat walks up to him, says that he's sorry for the pizza guy, and warns Stu that if his new-found honesty does not last he'll be hearing from him. Then the sniper walks away.
[edit] Trivia
- The film is set in real-time, so the timespan in which the film takes place is as long as it takes to watch it, much like the television series 24, which also stars Kiefer Sutherland.
- The principal photography on the film was completed in 10 days, with an additional 2 days of establishing shots, pick-ups and re-shoots.
- Even though the film is set in New York City, it was filmed in downtown Los Angeles (at Fifth Street, between Broadway Street and Spring Street). This is made evident by the LACMTA buses periodically driving by.
- The sniper's rifle, shown only for an instant at the end, is an Accuracy International AE. The scope the sniper uses is a Hensholdt scope with illuminated mil-dot cross hair reticle.
- The location of the phone is said in the movie to be at West 53 Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan.
- Though the movie claims that this phone booth was the last one in New York City and was due for replacement by a telephone kiosk, there are in fact several others still functioning in Manhattan.
- Larry Cohen originally pitched the concept of a film that takes place entirely within a phone booth to Alfred Hitchcock in the 1960s. Hitchcock liked the idea, but he and Cohen were unable to figure out a plot reason for keeping the film confined to a booth and hence Hitchcock never made the idea into a film. Cohen picked the idea up again in the late 1990s when the idea of the sniper came to him.
- Three OBEY Giant posters can be seen on the wall behind and to the left of the phone booth.
- During the movie, the sniper warns Stu not to move, he says that "You can be shot forty-one times just for pulling out your wallet". This is a reference to the killing of Amadou Diallo who matched the description of a serial rapist. The police approached him and he pulled out his wallet. They mistakenly thought it was a gun and shot 41 times between four officers, hitting him 19 times and killing him.
- During the later half of the movie, the sniper reloads his weapon three times without firing.
- The word "fuck" is used 122 times in the movie.
- Ron Eldard was originally cast as the shooter, filming scenes and recording voice over.
- At one point, Jim Carrey was set to star.
- Will Smith was considered for the leading role.
- Michael Bay contemplated directing the project, but couldn't convince screenwriter Cohen to eventually move the action out of the booth. Cohen vehemently refused and Bay left the project.
[edit] Box office
- Budget - US$ 10,000,000
- Total Domestic Grosses - US$ 46,566,212.00
- Total Overseas - US$ 51,270,926.00
- Total Worldwide Grosses - US$ 97,837,138.00
