But before Alice can begin, the film is interrupted by "interview" footage from an ex-obscene phone caller. Thus begins a manic quest to call every John Smith in the phone book. While reluctant, the mysterious, trenchcoated figure eventually agrees to meet in the flesh, provided she can track him down.
#Telephone book full#
The audience (to protect our fragile minds) is spared full exposure to his call through the careful use of sound editing and subtitles, but Alice is so enamored that, when he calls back later, she demands to see him in person. Her idleness is interrupted by a call from John Smith, a self proclaimed master of the obscene telephone call, who seduces her with smooth talk of unorthodox applications for hot fudge sundaes. The bubbly, helium-voiced Alice (Sarah Kennedy) could quite possibly be the physical embodiment of cuteness, especially while wearing the world's largest goggles and little else. The opening quickly establishes a style and mood somewhere between Soviet Montage and a 16mm student film, (minimal camera movement, clever editing) as a young woman rolls around on an American flag bedspread in a loft apartment wallpapered with pornography. By the midway point, the director could have started splicing in footage of the Nuremberg trials reenacted with Martians and I wouldn't have been surprised. Not that the "plot" is full of twists and turns, or even makes much in the way of sense it just adds another couple layers of weird to the proceedings. So if you take my word for its awesomeness, and feel like there is a strong chance you might track down your own copy, then read ahead with caution.
#Telephone book movie#
Normally I make no bones about spoilers, but after seeing this film with no foreknowledge other than the tagline/premise, half the fun was wondering what the hell the movie was going to do next. Other than that, it is as though The Telephone Book was created in a vacuum (or was at least dropped from the heavens by magical pixies/extraterrestrials). (Despite the flick's obscurity, it is very probable that at least one of the actors will seem vaguely familiar to you.) The writer/director, Nelson Lyon, is particularly mysterious all I know is that he was a writer on the '81-82 season of SNL, and that he was one of the people consuming epic amounts of cocaine with John Belushi on the night of his death. There is a severe dearth of information floating around online most of what I have managed to glean comes from the cast members' surprisingly long IMDB pages. I had a similar reaction during the end credits of The Telephone Book, but I can't stay mad at the myself or the universe, because very few members of said universe have even heard of the film, let alone tracked down a copy. My first reaction to reading Watchmen (after the first movie trailer, like a big poseur) was: "How come nobody told me this was the best comic ever?!?!"
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