The Big Picture
- Hitchcock struggled to find reason for protagonist to be in phone booth for entire movie.
- Many directors and stars were interested in ‘Phone Booth’ project before Joel Schumacher.
- Despite delays and challenges, ‘Phone Booth’ is an impressive thriller worth a watch.
Not a lot of movies can claim a three-decade development process, but long before Joel Schumacher took the reins of the 2003 single-location thriller Phone Booth, Alfred Hitchcock was trying to make it in the ’60s. When long-time screenwriter and B-movie director Larry Cohen pitched Hitchcock on the idea of a movie set completely in a phone booth, the pair struggled to put together a compelling reason that a protagonist would be stuck for the length of a movie and never got to make the film before the legendary director’s death. But when Cohen came up with a sniper angle, the troubled production was just beginning, cycling through directors and stars to no avail. Despite this, what was eventually put on screen is an impressive thriller with a great cast.
‘Phone Booth’ Was First Pitched to Alfred Hitchcock in the 1960s
There are many things that the Master of Suspense excelled at – casting blondes, being just one example – but if there is a director you want to toy with convention and turn something simple into a great movie, Hitchcock is your man. The simplicity of the idea behind Phone Booth is in many ways its largest hurdle. Putting an actor in a box for the entire runtime (or close to it) requires a skillful hand, so Cohen’s first port of call being Hitchcock is really a no-brainer. He had already made multiple limited location films before Cohen had come up with the idea for a movie set completely in a phone booth, such as Rope in 1948 and both Dial M for Murder and Rear Window in 1954, with Lifeboat from 1944 the truest encapsulation of the concept.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times in early 2003 ahead of Phone Booth’s release, Cohen detailed how he came up with the idea for the film during a lunch with Hitchcock and had gone back and forth with the director about the idea for years, with neither coming up with a good enough reason for the protagonist to be stuck in a phone booth. Unfortunately, Hitchcock died in 1980, a full two decades before the project would be realized, but Cohen did eventually solve the puzzle with a sniper that stops the lead from getting out of the phone booth.
There Were a Lot of Directors and Stars Interested in ‘Phone Booth’
Projects that are in development for as long as Phone Booth will inevitably have gone through a number of different iterations, with the stars and directors that don’t end up making the movie often just as interesting as those that do. Once a movie has hit screens, it can be almost impossible to imagine what the alternate history version would have looked like – even if AI can pump out a Wes AndersonStar Wars trailer – and some of the replacements for star Colin Farrell would have an extremely different vibe. According to Cohen, the possibilities were Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Anthony Hopkins, Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, and Mel Gibson as both star and director. Cohen claims that there are traces of Gibson’s ideas that made it into the final product.
Michael Bay Wanted to Get Rid of the Phone Booth in ‘Phone Booth’
Aside from Gibson, at different times, directors like Steven Spielberg, the Hughes brothers, and Michael Bay were interested before Joel Schumacher finally nailed down the gig – though even with him there were multiple lead actor possibilities. It was the ideas that Bay put forward that caused Cohen the most concern, with him writing that, after decades of trying to figure out the best way to keep the main character stuck in a box, Bay’s first words in a meeting were: “OK, how do we get this thing out of the damn telephone booth?” It’s unclear what this non-phone booth Phone Booth would look like, but it’s hard not to look at Ambulance to see that while Bay was a terrible fit for this particular film, he can be pretty inventive when working within a limited location for a large chunk of a movie.
‘Phone Booth’ Was Further Delayed by a Real-Life Sniper
So, did everything proceed smoothly from this point on? Of course not. The first delay was a strategic one that, in the long run, might have caused more issues than it was worth. Farrell wasn’t the star he is today when he signed on for Phone Booth, with his only notable roles coming in the disappointing Ordinary Decent Criminal (though he’s definitely the best part) and the well-received but little-seen Tigerland, also a Schumacher film. However, with American Outlaws, Hart’s War, and Minority Report in the pipeline, Fox decided to hold the release for a year to allow Farrell’s star to rise, according to Cohen. The first two films disappointed, so it was only Minority Report that gave Phone Booth any kind of boost. The result of all of these delays was that a month before its November 2002 release date, a spree of sniper attacks rocked the D.C. and Maryland area, with seven shot and six killed in just 15 hours. The attacks became national and international news and they continued until late October when the men responsible were arrested. Given the significant plot point of a sniper, it’s hardly surprising that Fox opted to delay the film’s release until the following April.
‘Phone Booth’ Is Still Worth a Watch
Phone Booth isn’t a film that was massive at the time it was released, nor has it become a cult classic, but it was generally well-reviewed and made a tidy profit for a low-budget thriller. The beauty of the movie is that it knows exactly what it’s trying to achieve, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The impressive cast all deliver quality performances, from Farrell credibly breaking down, Kiefer Sutherland’s creepy voice acting, and Forest Whitaker trying to negotiate with what he believes to be a murderer, to Radha Mitchell and Katie Holmes doing good work in limited roles. Ben Foster’s uncredited turn as rapper Big Q is much funnier now that Foster is a bigger name. Schumacher’s direction is a touch odd at times, mostly the opening zoom-in from space, but he creates a taut, effective thriller that keeps you on edge for the entire run time.
