I’ve wondered for a while why disused phone boxes weren’t being used as ATMs. I wonder no longer. I just came back from South Kensington in London and saw my first in what I think will be a continuing trend. Note that although one side has become an ATM, another side remains a phone.
I am happy to add one of the most iconic films of all time to my blog. I hadn’t realised there was a phone box in the games room of the Overlook Hotel.
The Shining
So this phone box never existed but in another reality (thanks to Phillip K. Dick and ‘The Man in the High Castle’)…
I like the creativity that phone boxes can bring out in scriptwriters.
In Person of Interest (Season 3 Episode 1) we find a new use for the phone box – ring a specific number and the back panels opens to become the door to a dodgy strip joint, frequented by sailors and cops…
Then in Episode 5 a phone box is being used to stash some cassettes…
This shot was used to set the scene in London, in an episode of ‘Bones’ from season 4:
I work/volunteer at the British Museum. Out the front are a few phone boxes and often there will be tourists standing in the open door of the booth getting their photos taken. I don’t know if the phones in the booth work but I think the iconic nature of the boxes is of far more value that the functionality, specifically in a popular tourist location.
Here is a celebrity getting her photo in a phone booth. It works for everyone I guess…
Ok so I understand why I see phone boxes in older tv shows and films, but they are still a feature in many current plots such as The Blacklist (USA), The Code (Australia) and Being Human (USA). You’d be forgiven for thinking that the popularity of the mobile phone would mean that the phone box would disappear from many cultural products, but not so.
The Blacklist (S2)
The Code
Being Human (USA, S3)
The X-Files – The Amazing Maleeni
The X-Files – Trevor
The X-Files – Roadrunners
The X-Files – Surekill
There is an article in the latest ‘Fortean Times’ (Krulos, T. 2014. Heroes in the night. In: Fortean Times, Vol. 314 May 2014, pp.28-35) which discusses the modern phenomenon of Real Life Superheroes (people who dress in the style of a superhero and roam the streets looking to fight crime). What amused me was the coining of the term ‘coming out of the phone booth’ – used to refer to the time when you reveal your lifestyle to your friends and family.
Just saw ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’. Fabulous movie by one of my favourite directors. I really do love Wes Anderson’s way of looking at the world. Anyway there is a lovely shot of a telephone box on stilts, pained with black and yellow zig-zags, in the middle of a snow covered field.
I am currently reading Morrissey’s ‘Autobiogrpahy’ and enjoying it. He has a very descriptive, evocative prose style. p. 179 says…”The realities of each northern day at the turn of the 1980s played out against a hardened backdrop in late repentance, because the north is a separate country – one of wild night landscapes of affectionate affliction. There are no known technological links apart from the telephone box on the corner, and this can always be relied upon to be out of order.”
Mojave Phone Booth
I listen to a podcast called ‘99% Invisible’. It’s an American series I have been onto for a couple of years – although I only listen in spasmodically. Podcast no. 202 is title ‘Mojave Phone Booth’ . Cool.
It has led me to a movie I didn’t know about ‘Mojave Phone Booth’ (2006) and the Wikipedia page on the artefact itself – you guessed it, a phone box in the Mojave desert.
This goes a long way to proving that I am not alone in my fascination for phone boxes.
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Posted in Comment, Geography, Media
Tagged cinema, desert, USA