‘Phone Booth’ needs to be Smashed then Reconstructed

At some points Phone Booth is unintentionally a comedy of errors, and other points it is a half-baked thriller of errors. In order for the film to work, it needs to be reconstructed, from the script to the casting. At 81 minutes, the film functions as almost a film short instead of the suspenseful character study it has the potential to be.

Directed by Joel Schumacher who helmed two of the Batman franchise films, the film focuses on fast-talking New York publicist Stu Shepard (played by Colin Farrell), who is supposed to be the everyday asshole. Stu finds himself immediately trapped in a phone booth where he is then forced to examine his asshole life all at the hands of an unseen sniper.

The audience is supposed to be opposed to Stu because he’s supposed to be a bad person and the audience is supposed to feel glee when Stu is forced to examine his sleazy existence in a sometimes humiliating way. That’s fine, but the only problem is Colin Farrell isn’t the sleazy type. Regardless of his actions, Farrell comes across as too innocent and puppy dog-like to portray a detestable character. A better casting choice for the role of Stu would have been Ben Affleck. With Affleck’s untrustworthy plastic smile, he plays sleazy, bravado-heavy characters well, yet always seeming like an inexperienced boy beneath all the posturing. Farrell’s accent alone doesn’t sound anything like a New York accent. Instead Farrell speaks in an unknown accent with occasional Irish flavorings.

Phone Booth is full of archetypical characters that never transcend the clichés they represent. The scenes with the street prostitutes on 8th Avenue are pure camp. The prostitutes are mouthy and look like the Halloween version of a prostitute: completely tacky and sleazy, but nothing more than that. There’s no personality under all the trashiness. The scenes are campy because the actresses give exaggerated performances of what they think a prostitute should be. I’ve never met a prostitute, but I doubt that they’d be as idiotic as the ones in the film, who act like chickens with their heads just cut off. I’m not saying the prostitutes have to be sugary sweet like Julia Roberts’ prostitute in Pretty Woman, but at least the prostitutes should be dynamic.

The cops in the film come across as annoying assholes. They come across as not knowing which end is up. They’re empty archetypes too just like the prostitutes because they never transcend stereotypes. They’re just objects there for the purpose of saying “put your hands up.” The cops never come across as heroes, but as annoyances.

The format of Phone Booth as it is would suit the stage. It would probably have more impact if it was adapted into a stage play. Audiences watching the scenes unfold as a stage play would connect more with the characters, especially the main character of Stu. On a stage, the cast would acting in closer quarters and would be physically closer to each other. The closeness would allow the character of Stu to connect with his fellow characters through eye contact in one frame, which is what audience’s view a play in. There are no camera angles in a play. Each member of audience can focus on whatever they want, but at least they’re given that choice. A film tells the audience what they should see by giving the audience only one option depending on who the camera is on. Most of the camera shots in Phone Booth are close-ups or medium shots. The film’s lack of long shots shows that Schumacher was trying to achieve a claustrophobic effect, which he does. However, the limited setting mirrors the film’s stunted storyline.

The static setting of Stu in a phone booth for the majority of the film is one of its major flaws. The static setting gets boring after only a short time. Static settings have worked in films like Hitchcock’s Lifeboat and Rope, but static settings only work in films that have characters with depth. If the 81-minute film was made longer in length, the plot could be extended. If anything, the film should have more of a back-story, which means that Stu shouldn’t enter the phone booth until much later in the film. Too much of the information about Stu is told to the audience and not shown. For instance, Stu cries when he is forced to admit to his wife his infidelity, but the audience is given no reason to believe he cares about his wife at all because of the lack of a back-story.

Phone Booth would have worked better as a character study that leads up to a dramatic and possibly horrific climax a la Taxi Driver. The climax shouldn’t have been the entire film. The climax shouldn’t be a substitute for the plot. As a character study, the film could have made Stu Shepard the audience could feel sympathy for. One of the best literary effects is to make the audience’s sympathies towards characters change. Often one character inspires sympathy at the beginning, and the character who initially seems the least sympathetic ends up being the most sympathetic character in the story. Everything in Phone Booth is static, from the characters and plot to the setting. This film should be renamed Static, it would be much more appropriate.
The film has potential to be a decent film, but only if the script is completely rewritten with casting changes. Schumacher is a director who likes color and he uses color to create a flashy New York City. The visuals are there, but the script is not.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to remake Phone Booth with a reconstructed script and better casting. It would hardly be a remake because if would essentially be a whole new film with the phone booth premise being an aspect of the film, and not the film’s focus. The focus should be on the main character Stu, not on the phone booth who steals the entire spotlight. If remade, it might be a wise idea to chuck the Phone Booth title in favor of a brand new title.

The Candyman is a Ghost of America’s Dark Past

Myths and urban legends are self-perpetuating. That self-perpetuation is what makes myths and urban legends powerful. If people believe in something then that makes it present in someone’s mind. in the 1992 horror film, Candyman, the title character is a myth who gains his power through people believing in him and ultimately fearing him. To feed the film’s racial subtext, Candyman is a symbol of how slavery and the racism in America it spawned is a ghost that keeps haunting Americans regardless of their race.

Candyman centers around Chicago grad student Helen Lyle (played by Virginia Madsen) who’s doing a thesis paper on urban legends and how black people, especially in ghetto areas use urban legends as excuses for their poverty and lives of crime. She enters Chicago’s infamous Cabrini Green projects and learns of the Candyman myth. She soon believes in the myth and that’s when her life takes a turn, and in typical horror/slasher film fashion, the body count starts rising.

Candyman is first and foremost a supernatural ghost story that is rooted in reality. Bernard Rose adapted Clive Barker’s short story, “The Forbidden” and links the supernatural to modern race relations in America. Race is something that people try to ignore or deny, and Candyman acts as a symbol to remind people that race is a very real thing. The film subtly implies that Candyman made the black people of the ghetto commit crimes. His wrath mirrored the wrath of black people, and the cycle continues.

The racial element of the film concerns the immortal racism of America, and how the macabre past of slavery haunts Americans. The Candyman acts as a vessel of anger because of his gruesome death at the hands of racists during the later part of the nineteenth century. He is a symbol of the anger that black people in ghettos like Chicago’s Cabrini Green projects featured in the film. In a way, the film suggests that the black people of Cabrini Green keep the myth of Candyman going because he’s a link to the past that. Some people try to forget the horrors of slavery and act like it doesn’t exist or just doesn’t matter. The fact that the urban legend of the Candyman ends up being real is meant to prove to nonbelievers that the horrors of slavery and racism are real. It proves that the struggles of being a black person in America are real and that black people are not just using their race as an excuse for being poor or committing crimes.
When Helen first arrives in the Cabrini Green projects with her colleague Bernadette, she interviews a black single mother living in her apartment.

Bernadette is a light-skinned black woman, while the single mother is of a darker skin tone. Bernadette can barely look the woman in the eye. Bernadette’s been around upper-crust and highly-educated people who are mostly white that she’s kept herself at a distance from the ghetto. When she’s face-to-face with the ghetto, it scares her. From the moment Helen and Bernadette arrive in Cabrini Green, Bernadette acts nervous and scared as if the boogeyman is going to pop out at any moment. In reality, she fears that a gun-toting thug will attack her, rape her and probably kill her. Even if when someone visited the ghetto and they didn’t see any violence or anything particularly menacing, they’d still hold onto a stigma of the ghetto. That stigma represents the violence and fear associated with black people. The stigma concerns beliefs about the way black people look physically to stereotypes of black people being violent and oversexed, which makes the fact that Candyman is a black man interesting.

The Candyman (played by Tony Todd) was the son of a slave who was educated the best schools because he had a talent for painting. He was killed because of his relationship with a white woman and the fact that she was pregnant with his child. Tony Todd plays Candyman as a man of breeding with his carefully enunciated words and deceptively authoritative voice that hums like bees. For a character who’s meant to be scary, Candyman is nonthreatening, save for the bloody hook that replaced his severed hand. The inclusion of Candyman’s back-story shows that Candyman is not even really a villain, but a victim.

Candyman uses his voice to hypnotize people. His voice is an instrument that haunts with its deep, melodic tone that is just as romantic as the interaction between Candyman and Helen. The reason Helen tears up pretty much every time she sees Candyman is because her belief in him is such a real thing; she believes in him with her soul.

Candyman is a ghost and as a ghost, he wanders from decade to decade, era to era. In Lafcadio Hearn’s prose-poem, “A Ghost,” he sums up the concept of a ghost well. “I refer to the civilized nomad, whose wanderings are not prompted by hope or gain, nor determined by pleasure, but simply compelled by certain necessities of his being,--the man whose inner secret nature is totally at variance with the stable conditions of a society to which he belongs only by accident.”

The piano music that plays while Candyman asks Helen to become immortal, a feeling of haunting is summoned, as well as mystery. This scene is made up of intense seduction and eroticism. The piano music tinkles as if it’s concerning a taboo subject, which the scene is. The interracial chemistry between Candyman and Helen is apparent. Although interracial romance is viewed as still somewhat taboo, the combination of Candyman and Helen is perfect. Candyman’s hook-for-a-hand acts as a direct phallic object and contributes to the film’s eroticism. The hook is direct because Candyman strokes Helen’s thigh with the hook and proceeds to grope her groin, implying penetration.

The murals on walls, including the mural of Candyman on a building’s wall suggests the importance of storytelling and oral tradition, which is very common in black culture. The past haunts minorities living in America more than non-minorities.

Helen’s realization that the Candyman is real is meant to be the equivalent of a white person accepting and realizing the difficult plight of being a black person living in America. Candyman is an allegory that intends to communicate that racism is still alive and kicking in America, despite the America having its first black president. As sad as it sounds, racism in America is immortal, just like Candyman.