Scene:
Apartment. No one is home.
Telephone rings. Answering machine picks up.
A frantic voice plays aloud through the answering machine usually to transmit some important message or to foreshadow to the audience that some fucked up shit is about to happen because the owner of the apartment has missed the crucial call.
Great scene except for one critical element: People don’t have landlines anymore. Well, let me rephrase that: Young people don’t have landlines anymore or answering machines to record vital messages. My mother has a landline and an answering machine, but she is also 62 years old and goes to Bi-Lo on Wednesday for her senior citizen discount. Unless the scene in the movie involves senior citizens and harried phone calls about produce sales, this classic scene is now unrealistic.
How many times in films have the characters lamented, “I just missed her! She isn’t home! What am I going to do? How will she get this information so that she doesn’t die?”
Well, one way, asshole, is to call her on her cell phone.
Most modern citizens have cell phones now. Catch up filmmakers. I use my cell phone as my main communication utility, but I don’t even use the voicemail application on my phone very much. If it was so important, you would have texted me a message, right? And if I were going to die, hopefully, one of you would call, text, e-mail, or write on my facebook wall to tell me some important information that will prevent me from my untimely death.
Now that I have said this… I bet the first film I ever work on will have this scene in it and I will have to retract what I just said in this blog post, but until then…
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