Hollywood’s king of schlock

Originally appeared in The New Yorker February 2, 2004

BY: Amy Wallace

In 1998, a script entitled “Phone Booth” started making the rounds in Hollywood. It had a simple premise: a smarmy New York City publicist picks up a ringing pay phone and learns that a sniper will kill him if he hangs up. The story, which takes place entirely in and around a booth on Fifty-third Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, was seductively “high-concept,” meaning that you could explain it in a sentence or less. Such scripts are relatively easy to sell to moviegoers, which is why Tom Cruise’s production company flirted with buying it, and why Twentieth Century Fox paid seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to take it off the table. Steven Spielberg briefly considered directing it, as did Mel Gibson, who also planned to star. Michael Bay, the king of blow-it-up cinema, was in line for the director’s job, and then the Hughes brothers were. Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and Robin Williams were interested in starring, but the studio wanted to go younger, so Will Smith came aboard. After he dropped out, Jim Carrey stepped in, with Joel Schumacher as director. Then Carrey took a pass. Click to continue »