The short film "Dead Ringer," by Alex Kliment, Mike Tucker, and Dana O'Keefe, is a work of unfettered nostalgia for one of New York City's endangered species: the curbside pay phone. As Ian Frazier recently reported for the magazine, by 2020 more than half of the city's eight-thousand-plus phone booths will be converted into Links, which will provide high-speed Internet access across the city. But that doesn't mean the old-school pay phone is going down quietly. In "Dead Ringer," which premièred earlier this month at the Tribeca Film Festival, one of the city's last remaining booths, his Brooklyn accent thicker than Bernie Sanders's, delivers an obstreperous self-elegy, remembering the good old days when he and his comrades were visited by thousands of ears each night. "We used to run this town," he says. "For decades, we handled all of your drug deals, love affairs, runaways, pimps, crime tips, cranks, heavy breathers, and emergencies. You name it, we heard it all."
“Dead Ringer”: A New York City Pay Phone’s Spirited Farewell
