Dear Phone (1976) Movie Script
(phone rings)
Hiro Candici phoned his nephew,
Serge Gallagher,
and asked him for the phone number
of Joseph Morpetho,
the manager of a local football club.
Serge couldn't remember it
and left the phone off the hook while
he stepped outside to ask Gary Modler
who looked after a barrow
on the corner of Fiddler Street.
Modler was married
to Morpetho's ex-wife,
who used to be a telephonist
before she went deaf
after being knocked down by a barrow,
a fact that hadn't affected
her memory.
(ringing tone)
Hirous Canditi got Jerry Modler
to phone Louis, his wife's cousin,
to ask him if he knew
Gary Sutler's phone number
so that he could give him
a piece of his mind.
Jerry pretended to have no change,
so he said he'd ring later.
Hirous told him to piss off
and he ran into the bar,
demanding to use the phone.
Harry Diego, the barman,
pointed to the phone
at the back of the serving hatch
and asked Hirous to buy him a drink.
Hirous claimed that he could make
ten calls for the price of a beer.
(dialling)
(ringing tone)
Harry Contentino owned ten barrows
in Fiddler Street
and held another three
off Gregory Square.
He paid his barrow boys badly
and expected them to keep him
in small change for his phone calls.
He was always on the phone.
Louis, his wife's brother,
ran the pub in Gregory Square
and had banned Harry
from using the phone behind the bar
because he never paid for it.
Harry broke a bottle
and scratched the paintwork
and vowed he would never
drink in the bar again.
The same evening
he was back to phone Zelda.
Louis allowed him to use the phone
provided he bought every person
in the public bar a drink.
There were five people in the bar.
Harry said he could phone New York
for the price of five beers.
(engaged tone)
Harrim Constanti
insulted the operator
every time
he picked up the receiver.
He never said please,
always called the operator a deaf cow
and belched every time
she asked him to repeat a number.
(Italian)
(engaged tone)
(French)
Hiro Contenti got to calling his wife
Zelda after a telephone operator
who used to identify herself
by saying, "It's Melba,"
every time he rang his mother
for money.
It was a weak link,
but Hiro thought it was amusing.
What also made Hiro laugh was
the fact that this telephone operator
never seemed to need a natural break.
Hiro used to call her a deaf cow,
yet he loved his wife.
It didn't make much sense to the woman
who came on the Monday to clean the phone,
who thought Tender is the Night
the greatest movie she'd ever seen.
(phone beeps)
(beeps become louder)
Harold Constance lived on the phone.
He ate through it,
he had a hotline to the supermarket
and he organised
his sex life on it.
The phone in his office
was always covered in crumbs
and was sweaty from being held under
his armpit while he masturbated.
(phone being dialled)
(approaching police siren)
Hirohito Condottieri was the youngest
child of an Italian businessman,
Paulo Condottieri, who lived for nine
years under house arrest in Taiwan.
Paulo's only pleasure
had been to use the phone.
He'd phoned people like other people
blinked their eyelids.
It was a reflex action.
Arrested for forgery,
he wasn't jailed outright because
his financial contribution to the state,
through his use of the telephone
was immense.
The telephone company, at their own
expense, had installed a phone
in practically every room
in Paulo's house.
Paulo had died at the age of 83
over a telephone arrangement
he had with a nightclub manager
whose girls contrived to give Paulo
excitement over the phone.
The giving of pleasure had
apparently been reciprocal,
for Paulo's favourite girl
had borne a son
some nine months
after Paulo's death.
And it was this child,
Hirohito Condottieri,
who'd given his father's house to the
nation as a communications museum.
(ringing tone)
Hirt Constantino spoke of the
telephone with exceptional reverence.
Thanks to it,
he'd escaped from Europe,
met his wife
and set up his own business.
He hoped to order
the rest of his life as successfully
through the telephone.
He taught his children to use it
when they were young
and educated his Estonian grandmother
to treat it with admiration
and affection.
When the telephone company
was having difficult relations
with its employees,
Hirt went sick,
complained of being deaf
and shouted at his children
to have more respect.
When the telephone company
employees went on strike
in a harsh winter that blew down
telephone wires all over the country,
Hirt took to his bedroom.
His grandmother tried to interest him
in letter-writing
and his wife bought him
a two-way radio,
but Hirt's allegiance
to the phone was unshaken.
He had a photograph of William Bell
hung above his bed
and had his telephone directories
bound in black Moroccan leather
with metal corner pieces
and a silver clasp.
This is the forecast for the Greater
London area until dusk Thursday,
issued 4pm Wednesday.
Temperatures will fall to 3C with
frost in the suburbs after midnight.
Thursday will be mostly dry
with some sunny periods
and temperatures will rise
to about 10C.
Winds will be northerly,
moderate to force four...
(voice drowned by rising wind)
Henry Clementi's ex-wife, Zelda
Maroni, lived in a small village
not too far outside Olaf-St Simeon.
The only telephone available
among 27 people
was in the general store
at the end of the main street.
Henry continued to correspond
with his wife after their divorce
and he wrote to her
on the first Saturday in every month.
One summer,
there was a postal strike.
And feeling it necessary to continue
to communicate with Zelda,
Henry phoned the general store
and left a message there for Zelda
to phone him in Zrich at noon
on the first Monday in each month.
For the length of the postal strike,
Zelda phoned Henry from the general store,
but when the strike ended and
the letter postal service was resumed,
Zelda insisted on returning
to corresponding by letter.
Henry was reluctant to do that
and suggested he might pay for a
phone to be fitted in Zelda's house.
To do this, a cable had to be laid
from Olaf-St Simeon
and would cost a great deal, probably as
much as it would cost Zelda to move
and buy a house
in Olaf-St Simeon itself.
With no hesitation, Henry offered to
provide the money for Zelda to move
and she agreed.
But she double-crossed him,
for, with the money he gave her,
she bought out the general store,
closed down the postal service
and destroyed the telephone.
Harry Contense
was a telephone operator
who got his job
much against his wife's wishes.
Zelda Contense thought that a telephone
operator ought to be female.
So, for that matter,
did the telephone service,
but they employed Harry because
they were seriously understaffed.
The other women working on
the exchange had mixed reactions.
Some were amused
when the management had to
provide a separate cloakroom for him.
But later, on seeing Harry
enjoying so much space privately,
whilst they had to share a cloakroom,
they were soon demanding better conditions.
Some of the women mothered Harry
and five of them, in their different
ways, began to make passes at him.
When Harry worked nights,
he had a bed put up
in his spacious private cloakroom
and on Tuesdays and Fridays, he
entertained lady telephonists in there.
His wife found out at the same time
that the more militant of the telephonists
were organising a demonstration
for better conditions
and jealousy amongst Harry's suitors
was beginning to impair
the efficiency of the exchange.
Zelda phoned the manager
and demanded that Harry be sacked.
The management consulted the telephonist
union to see if Harry could be transferred.
Harry realised
the problems he was causing
and to find a way to resolve
everyone's difficulties,
he went deaf and resigned.
(cries of seagulls)
At the third stroke,
it will be 2:29 and 50 seconds.
At the third stroke,
it will be 2:30 precisely.
Harry Contento phoned
his wife Zelda from the quayside
so that she could hear the sea.
Harry propped the door of the telephone
kiosk open with a piece of driftwood.
Flora Gallagher,
who taught Zelda to swim,
was always around when Zelda
picked up the phone.
And she said she could always tell
from Zelda's face
whether the tide was in or not.
Harry's brother, Philip, always wondered why Harry
didn't fit something up, like a tape recorder
instead of having to travel
20-odd miles to the sea each day.
But Horace Muldoney said that Harry
had once told him that he liked travelling
and enjoyed making phone calls
from beside the sea.
He liked the way the phone box
was being eroded by salt spray.
He could imagine the way the sea,
if given time,
would corrode the phone itself
and how, eventually,
the corrosion would pass
along the line to Zelda's ear.
(coin inserted into phone)
Hello?
Harry, you should've gotten him whisky or something.
'Cause they said he drinks.
He goes in the pub.
Well, it's up to them, isn't it? I'm
not putting the money in, anyway
3-6-9-3-3-4. Look for a code.
...the Belgian franc, 72.85,
the Danish krone, 11.28...
- Jessica?
- Bugger!
Howard Contentin
was a student of hygiene.
His particular scruple in
the summer months was the telephone.
He believed
the use of the public telephone,
being in such intimate contact
with the mouth, spread infection
and he conducted a private campaign.
Equipped with disinfectant, he spent
his evenings in telephone booths,
scrubbing the mouthpiece
of every telephone he could find.
A summons for loitering
only seemed to encourage him.
He was eventually arrested
for causing corrosive burning
to the face of a 43-year-old
public health inspector
who was phoning his wife, Zelda.
(dialling)
Henry Constantin phoned his wife
Zelda every morning from his office.
He always announced himself
the same way,
"Hello, darling,
this is your mid-morning call."
After his mother died,
Henry Constantin began
to lose control of his wits.
Being a creature of deeply ingrained
habits, he never failed to call his wife,
but his sense of timing
began to go astray.
His calls to his wife
grew later and later in the day,
until his wife received his,
"Hello, darling,
this is your mid-morning call,"
late in the afternoon.
Zelda was distressed
at this well-meaning
but poorly executed
demonstration of affection.
So she took to phoning him around
about half past ten every morning
to remind him that it was
time he should ring her.
At the third stroke,
it will be 10:38 precisely.
(three beeps)
At the third stroke,
it will be 10:38 and ten seconds.
(three beeps)
At the third stroke it will...
HC spent a long time composing his
letters. He rewrote them many times,
especially those to his mother
and to his ex-wife, Z.
When he'd finished them to his
satisfaction, he phoned them through.
He fixed the phone to a music stand,
measured a step and a half back
on the floor and made a chalk mark.
Then he came forward,
dialled the number
and waited till he could hear the receiver
being picked up at the other end.
Then he stepped back, cleared his
throat noisily and began to read,
"Dear Mother", or "Dear Z",
or whatever it might be,
"Dear Sir",
"Dear Construction Company",
or "Dear Insurance Broker".
He felt he had developed
telephoning to a fine art.
Over the years, HC refined his style,
concentrated on form until
the content of his calls atrophied
and he reduced his conversations
to "Dear Phone",
and continued with a list
of names and addresses
read from the telephone directory.
The only people who did listen to him
with rapt amazement were his mother
and the very rare wrong numbers
HC sometimes dialled.
(phone rings)
Hiro Candici phoned his nephew,
Serge Gallagher,
and asked him for the phone number
of Joseph Morpetho,
the manager of a local football club.
Serge couldn't remember it
and left the phone off the hook while
he stepped outside to ask Gary Modler
who looked after a barrow
on the corner of Fiddler Street.
Modler was married
to Morpetho's ex-wife,
who used to be a telephonist
before she went deaf
after being knocked down by a barrow,
a fact that hadn't affected
her memory.
(ringing tone)
Hirous Canditi got Jerry Modler
to phone Louis, his wife's cousin,
to ask him if he knew
Gary Sutler's phone number
so that he could give him
a piece of his mind.
Jerry pretended to have no change,
so he said he'd ring later.
Hirous told him to piss off
and he ran into the bar,
demanding to use the phone.
Harry Diego, the barman,
pointed to the phone
at the back of the serving hatch
and asked Hirous to buy him a drink.
Hirous claimed that he could make
ten calls for the price of a beer.
(dialling)
(ringing tone)
Harry Contentino owned ten barrows
in Fiddler Street
and held another three
off Gregory Square.
He paid his barrow boys badly
and expected them to keep him
in small change for his phone calls.
He was always on the phone.
Louis, his wife's brother,
ran the pub in Gregory Square
and had banned Harry
from using the phone behind the bar
because he never paid for it.
Harry broke a bottle
and scratched the paintwork
and vowed he would never
drink in the bar again.
The same evening
he was back to phone Zelda.
Louis allowed him to use the phone
provided he bought every person
in the public bar a drink.
There were five people in the bar.
Harry said he could phone New York
for the price of five beers.
(engaged tone)
Harrim Constanti
insulted the operator
every time
he picked up the receiver.
He never said please,
always called the operator a deaf cow
and belched every time
she asked him to repeat a number.
(Italian)
(engaged tone)
(French)
Hiro Contenti got to calling his wife
Zelda after a telephone operator
who used to identify herself
by saying, "It's Melba,"
every time he rang his mother
for money.
It was a weak link,
but Hiro thought it was amusing.
What also made Hiro laugh was
the fact that this telephone operator
never seemed to need a natural break.
Hiro used to call her a deaf cow,
yet he loved his wife.
It didn't make much sense to the woman
who came on the Monday to clean the phone,
who thought Tender is the Night
the greatest movie she'd ever seen.
(phone beeps)
(beeps become louder)
Harold Constance lived on the phone.
He ate through it,
he had a hotline to the supermarket
and he organised
his sex life on it.
The phone in his office
was always covered in crumbs
and was sweaty from being held under
his armpit while he masturbated.
(phone being dialled)
(approaching police siren)
Hirohito Condottieri was the youngest
child of an Italian businessman,
Paulo Condottieri, who lived for nine
years under house arrest in Taiwan.
Paulo's only pleasure
had been to use the phone.
He'd phoned people like other people
blinked their eyelids.
It was a reflex action.
Arrested for forgery,
he wasn't jailed outright because
his financial contribution to the state,
through his use of the telephone
was immense.
The telephone company, at their own
expense, had installed a phone
in practically every room
in Paulo's house.
Paulo had died at the age of 83
over a telephone arrangement
he had with a nightclub manager
whose girls contrived to give Paulo
excitement over the phone.
The giving of pleasure had
apparently been reciprocal,
for Paulo's favourite girl
had borne a son
some nine months
after Paulo's death.
And it was this child,
Hirohito Condottieri,
who'd given his father's house to the
nation as a communications museum.
(ringing tone)
Hirt Constantino spoke of the
telephone with exceptional reverence.
Thanks to it,
he'd escaped from Europe,
met his wife
and set up his own business.
He hoped to order
the rest of his life as successfully
through the telephone.
He taught his children to use it
when they were young
and educated his Estonian grandmother
to treat it with admiration
and affection.
When the telephone company
was having difficult relations
with its employees,
Hirt went sick,
complained of being deaf
and shouted at his children
to have more respect.
When the telephone company
employees went on strike
in a harsh winter that blew down
telephone wires all over the country,
Hirt took to his bedroom.
His grandmother tried to interest him
in letter-writing
and his wife bought him
a two-way radio,
but Hirt's allegiance
to the phone was unshaken.
He had a photograph of William Bell
hung above his bed
and had his telephone directories
bound in black Moroccan leather
with metal corner pieces
and a silver clasp.
This is the forecast for the Greater
London area until dusk Thursday,
issued 4pm Wednesday.
Temperatures will fall to 3C with
frost in the suburbs after midnight.
Thursday will be mostly dry
with some sunny periods
and temperatures will rise
to about 10C.
Winds will be northerly,
moderate to force four...
(voice drowned by rising wind)
Henry Clementi's ex-wife, Zelda
Maroni, lived in a small village
not too far outside Olaf-St Simeon.
The only telephone available
among 27 people
was in the general store
at the end of the main street.
Henry continued to correspond
with his wife after their divorce
and he wrote to her
on the first Saturday in every month.
One summer,
there was a postal strike.
And feeling it necessary to continue
to communicate with Zelda,
Henry phoned the general store
and left a message there for Zelda
to phone him in Zrich at noon
on the first Monday in each month.
For the length of the postal strike,
Zelda phoned Henry from the general store,
but when the strike ended and
the letter postal service was resumed,
Zelda insisted on returning
to corresponding by letter.
Henry was reluctant to do that
and suggested he might pay for a
phone to be fitted in Zelda's house.
To do this, a cable had to be laid
from Olaf-St Simeon
and would cost a great deal, probably as
much as it would cost Zelda to move
and buy a house
in Olaf-St Simeon itself.
With no hesitation, Henry offered to
provide the money for Zelda to move
and she agreed.
But she double-crossed him,
for, with the money he gave her,
she bought out the general store,
closed down the postal service
and destroyed the telephone.
Harry Contense
was a telephone operator
who got his job
much against his wife's wishes.
Zelda Contense thought that a telephone
operator ought to be female.
So, for that matter,
did the telephone service,
but they employed Harry because
they were seriously understaffed.
The other women working on
the exchange had mixed reactions.
Some were amused
when the management had to
provide a separate cloakroom for him.
But later, on seeing Harry
enjoying so much space privately,
whilst they had to share a cloakroom,
they were soon demanding better conditions.
Some of the women mothered Harry
and five of them, in their different
ways, began to make passes at him.
When Harry worked nights,
he had a bed put up
in his spacious private cloakroom
and on Tuesdays and Fridays, he
entertained lady telephonists in there.
His wife found out at the same time
that the more militant of the telephonists
were organising a demonstration
for better conditions
and jealousy amongst Harry's suitors
was beginning to impair
the efficiency of the exchange.
Zelda phoned the manager
and demanded that Harry be sacked.
The management consulted the telephonist
union to see if Harry could be transferred.
Harry realised
the problems he was causing
and to find a way to resolve
everyone's difficulties,
he went deaf and resigned.
(cries of seagulls)
At the third stroke,
it will be 2:29 and 50 seconds.
At the third stroke,
it will be 2:30 precisely.
Harry Contento phoned
his wife Zelda from the quayside
so that she could hear the sea.
Harry propped the door of the telephone
kiosk open with a piece of driftwood.
Flora Gallagher,
who taught Zelda to swim,
was always around when Zelda
picked up the phone.
And she said she could always tell
from Zelda's face
whether the tide was in or not.
Harry's brother, Philip, always wondered why Harry
didn't fit something up, like a tape recorder
instead of having to travel
20-odd miles to the sea each day.
But Horace Muldoney said that Harry
had once told him that he liked travelling
and enjoyed making phone calls
from beside the sea.
He liked the way the phone box
was being eroded by salt spray.
He could imagine the way the sea,
if given time,
would corrode the phone itself
and how, eventually,
the corrosion would pass
along the line to Zelda's ear.
(coin inserted into phone)
Hello?
Harry, you should've gotten him whisky or something.
'Cause they said he drinks.
He goes in the pub.
Well, it's up to them, isn't it? I'm
not putting the money in, anyway
3-6-9-3-3-4. Look for a code.
...the Belgian franc, 72.85,
the Danish krone, 11.28...
- Jessica?
- Bugger!
Howard Contentin
was a student of hygiene.
His particular scruple in
the summer months was the telephone.
He believed
the use of the public telephone,
being in such intimate contact
with the mouth, spread infection
and he conducted a private campaign.
Equipped with disinfectant, he spent
his evenings in telephone booths,
scrubbing the mouthpiece
of every telephone he could find.
A summons for loitering
only seemed to encourage him.
He was eventually arrested
for causing corrosive burning
to the face of a 43-year-old
public health inspector
who was phoning his wife, Zelda.
(dialling)
Henry Constantin phoned his wife
Zelda every morning from his office.
He always announced himself
the same way,
"Hello, darling,
this is your mid-morning call."
After his mother died,
Henry Constantin began
to lose control of his wits.
Being a creature of deeply ingrained
habits, he never failed to call his wife,
but his sense of timing
began to go astray.
His calls to his wife
grew later and later in the day,
until his wife received his,
"Hello, darling,
this is your mid-morning call,"
late in the afternoon.
Zelda was distressed
at this well-meaning
but poorly executed
demonstration of affection.
So she took to phoning him around
about half past ten every morning
to remind him that it was
time he should ring her.
At the third stroke,
it will be 10:38 precisely.
(three beeps)
At the third stroke,
it will be 10:38 and ten seconds.
(three beeps)
At the third stroke it will...
HC spent a long time composing his
letters. He rewrote them many times,
especially those to his mother
and to his ex-wife, Z.
When he'd finished them to his
satisfaction, he phoned them through.
He fixed the phone to a music stand,
measured a step and a half back
on the floor and made a chalk mark.
Then he came forward,
dialled the number
and waited till he could hear the receiver
being picked up at the other end.
Then he stepped back, cleared his
throat noisily and began to read,
"Dear Mother", or "Dear Z",
or whatever it might be,
"Dear Sir",
"Dear Construction Company",
or "Dear Insurance Broker".
He felt he had developed
telephoning to a fine art.
Over the years, HC refined his style,
concentrated on form until
the content of his calls atrophied
and he reduced his conversations
to "Dear Phone",
and continued with a list
of names and addresses
read from the telephone directory.
The only people who did listen to him
with rapt amazement were his mother
and the very rare wrong numbers
HC sometimes dialled.
(phone rings)