As Good As It Gets

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Rating: While France was experiencing a massive directorial overhauling of conventions and norms in the sixties, it seems the always intriguing city of New York City was experiencing something of a shift in their approach to American cinema as well. With Nelson Lyon's The Telephone Book captures such a peculiar time in seventies cinema, which is the underground cinema movement in NYC, where rebel filmmakers began realizing that they didn't have to follow in the footsteps of big time filmmakers and could make what they so desired in the comfort of their own neighborhood. One could loan their discoveries and beliefs to the development of what is known today as independent films, or films that lack the participation of large studios with blank-checks and huge distribution deals.The Telephone Book is one of the most fascinating and truly unique cult films from the seventies you have never seen nor heard of. It concerns a young, eighteen-year-old girl named Alice (Shannon Kennedy), who possesses tendencies of a nymphomaniac. Alice lives in her NYC apartment, which is lined with explicit, black and white sexual photographs and lewd images that assist her in her own personal self-discoveries.One day, Alice gets a call from a man claiming to be named "John Smith" (Norman Rose), a man with an incredibly deep voice and one who has the rare ability of being able to seduce women just by the sound of his voice. Alice is smitten by his charm and his smooth-talking ways, and after getting his name, makes it her goal to try and track him down and find him in person. Alice has become in love with what she finds the greatest obscene phone call in history.Alice goes on an exhaustive search for the man, who claims to have one of the most notoriously common names in the country. However, even when she sticks to the telephone book focusing on just the people in New York City she is overwhelmed with results. The film follows her as she exhaustively searches for the man, running into some of New York's strangest and quirkiest souls. One of them is a stag film director who enjoys sex with multiple women at a time, while another subject provides for one of the film's most hilarious scenes. This scene involves your average everyman, who tries to find ways to get Alice to say dirty words and paying her in change so she can make more calls to find her real "John Smith." The man has a change dispenser clipped to the waistband of his pants, which represents his ejaculation and his level of arousal. You may already know where this is going, but the result is devilishly funny and provides for some of the strangest, most off-the-wall comedy the film has to offer.The film is photographed in high-contrast black and white, providing an even edgier, more authentic experience of the 1970's time period along with the vibes of what feels like unadulterated underground cinema. The Telephone Book comes from the time period where risks in films were actually taken and the idea of subversion wasn't nudged at but boldly and bravely toyed with to the point where what emerged was something almost totally unrecognizable and sometimes frightening.While sex is a huge topic in the film, and the intricate elements of sex are talked about quite frequently in the film, this film is not one for the erotic genre. Despite its subject matter, the picture is rarely erotic, but instead, more of a sensation, if anything. Even the fact that the film concludes with a surreal, seven minute animation sequence depicting graphic, mind-blowing sexual intercourse between two people on the phone in two separate phone booths solidifies that the film is more interested with being a sensory experience rather than an arousing one. The film was made during the time that "porno chic" was becoming popular, and even indulging in graphic sex scenes would've been a subversive move on the film's behalf. Instead, the film even ignores another groundbreaking element of the time to go off and do its own thing, which is even more unique. It's a film about sex that is rarely sexy.The Telephone Book feels like the kind of thing John Waters would've made in the early seventies and added it to his collection of trash cinema set in the eccentric land of Baltimore, Maryland. It plays the similar instruments of shock, weird comedy, oddball events, fetish pornography, and individualistic style. Needless to say, I loved every minute of it.Starring: Sarah Kennedy and Norman Rose. Directed by: Nelson Lyon.

Alice (Goldie Hawn look-a-like Sarah Kennedy) answers the phone in her apartment on day only to find the world's best obscene phone caller Mr. Smith (Norman Rose) on the other end. She is immediately smitten with him (after all, he is the world's best obscene phone caller) and demands to meet him. "I'm in the book," he tells her and Alice begins her quest to find THE John Smith, meeting lots of weirdos along the way. This bizarre and often hilarious avant garde comedy really took me for a wild ride. This is unlike anything before or since its release. Somewhere amongst the weirdness is commentary about oddballs, the role of sex in society and the increasing inability of people to communicate. The film is also an explosion of imagery, filmed mostly in black & white until the color ending that comes complete with a graphic cartoon. Despite such a lurid subject matter, director Nelson Lyon keeps it all in good fun. The only familiar faces for me were Dolph Sweet as one of the people making sexual confessions interspersed through out the film and a young William Hickey (he was once young!) as Alice's favorite lover - a man whose erection would never go down. Definitely one of a kind.

Who is John Smith? why....every man's deepest fantasy of course. As he utters at one point and which sums up this incredibly original and black-humored ode to left wing sexuality..."I have perfected the obscene call to the point where I could seduce the President, his wife and his family - but I have no political ambition!"Poor old Alice, cute little Goldie Hawn wannabe and who is a couple of bra-sizes short of average intelligence, she decides to answer her telephone! Big mistake - it is the world's most experienced serially-obscene phone caller. Does she care? No, she falls in love with him. She must embark now on the ultimate sexual odyssey to discover the joys of true spoken obscenity.This film is unlike anything else ever made - as original as ERASERHEAD, as meaningless as an Osmond Brothers album. You have to see it...if for no other reason to witness Barry Morse's cameo to end all cameos. They surely COULDN'T have paid him to do it...he MUST have paid them!I have had this film for twenty years and STILL haven't let my kids see it! I think mine is the only copy in Australia, if not the southern hemisphere. A deep deep underground film that could NEVER have found theatrical release I imagine.

Very entertaining. Girl in Manhattan receives the obscene call of her life, attempts to find him (identified as "John Smith") in the telephone book. Funny scenes as she finds the wrong John Smiths. Surprise ending when she finds the right one. Some nudity and extremely explicit but funny cartoon sequences.