Ok, some posts back I was talking about how I watched For a Good Time, Call… and was going to write a review of it for Tits and Sass. Well, I suck, but I have to renege. I can’t do it. I just…Can’t. See, it was such a goddamn awful movie, I think I managed to block it out of my brain. I’ve actually sat down no less than four times to write my review, looked at my notes, and had no idea what to write. Finally today I realized that if I wanted to make any sense, I was going to have to watch the movie again. And I simply cannot bring myself to do it. I refuse. The damn flick doesn’t deserve another hour and a half of my life. So, I’m sorry if you were looking forward to my take on it, but I have to disappoint you. Trust me, it is no loss. You didn’t want to see the movie anyway, and nothing I said would have changed that. Jesus that movie rankled me more than I realized.
Yesterday I sacrificed an hour and a half of my life in service to The Cause. (The Cause being my never-ending quest to root out and expose phone sex fallacies wherever I may find them.) I had been dreading watching For a Good Time, Call… ever since I heard about it. In my take on the Castle phone sex episode, I mentioned why I bristle when phone sex appears in films and television: because the media just gets it so very wrong most of the time. I need a day or two of stewing on the movie before I write my actual review, which I will probably submit to TitsandSass.com, but I’m annoyed enough to write about something else.
There are a couple of egregiously overused sex-worker cliches in tv and film, most notably The Hooker (not to be confused with The Escort), The Stripper, and The Trafficked Sex Slave. Slightly less abused, but no less demeaning and dismissive, is The Phone Sex Operator. The PSO cliche used to be an apathetic 300-pound, white trashy mommy, but over the last decade it has morphed into an archetype I find even more insulting and insidious. Picture Anne Hathaway in Valentine’s Day, or Ari Graynor and Lauren Miller in For a Good Time, Call… The key components of the new PSO cliche are…
Beauty. Today’s PSO isn’t an ugly troll, she’s gorgeous. She is much more beautiful than any of the adult models whose stock photos she uses to represent her phone sex persona. And the character is often portrayed as just an average girl, in the same way a Victoria’s Secret model is just an average representation of how any woman might look in lingerie.
Shame. These PSO’s are not proud of what they do. They take calls on the sly and keep secrets from everyone around them, from roommates to family to spouses to friends. They think doing phone sex is beneath them and/or makes them a slut.
Ambition. Phone sex is not a career or “real job” to these women, it’s a crutch. They do it as long as they have to and can’t wait to toss it aside for something “better.”
Well pardon me, but I object. To be fair, much of the phone sex part of For a Good Time, Call… is fairly accurate, including the operators who decide they know enough to start their own company when they get tired of paying management to “do nothing.” That I think it’s a crappy movie has little to do with its treatment of phone sex, and will be further explored in my forthcoming review. But I am beginning to tire of seeing the job I treat with respect and conduct with professionalism used as a writers’ default naughty/daring/shocking/embarrassing plot catalyst.
I can totally believe that Miller, the writer/star of the movie, has probably had experience with phone sex at some point in her life, as parts of it do ring true. But that’s like saying a couple drunken girl-on-girl hook-ups in college qualifies one to write an advice column on lesbian dating. For the love of authentic storytelling, Hollywood, the next time you make a full-length motion picture about women who start a phone sex company, talk to a real woman who has started an actual existing phone sex business. Trust me, the women I know in the industry could tell you true stories that are infinitely more entertaining than For a Good Time, Call…
So there’s this movie out now, maybe you’ve heard of it? For a Good Time, Call…It’s apparently a story about two roommates who start a phone sex company, and I am so NOT dying to see it. I’ve written before about how movies and television portray the phone sex business, and I think part of my job is staying informed, so I feel like I have to see the movie. But I’m dreading it. Just the promo poster makes me involuntarily shudder. I’m not proud of this- I mean, I want to be supportive and positive and optimistic, and be rewarded with an amazing movie that shows the biz like it really is. But someone whose opinion I respect said For a Good Time, Call… is to phone sex what Fifty Shades of Grey is to bdsm. That does not bode well. I really really really hope I’m wrong, but unfortunately in my experience, Hollywood gets it wrong (and badly) way more often that they get it right.
I’m thinking about this a lot right now, because I’m in my creative gestation process, trying to figure out what my next one-woman show is going to be. I was lucky that I “inherited” the Threads story, that it was so unique and memorable. There was no question when I sat down to write, what story I would tell, as it was by far the most engrossing and personally relevant to me. I will continue to tour it for at least another year or two during festival season. But in looking forward to the future, I know my next project will involve sex, bdsm, and phone sex in some way.
There’s a bold, talented fringe artist named Cameryn Moore who also happens to be a phone sex operator and wrote a one-woman show called Phone Whore. I didn’t actually see it on the fringe circuit, but she came through Portland a couple years ago. I loved the play but remember thinking, “my phone sex show will be very different.” But right now there’s no idea or structure, no shape to it yet.
In slightly related news, after three years of gentle nagging, wheedling, and cajoling, Cindy has convinced me to participate in NaNoWriMo! I haven’t decided what to write about for that either, but if it ends up being sexy, who knows? It may be the foundation for my next show…If you’ve signed up for this creative craziness as well, please add me as a writing buddy on the site. My screen name is (shocker) Tonya Jone Miller.
There you have it. A damn lot of phone sex and writing in my future, and I suppose I’ll have to see that movie at some point…