Screenwriting : Question for British people by LindaAnn Loschiavo

LindaAnn If your location is rural there is a good chance the phone box will be the traditional red painted box so beloved of British iconography. If not, and it is in a suburban / large town setting, it would likely be a utilitarian closed glass-fronted box with no distinguishing features. The red painted boxes are something of an endangered species these days. If it is a 'modern' setting the box probably has a slot for credit card payments, as well as for coins. For the red box, it would likely be coins only. Your character would need to place coins in first, then dial, and the first coin would drop when the call is answered. And then keep feeding coins in if the call was of long duration or long distance. Making a call in the daytime would eat coins very fast - slower after 6pm. If you did not have enough coins you'd be cut off in mid speech. No capacity to take pound notes. In most there would be a telephone directory, unless it had been stolen / shredded. In really small rural areas telephone boxes would be the only places where one or (max) two teenagers could hang out in winter and shelter from the weather, so you might find evidence of their visits on the floor. And if the area was a bit dodgy, then definitely some graffiti. Caveat: my experience was as far from "a country estate an hr from London" as it was possible to get. There may be posh southern English types on the site who would know different. Technological changes would have been faster within the London orbit. Hope this helps.

Geoff, what do you mean by "modern"? Because my script is set in the early 1990s in a rural area. The heroine is able to walk to "town" (about 2 blocks long with a pub, a butcher, tea shop, bookshop, church). Soon she acquires a bicycle. Not thinking "posh" - - but I'm not thinking dangerous, crime-ridden either.

In such a setting and date there's a good chance it would be a coin-operated red phone box. And that butchers would be an endangered species as well. Most customers by that date would have shifted to a ginormo supermarket on the ring road of the nearest soulless commuter town (it's the south of England, less than an hour from London - soulless commuter towns are the local speciality). However, a long-established butchers with speciality products would still be soldiering on if the village had its share of well-off customers. OK, that was something of a tangent - for the phone box, you're safe with a classic red-painted box, coins only.

Tangents and other details such as that -- very helpful for me to keep in mind. Is a bookshop too fancy for a rural British setting, Geoff?? THANK YOU!!! [Yes, I've read "The Bookshop" by Penelope Fitzgerald but her novel was set well before my screenplay's setting.]

A bookshop would be fine if it could maintain a clientele. So that might mean it specialised in local books, secondhand books, children's books or similar. Yours is a small village so the local population could not support an ordinary bookshop. But as it is in the south of England and not too far from London an antiquarian bookshop is entirely feasible, with customers coming some distance to shop there. The economics of such a business at that place and time would mean the owner could probably not afford an employee (apart from perhaps a local part-timer on Saturday). So by all means keep the bookshop if you wish. The important thing to realise is that the economy of rural England anywhere within commuting distance of London had completely changed by this point. House prices were going through the roof. Many traditional areas of local employment were disappearing. People with white collar jobs were traveling long distances for work, while people who worked on the land were getting forced out because of the rise in rents and house prices. Young people would pack up and leave because there were no jobs and they couldn't compete with the townies who were buying up rural properties as second homes. Anywhere within driving distance of London was the same. All of this decided what businesses could survive in a small village. Pub yes, bookshop yes -ish, butchers maybe, village shop (newspapers, milk, bread, cigarettes) yes, B & B yes (typically at the pub). Greengrocers no, speciality shops no (although antiques shops did well at this time, often catering for people with too much money and very little taste). The cosy English countryside of yore it was not.

The British have a strange nostalgia for the wrought iron red phone box, but by 1990 British Telecom had just become a public company and the boxes were more akin to this : http://www.tafweb-trainz.co.uk/telephone_box_bt_1.jpg IIRC the image etched into the windowpane is Mercury, the messenger of the Gods. The telephone receiver itself was rectangular, dark grey and had a smell of circuit boards and foam. The phone was coin operated (10p), metallic, with blind friendly push buttons. A recorded posh female voice announced the numbers into the earpiece as you dialed. - As I was a child at the time, we used to repeatedly press the number zero for a free sex-line.

Thanks, Oliver. British novelist Penelope Fitzgerald always made up the place names for her novel; she sets "The Bookshop" in the English town of Hardborough, for instance. But that's a published book. For a script, must a place be named, Oliver?

@ Kristopher Rickards -- very helpful about the public phones & a great photo! Thank you!!

Coming from England ... these are common things : vandalism ,The phones cord has been cut, The coin slots are jammed full or some fool puts chewing gum in them.. the coins will not connect with mechanism .. they run straight through into the 'eject' slot thus not connecting you... if you are bordering a 'long distance call (how we are supposed to know the mileage, i dont know) or on a 'peak' time call it is like feeding an Elephant strawberries, thus needs tons of coins ... I'll try and think of some more :)

Steve: my heroine would be trying to phone her aunt in America, to let her know what's going on in England. In my script, she has trouble making those calls. Thank you for your comment. Because there needs to be "trouble" any time she's phoning American relatives!

depending on comedy or thriller ,, she could be smashing one pound (sterling) coins into the phone until it fills up etc ... I remember having to do this with an Irish girlfriend with a typical Dublin sense of humour,, frustrating but hilarious :)

Yes, Oliver, that is very wise advice. Thanks. My script is "Nightfall at Shadow House" -- and Shadow House is the rundown English estate where most of the action takes place. Often movies are put together where it's cheap to film, so why get that specific, right??

Thank you for the helpful link, Sam. Question for all: would a rural place in England have a BRIDAL SHOP??

Unlikely, you may need to give a reason for it being there... e,g, designer lives in the village and it's his/her shop window... but would anyone really quibble?

Anthony: many thanks. I need a local seamstress who makes gowns for one scene and later the mysterious uncle suggests she marry at Shadow House, so having a bridal boutique serves the story. THANKS!!

I don't know if this is out of your ballpark or not, LindaAnn but you should watch The Baker, a fantastically funny film set in a very small Welsh town with a single main street. I just looked it up on IMDb to see the era and it was made in 2007 and for some reason the poster lists it as Assassin In Love, a revolting title that does nothing for the story but the film is fantastic and may give you some ideas on small town life. I also would have thought a small town would be too small for a supermarket and would still use a butcher and general store. as for a bookshop? I guess that would depend on whether it's a touristy town or not. What's your estimated population?

Very happy to have suggestions and tips and encouragement from my wonderful colleagues here! While I don't want to name a town (or population), I also don't want my make-believe English town to sound ridiculous either. Great idea, Lisa - - the idea that the owner-operated dress shop also sells dolls/ dollhouses, pet apparel. Yes, a "general store" makes sense. Pierre, I'm going to watch "The Baker"!!! My protagonist, JENNICE, needs to come into town to make phone calls, to sketch more landscapes, get art supplies, etc. A very helpful artist-ghost has interfered with JENNICE's painting process; during a visit into town, she will see paintings the ghost left behind and realize the painter was her cousin (big plot points). This screenplay keeps me awake all night. :-D

Depending on how rural we're talking they could still have had red phone boxes, I came from a rural area of hampshire and it still had red phone boxes up to the 2000's, the biggest problem was that BT were notoriously bad at emptying them so they'd eventually stop being able to accept coins - possibly also the reason why they weren't replaced by the horrible grey ones for so long too now that I think about it. The second biggest problem was the overhead lines were very susceptible to the elements, strong wind or very heavy snow would cause them real issues

Jonn, how perfect for my script. When the protagonist tries to phone her aunt in America, there are problems: static on the line, she runs out of coins, the equipment will not work, the call won't connect, etc. And it's all REALISTIC!!!!! Thank you!! Where is Hampshire. by the way? Far from London? I need the detective to be able take a train back and forth.

Most of it is on the main trunk route from London, for instance Basingstoke is a 45 minute train journey from Waterloo

We were honest yokels

In English towns, is there still the "village church" and is there often a cemetery behind it?

My protagonist is in a public phone booth in England. She wants to make a collect call. Does she have to drop a coin in first????

I really don't think you need to be so specific. The Australian system, for most things, follows the UK system and you never had to put in a coin for a collect call and it was (and still is) called Reverse Charges. I think, from memory, we had to dial 013 to get the operator and they could then initiate a reverse charges call. Perhaps one of the Brits can confirm what they had to dial there to get the operator not that I think it's really that important. Surely you can just show your character enter a phone booth, then cut to INT phone booth with your character saying "Operator, I'd like to place a reverse charges call" and take it from there.

RE: Collect call. We called it reverse charges in the UK and around the time of your tale, you could just dial 100 without putting any money into the phone and ask for a reverse charges to [phone number] and give them your name. You would then here the person you were reverse charging answer the phone., The operator would ask, "would you accept a reverse charges call from XXX" and they would usually answer, "No, are you kidding. It costs three times the amount," and then they'd hang up and you'd be stuck. Well, that was my experience anyway.

Thank you, Pierre! You are quite right about cutting to my character saying, "Operator ..." But I was just trying to visualize the entire U.K. process -- -- to walk thru it mentally. In the USA, if you used a payphone, you MUST insert a coin, an operator will reply, and then after a "collect call" is initiated, you are supposed to get your coin back.

@ Kristopher Rickards ---- PERFECT! Thank you! I've got the hang of it now!!!

It's not a given rule that a church would have a graveyard but it would be safe to assume it had one - especially if it was the only church on the village. Very small villages may not have their own church, especially if a lot of villages surround it. But a medium sized village - small town would probably have one. Yeah calling the operator on 100 was always a free call so you wouldn't have to put money in

Jonn Blanchard - splendid details! Immensely helpful! Many many thanks!!

Withnail And I (Telephone Box) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhGCAqEG2cs my memories of telephone boxes was always frustrating stinky and cold if they worked! It is an english icon as important as the post box the double decker busand the london taxi cab.

Andrew, you make good points! Thank you for helping me!! I was asking because, when I write, I walk thru it mentally. I want to BE in those malfunctioning phone booths. I want to FEEL the frustration, which inspires the dialogue. In the script, the frustrating phone boxes force the protagonist to find a phone indoors, which leads to more incidents.

@ Richie Holland: Don't ever ask Withnail to understudy Constantine in "The Seagull." Great scene in a fabulous British phone box!

"Don't threaten me with a dead fish!!!!" - - - "Withnail and I"

Yes, I shall return --- what a great idea!