Skip to Content
Watch trailer for THE TELEPHONE BOOK Watch trailer

THE TELEPHONE BOOK

Director: Nelson Lyon Run Time: 87 min. Release Year: 1971

Starring: James Harder, Jill Clayburgh, Norman Rose, Ondine, Sarah Kennedy

“One of my favorite films of the Seventies.” — Steve Martin

Truly alive and more wonderfully whacked with each passing minute, this underground comedy plays like a sketch show devised by Robert Downey Sr., with a little Ralph Bakshi and Brian De Palma thrown in for good measure.

A cute, bored young ditz (LAUGH-IN’s Sarah Kennedy) is invigorated after a life-changing obscene phone call from a baritone weirdo. In a who’s-who of the era’s counterculture personas, she calls every last Village crackpot in search of her velvet-voiced wonder.

THE TELEPHONE BOOK’s bizarre peanut gallery includes future Oscar nominee William Hickey (PRIZZI’S HONOR) bedridden with priapism, Warhol superstars Ondine and Ultra Violet, Barry Morse (THE FUGITIVE) as a fallen stag filmmaker and voiceover guru Norman Rose (wearing an unforgettably disturbing pig mask) as the obscene call king. Heady, heated and oh-so-right.

Trailer

powered by Filmbot