The filming went way better than I expected. Which is to say that I think it went very well indeed. My fears were completely unfounded. I was thinking that Mo, the interviewer, was of that genre of comedians whose material comes from subtly ridiculing the person they are interviewing. Nothing like that at all. I had considered voicing this concern to the producer before the taping but I opted otherwise. I atually had such an uneasy feeling after the pre-interview phone conversation that I thought they might find someone else, or not do the segment at all.

I also was hesitant to embrace this segment on account of television spots I’ve done in the past. They turn out to be a lot of work for very little return. And while I have not done a whole lot of television I’ve found that the tone of the interviews I agreed to tended towards spasticity. A certain spot I did for a cable news channel some years ago was one of the stupidest things I have ever seen on television.

The subject matter of payphones is not one in which I find a lot of humor, as other people do. My interest in them revolves around their capacity to be a focal point of obsession and intrigue. But I came with a sense of humor and went with the flow of things, and at a few moments Mo and I had the whole film crew laughing.

It was kind of jarring to arrive at the NYPL and find these phone booths ambushed by cameras and spotlights. I have known these phone booths for 25 years. Seeing them in a position of celebrity seemed wrong at first, but I got over it.

I thought I would be nervous about this but I was not. I was more tired and groggy than anything else. My most intrusive handicap was in simply navigating through a very familiar place overtaken by very equipment and stuff I do not ommonly deal with. I have not had to report anywhere at 8:30am for many years. But we had to do the filming before the NYPL opened to the public. I was lucky to be able to arrive at 8:30. The rest of the crew was there at 6:30. The night owl in me hooted at that information.

I got there a little early. The doors to the 42nd Street entrance of the NYPL were closed, but at 8:30 on the dot they opened, and a security placed a sign saying that the public would be admitted at 10:00am. I asked the seutiry guard “Is there a film crew in there?” He responded in the affirmative. I said I was supposed to be working with them. He went inside, armed with my name, and a minute later he returned. He was all smiles, saying “You’ve been verified and bona fide!”

At one particular point the crew was setting something up and I was just kind of sitting there in the phone booth. In that moment I felt the weight of six million people in the room with us (The producer had thrown out that number as an estimate for how many people watch the show). In contemplating that many human beings seeing my face I said to myself: As long as they’re not cramming into the phone booth with me then I guess it’s all good. This was not live, of course. But we couldn’t conduct the interview without that future audience very much in mind.

I had offered to bring along a phone booth curio which I possess. It is a life size print of the famous Joe Munroe picture of a bunch of frat boys stuffing themselves into a phone booth. The print is over 6 feet high and maybe 4 feet across. Two of the heads in the picture are cut out, so you can stick your head through and make it look like you are being crushed by the asscheeks of a 1950s college kid. It would have been a pretty unwieldy object to carry over, and the producer wisely said not to bring it. He did, however, suggest that we might use it in a potential follow up interview. I did not know until then there was even a possibility for a follow up interview. So maybe I’m not done with this yet.

I don’t remember now how clearly I articulated what was to be one of my main points: That I think a certain element of false nostalgia inhabits America’s memory of phone booths. They are sometimes described in ways that make it sound as if people enjoyed and even loved the experiene of using a payphone to make phone calls. I remember it otherwise. Not only were phone booths stuffy and uncomfortable but the time spent making the calls was not time spent because you just wanted to be there, or because you felt comfortable. You were there because you had to be there.

…

I am at a library on 21st Street and … I think it’s 37th Avenue. Not sure why I came over here. I am going back to Manhattan, I think.