Something Out of Place

Halfway through a workweek, halfway through a mandated survey project, and I've only been able to collect enough material for one good rant (not on the survey - too much material for that - but I'd like to keep my job).

Monday night I saw a special screening of Capote starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and penned by actor-turned-first-time-screenwrighter Dan Futterman. The buzz about this movie from Telluride and Toronto was positive, and Hoffman's portrayal of TC is impressive. There is already a murmur going around some boards that Hoffman might get an Oscar nomination for this part. I liked it, so if you enjoy this blog, make the effort to catch it when it comes to your town.

My gripe, however, isn't with the cast - it's with the crew. One memorable scene has a headshot of Capote talking on the phone to New York from Kansas circa 1960. Nothing else is going on, except for a few cuts to the office in New York at the other end, so anything out of the ordinary stands out. I'll say - the phone he was talking on had an RJ11 phone jack sticking out of the end! All the other phone scenes remained true to the old hard-wired connections, but props failed on that one. A brief review of phone history in the US shows that RJ11 phone jacks only became widely introduced after 1977 to facilitate connections with *new* home consumer products like answering machines and faxes.

Leave it to an anthropologist to point out the obvious. (The AA's basic guide to ethnography: shut up, sit down, and observe before opening your mouth.)