Sure, law enforcement always had radios and walkie-talkies. But it's the device you don't see -- the phone in everyone's pocket -- that really makes an impact.
That implied phone creates the potential for audiences to think, "Why doesn't he just call?" For instance, in "Superbad," after Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) appears to be getting arrested after buying alcohol with a fake ID, why doesn't he call his friends to tell them he's just partying with the cops?
The typical solution is simple: Kill the cellphone. It can be lost ("Sex and the City"), out of range ("Damages," when Ted Danson is trying to re-call a hit man) or out of battery (Jamie Foxx at the end of "Collateral"). The cellphone death has become the 21st century version of the car not starting when a killer is after you.
Katherine Heigl and James Marsden's car gets stuck with no cellphone service in "27 Dresses," forcing them to seek help at a countryside bar, where sparks fly during a drunken dance to "Bennie and the Jets." The screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna, says the scene isn't a cliche, it's relatable, and that audiences laugh when the two characters hold their phones through the car windows and wave them.
"Doesn't it happen to you all the time?" she asks. "Maybe as cellphone service improves, writers will have to think up better excuses." McKenna is trying to find a way to ditch a phone in her adaptation of Sophie Kinsella's novel "The Undomestic Goddess," in which a corporate attorney gets stuck in the countryside.
One solution is to get rid of the phone before it becomes an obvious burden, preferably in a way that reveals character, humor or suspense. McKee likes how it was done in last year's Tim Roth-Naomi Watts film "Funny Games." When two seemingly nice young men talk their way into a family's house, one of them, in an apparent accident, breaks the family's cellphone by nudging it into a sink of water, planting the seed for their terrorizing of the family.
"Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" uses a comic beat. Kumar gets halfway down the hall and realizes he left his phone in his apartment, but in his drug-induced stupor, he decides, "We've gone too far," thus allowing for the night's misadventures.
More downsides
Mobile technology affects each genre differently. "The cellphone has created more problems than benefits for horror screenwriters, because so many horror films involve so many people stuck outside civilization, who are being hunted and have no recourse," says Scott Kosar, the screenwriter of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake and others.
