An exploration of the need for human connection through the anonymity of telephone hotlines.
Once ubiquitous in the pre-Internet era, hotlines served to connect strangers for a multiplicity of purposes – some for profit, others for the public good – from the titillation of phone sex to the potential lifesaving of a suicide prevention line. While they may not be quite as common today, when people are more apt to Google their way to porn or online forums for their needs, there are still hundreds of hotlines still in operation, serving many of those same roles. Director Tony Shaff explores what motivates individuals to reveal personal details about their lives in conversations with faceless strangers, and how it affects those hotline operators.
At the time of this writing, Shaff has raised over a third of his $22,000 Kickstarter goal for post-production funding. With just under three weeks left in his campaign, there’s still time to support the project. To keep updated on the doc, visit its website.
What most interests me about this project is what the continued phenomenon of hotlines suggests about how and why people seek out human connection, especially in a time when individuals are arguably the most connected they’ve ever been thanks to modern technology. The action of dialing a number for a voice call seems almost archaic – like many others, I wouldn’t consider myself a phone person, and try to avoid unnecessary telephone time in favor of emails, FaceTime, or in-person conversations. That said, there are a small number of exceptions, usually family members and close friends, for whom phone calls are the de facto mode of conversation – a sort of comfort mode of communication. That Shaff’s subjects represent perfect strangers seeking this kind of intimate aural experience makes his project especially compelling. Beyond this, the film promises to explore a range of hotline types, from the experiences of the infamous psychic Ms Cleo to those of the men and women dedicated to offering hope and help to desperate people contemplating ending their lives, thereby injecting moments of both levity and gravity to what should be a universally accessible doc.
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