Cell phones are a big problem in TV and movies. One, it just wrecks suspense when one character can get a hold of another immediately to warn them of impending doom, danger, or apocalypse. Two, having two characters just hanging out talking is boring enough--having them hanging out talking in different places, where they can't really interact with each other or their environment organically is beyond boring. Why don't you just go watch a play?
Not that I am saying anything bad about plays. They are just fundamentally different from TV and movies and can support dialog heavy scenes in a way that TV and media cannot.
One of the things I had to do for The Garden was separate the characters from their cell phones. It wasn't terribly difficult to do, but then it proposed an entirely new problem--
People don't know phone numbers anymore.
Even though my character had lost his cell phone, he still needed to call a friend. And then this was when I realized, I myself know about three phone numbers. Two of those are my parents' cell phones. I don't know my parents' house number, I don't know my sister's number, I don't know my best friends' phone numbers. So cell phones provide infinite frustration. Either they create excessive accessibility or they completely cut us off from contacting anyone.
I mostly stalk showrunners and bump industry news, but if you'd like to follow me on Twitter, you can find me at AmyRButler.
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