MovieChat Forums > Pacific Heights (1990) Discussion > What was with the phone books?

What was with the phone books?

posted 19 years ago by petrina5
6 replies | jump to latest

How did they fit into his scheme?

[–] 19 years ago

[deleted]

[–] thekeir 18 years ago

I believe they were shown to emphasize how much he moved around while he was doing his scams (you move to a different city, you get a different phone book, etc.)

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] moviegeek71 18 years ago

He seemed to live a very affluent lifestyle, although fake and through fraud, so he surely needed a phone book to find things and get out on the town and meet people and/or charm the one he was with at the time.

----------
"If I've never seen it before, it's a new release to me."

[–] triplegrim 12 years ago

This was before internet. Phonebooks is how he gets his information etc.

[–] ProfSpielberg 10 years ago

It was a visual touch more than anything, like the razor blade, showing the above-and-beyond effort he undertook to mine Ye Olde Public Info and spin webs of phony references; also (maybe) the intimation that anyone anywhere could be his victim, as simple as the next line in the directory-- it truly "wasn't personal" to the guy.

But since a major part of his scam was social engineering and wearing different identities over the phone I suppose it saved enough time to justify lugging around the White Pages for a dozen area codes. From experience I can tell you it was fairly easy to prevent your home phone listing from being printed at the time this was made, which is what most normal people under 60 did to avoid the telemarketers.