Excuse Me, I'm On The Phone
2026 · 10m · USA
Directed by Bobby McCoy
Tones: absurdist, humorous, tense
A daisy chain of overlapping phone calls bouncing between LA street corners, starting with a canvasser outside Erewhon and pinballing through debt collectors, pet emergencies and family meltdowns. Whole city told sideways through one telephonic ear.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Every LA short is about the city; this one is about the city's hold music. McCoy's daisy-chain structure earns its Altman comparisons without begging for them.
McCoy structures the whole city around interlocking phone conversations rather than physical encounters — Short Cuts via Tangerine, Rohmer for the chatter. The telephonic-ear conceit is exactly the right form for the LA-canvasser-Erewhon territory.
Vignette structure built entirely around interlocking phone conversations rather than physical encounters — the daisy-chain Erewhon-canvasser-to-debt-collector-to-cat-emergency premise is doing the structural work, not just generating content. Short Cuts via Erewhon is a clean Altman-update.
Reviews
McCoy flexes an ever-evolving microbudget mastery.