Archives: Movies
Spring cleaning
March 1, 2010
Over the past five years we’ve collected a lot of photobooth-related stuff, much more than we can get to on a regular basis, and the To-Do List tends to pile up. Over the last week or so, we’ve had a chance to get a whole passel of material online, from TV shows and movies to commercials, print ads, music videos, and photobooth locations. In no particular order, here they are. Enjoy!
A commercial for Fruit Gushers in which kids’ massive fruit-shaped heads make their photobooth tip over.
An episode of “How It’s Made” that shows how a digital photobooth is assembled.
The 1989 Lewis Gilbert film Shirley Valentine, with a railway photobooth sequence.
Low Water’s video for “Sister, Leave Me”. Dave sent me the video and a nice note back in 2008; my apologies for not getting to this for far too long.
The 2008 opening titles of “Neighbors,” now with more pseudo-photoboothiness.
The film Onion Underwater, for which we have only a few images from the trailer.
A few glimpses of a photostrip in an episode of Fringe.
An ad for Will Young’s album Let It Go, as sold by Tesco.
Science World’s Photobooth of Doom.
Wickbold Light Bread from Brazil.
The 2001 animated short fim Autofoto.
And finally, two photobooths in the Helsinki Railway Station, thanks to Marco:
The booths (Helsinki Railway Station II and Helsinki Railway Station III) are located in the west entrance of the station.
One of these may be the first booth I found in Helsinki in 2005, moved to a new location within the station.
We’ll be back with more goodies in the coming months.
Please keep your contributions coming, as we continue to build our database of all things photobooth.
Brian | 9:14 PM | Comments (0)
Odds and ends
January 25, 2010
We’ve made a bit of a dent in the backlog of material to add to the site, and have a little batch photobooth sightings to present.
First, we revisit the film Management. We spotted a photostrip in the trailer, and though there’s not much more in the film itself, we’ve updated the entry.
We’ve also added a clever advertisement found on the side of a photobooth in Germany:
Last summer, we got wind of an ABC News webcast featuring a review of the new Arctic Monkeys album, illustrated with photobooth photos of the band:
Described in its Wikipedia article as a “German queer cinema horror film” by a Canadian director, Bruce La Bruce, Otto; or, Up with Dead People features a photostrip (and a photobooth flashback sequence) as a key moment in Otto’s journey.
A few weeks back, James Franco hosted “Saturday Night Live,” and starred in a sketch as a Christmas tree salesman who became overly attached to his trees. As he says goodbye to one, he gives “her” a photostrip of the two of them. No, it doesn’t make much sense.
Finally, we have a 2006 film starring Christina Ricci as a girl born with a pig’s snout, Penelope. Needless to say, she takes a strip of photos in a photobooth:
Brian | 9:12 AM | Comments (0)
Fall updates: Italian film edition
December 2, 2009
Our friend Marco in Italy has been sending us news and info from Italy over the past few years, and we’ve finally had time to track down three films he let us know about. Two are 1980s Italian films with extensive photobooth sequences, and one is a Kevin Costner film with a fake photostrip in it, but we’re happy to have them all. Thanks, Marco.
First, Cosi parlo Bellavista, in which a Naples man is directed in how to pose for his photobooth photos.
Second, Al bar dello sport, in which a winning lottery ticket goes missing but is spotted in a photobooth.
And finally, Message in a Bottle, where we see a photostrip of Kevin Costner amongst the detritus of his life.
We are always grateful to our readers who submit their finds to us; please drop us a line if you come across something we don’t have listed on the site.
Brian | 8:03 PM |
Fake "Fur" and the Ace hits New York
August 14, 2009
We are still digging out more updates that piled up during our summer hiatus, and present a few more today. First, Stephanie was kind enough to check out the new Ace Hotel in New York City, which we reported on in late 2007, wondering whether it would feature a photobooth in its lobby. Our question was answered: like its counterpart in Portland, the Ace New York does have a black and white photobooth, which takes credit cards only and pushes the upper limit of photobooth pricing up to $5.
The new Ace in Palm Springs apparently has a booth, as well, though we haven’t visited there yet, but when we visited the Ace in Seattle a few years ago, there was no booth to be found. Anyway, the photobooth at the Ace Hotel in New York is a welcome addition to the often volatile New York photobooth scene. Thanks, Stephanie.
Back in January, I visted the Motley Coffeehouse in Claremont, California, and checked out their black and white booth, which looked like it turned out great photos, but wasn’t on at the time, as the coffeehouse was actually closed.
And finally, we add another movie to our long list of films featuring faked photostrips, this one the highly anticipated and promptly critically lacerated Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, starring Nicole Kidman as the famed photographer.
Brian | 10:16 AM |
Wim Wenders in the booth
August 11, 2009
Late last year, when I was preparing my Photobooths in Cinema talk for the 2009 International Photobooth Convention, our friend Klaas sent us a scan of a photostrip. It wasn’t just any photostrip, though: it was a set of photos by famed German film director Wim Wenders. When Klaas passed the scan on to us, it made for a nice first: the first photostrip we’ve seen of a director who has also used photobooths in his films. I had to take a quick look through Hilhaven Lodge to make sure, but I’m pretty certain. I can hear jaws dropping around the world, I know.
Not only has Wim Wenders used a photobooths in one movie, he’s used them in three: Alice in the Cities, Paris, Texas, and Faraway, So Close!
We thank Mr. Wenders for letting the strip be published, and Klaas for providing it to us.
In other news, we’ve added some more content recently, including a nice piece called “40 Under 40,” by Crain’s Chicago Business magazine, with photobooth portraits by our good friends at 312photobooth.com.
Anthony brought one of his photobooths into the Crain’s studio and had the 40 up-and-coming powerful Chicagoans take photostrips. The strips were used for a giant collage on the cover, for a table of contents, and to illustrate each individual profile.
The new Fox series “Glee” got an early start on the fall season when the pilot episode aired a few months ago. Tim spotted a photostrip in the locker of one of the main characters, and we’ve now got it listed in our TV section.
If you missed the three-episode series Wallander, based on the Swedish crime novels featuring Kurt Wallander by Henning Mankell, we recommend seeking them out, in high-definition, if you can. They were shot using the Red One digital camera, the first UK series to do so, and they look absolutely stunning, in a way that’s really tough to describe.
Two of the three episodes, which star Kenneth Branagh as Wallander, featured photostrips. We added one episode back in June and have now added the second epsiode, with a much more central role for the photostrip.
We’ll have more updates on booth locations, movies, TV shows, and music throughout the week.
Photostrip © Wim Wenders, courtesy of Klaas Dierks
Brian | 8:41 AM |
Portland photobooth show and more
August 2, 2009
Our trickle of new additions to the site continues, with two new locations and news of a photobooth gallery show, for those of you in the Pacific Northwest. First, thanks to Nathan for our long-awaited first-ever photobooth location in Montréal. We’ve long known of Montréal’s great Metro station photobooths, and even taken a few photostrips (and squares) there in the days before Photobooth.net, but we’ve never had an official submission to the site. Here’s hoping the booth at the Rosemont Metro Station is the first of many.
We received word of a new photobooth location in Portland a few months back, so after much delay, we’re happy to list the black and white booth at the House of Vintage, thanks to Victoria. And speaking of Portland, our friend Myles Haselhorst, whom we first met here in L.A. earlier this year sent us news of a photobooth exhibition that just opened at his gallery, Ampersand Vintage:
Out of the Booth : Photobooth Enlargement from the Robert E. Jackson Collection
July 29th to August 23rd, 2009
For a little over a decade, Robert Jackson has been collecting vintage American snapshots, an activity that culminated in a 2007 exhibition at the National Gallery titled “The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978.” The photographs exhibited in that show provided a comprehensive record of all the nuances, anomalies, visual tricks & standard subjects that comprise what one thinks of as a typical (& in some cases, not so typical) American snapshot. The same can be said of Jackson’s collection of vintage photobooth images, the single panels & unclipped strips being suggestive of what he considers the photobooth’s ability to meld a sort of unseen photographic technology with one’s personal aesthetic. Collaborating in the curatorial process with Jackson, our August show features enlargements of 32 pieces from his collection that exemplify the uncanny, self-expressive quality inherent in photobooth images.
And finally, a new film has been added to our list, last year’s Choke starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston.
Brian | 4:05 PM |
European film trifecta
February 19, 2009
As we’re gearing up for the 2009 International Photobooth Convention and a revamped “Photobooths in Cinema” lecture, I’ve added three major examples of photobooths on film from three important European directors. First, a story of a Frenchman in L.A. directed by Jacques Deray,
The Outside Man.
Jean-Louis Trintignant joins a cast including Roy Scheider, Ann-Margret, and Angie Dickinson in this story about a hitman who finds himself becoming a target.
Second, thanks to a tip from Klaas Dierks, Wim Wenders’ breakout 1974 film Alice in the Cities.
Rüdiger Vogler plays a writer and photographer who finds himself in charge of a young girl as they try to find her grandmother, somewhere in Germany.
And finally, thanks to an image featured in Federica Muzzarelli’s book Formato tessera, a 1989 film by director Ettore Scola, Che ora è, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Massimo Troisi.
These two giants of Italian cinema play a reunited father and son who talk through their relationship over the course of the film. We’re happy to have these titles added to our list, and are always looking for more, so if you know of something we haven’t listed yet, please let us know.
Brian | 9:15 PM |
Harold and the magic photobooth
January 7, 2009
We’ve posted images from the 1929 Harold Lloyd comedy Welcome Danger, which, along with Lonesome (noted here last month), is one of the earliest films we’ve found yet that features a photobooth. In Welcome Danger, the machine is more of an automatic photo machine without the booth, but the principle is the same, and once again, the photo taken by the machine plays an integral part in the plot of the film.
When a photo taken by Billie (Barbara Kent, who also played Mary in Lonesome) fails to come out of the machine, she walks away. A moment later, Harold (Harold Lloyd) approaches the machine, sits for his photo, and once it has arrived, places it on the drying stand for a moment. After replacing his hat, he looks at the photo and finds that it is a sort of movie fantasy double exposure, with his and Billie’s images neatly superimposed next to one another. He becomes smitten with the girl in his photo, and, as the stills from the film show, he eventually tracks her down.
We now have films featuring photobooths from every decade of the photobooth’s history, the 1920s to the present, missing only one: the 1930s. I’m hoping some eagle-eyed fans of ’30s musicals are keeping their eyes peeled for photobooth appearances. if you spot something please let us know.
Brian | 8:35 AM |
Photobooths in cinema: origins
December 16, 2008
For a few years now, we’ve been keeping our eyes out for images from Paul Fejos’ seminal silent film Lonesome, the story of a man and woman who meet, fall in love, become separated, and finally reunited, all in the same day. I’d had a tip from our friend Klaas that the film had a photobooth sequence in it, and finally had a chance to see the film a few years ago, but just this month, I’ve finally managed to get ahold of some images from the film to add to our list the film that has, to my knowledge, the earliest appearance of a photobooth in cinema.
The photobooth, labeled “Auto Photo,” produces a single photo in a circular disc, a product that a number of different photobooth companies were providing at the time. The photo is produced nearly instantaneously in the film, creating a precedent that nearly every film since has followed, as editors ignore the photochemical reality and show the photostrips appearing just seconds after the photos were taken. Lonesome also sets the pattern for the use of the photobooth photo in the narrative structure of the film. First, it is a symbol of the love the two share, a memento of Coney Island, where they met. Later in the film, when they’ve become separated, both Mary and Jim use their photos of each other to show a carnival worker, asking if he’s seen their lost love. And finally, at the end of the film, Jim pulls out his tiny photo of Mary and looks at it longingly, convinced that he has lost the girl he fell in love with that day.
Look at the still images from the film to get a better sense of how the images fit into the movie as a whole. And if you ever have a chance to see the film screened - prints do circulate, both in the United States and Europe - I recommend it highly, not just for the photobooth sequence, but for its compelling and magical artistry. It really is silent cinema at its best.
Brian | 8:24 AM |
San Diego photobooths and movie/TV updates
November 30, 2008
A weekend visit to San Diego was a bit of a disappointment in terms of functioning photochemical photobooths out in the wild, but it wasn’t a complete loss. First, the bad news: the photobooth at the Corvette Diner has indeed been replaced with a digital booth, and the photobooths at the Waterfront, U 31 and the Ruby Room are all digital. The two photobooths at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park are still there, but both were out of order during my visit. The photobooth at the Beauty Bar is also no longer there, which leaves a pretty poor verdict for real photobooths in San Diego. If anyone knows of any we’ve missed, please let us know; we’d love to hear some good news.
The saving grace of our visit was a chance to see photographer Tim Mantoani’s beautiful Model 9 photobooth, which lives in his San Diego studio and is occasionally used for photo shoots and parties.
Tim was kind enough to take time out of his holiday weekend to meet me and let me have a look at the booth - it’s a real beauty, in great working order, and is complete with the top sign, two different sets of advertising inserts for the wraparounds, and the operating manuals.
We first came across Tim’s work in early 2005, when we noted his photobooth-like photoshoot for the 2005 Pro Bowl in Sports Illustrated. We’ve been in touch since, and were happy to have the opportunity to see his photobooth in person. Thanks again, Tim.
We’ve also made a few new additions to our Movies & TV section:
First, filling in a gap in the decades for the 1950s (we now have booth appearances in every decade from the 1920s to the present, save the 1930s…and I know there’s got to be a ’30s musical with a booth out there somewhere…), we’ve got Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon, starring Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and, briefly, a Photomatic photobooth.
Gus Van Sant is in the news thanks to his recent release Milk, Nicole Kidman for her turn in Australia, and Joaquin Phoenix for vowing to be done with acting; once upon a time, they were all working together, in a photobooth, in To Die For.
Further back, we added scenes from a Swedish ski vacation comedy, Snowroller, a Hong Kong shoot-‘em-up called Fong juk, Robert Altman’s classic interpretation of the Philip Marlowe story The Long Goodbye, and Agnes Varda’s gritty story of a roaming vagabond, Sans toit ni loi. Four more different films it would be challenging to find, but they all share a photobooth in common.
On the television front, we’ve also had some recent additions: first, some TV shows that feature pseudo-photostrips in their opening credit sequences, The Ex List and ‘Til Death.
Thanks to Klaas, we also added an old episode of the now-defunct Charmed, and thanks to Stephanie, a first-season episode of Pushing Daisies. Another new TV season also seems to always bring a photostrip appearance in a pilot episode; this year it’s The Mentalist.
Brian | 8:52 PM |
Fall update: Boots, words, movies, TV, and a podcast
September 2, 2008
It’s time for more updates and a few random tidbits from around the photobooth world: first of all, did anyone out there know that Kenneth Cole made a style of boot named Photo Booth?
Now that that game-changing piece of news is out of the way, on to more relevant things: first, Ted Travelstead’s “Suggested Poses for Photo-Booth Pictures” from McSweeney’s is pretty great.
They start out small: “(a) Big ol’ cheesy smile, (b) “I am not a crook” face with double peace sign, (c) Doin’ the funky chicken,” and quickly progress to the very involved: “(a) Peacocking for the paparazzi on the red carpet at the premiere of your cinematic masterpiece, (b) Smoking a cigarette nonchalantly by the pool while half-listening to an eager interviewer, (c) Sweating profusely, cheap black hair dye running from your graying temples, as you desperately plead for a walk-on role in a C-movie about a ghost clown so you can afford one more week in a seedy North Hollywood motel.” I’m not quite sure why he chose to list only three at a time, when photobooths come most commonly in strips of four, but that’s beside the point.
We gave up waiting for The Wonder Years to come out on DVD and managed to find another option for getting images from the episode titled “Summer Song,” in which Kevin and his family go to Ocean City and he meets Teri, an older girl who takes a liking to him. They take some photos in a booth, and Kevin cherishes them forever, of course.
We’ve also added a page for a Danish film titled Mig og mafiaen (“Me and the Mafia”), which turns out to be a remake of Ooh… You Are Awful, right down to the photobooth sequence.
Director Bruce McDonald’s The Tracey Fragments uses multiple images and split-screen techniques to bring to life the mental state of a teenage girl, played by Ellen Page. At one point she takes some photos in a photobooth, and we watch as they turn out
And finally, something we’ve been meaning to post for ages and have had no good reason not to: an interview with photobooth artist Daniel Minnick, a friend and contributor to Photobooth.net, on Todd Wemmer’s Lost and Found Photos blog. Thanks to Todd for sending us the link.
Brian | 8:33 AM |
Mid-summer news round-up
July 20, 2008
We’ve got a lot of photobooth news to get off our desks and into the archive, so we’re putting it all together into one mega-post. First, we start with a video interview on MTV.com with Sub Pop’s vice president, Megan Jasper, as she gives a tour of the offices, including their in-house photobooth, not far from the soda machine that dispenses 75¢ Rainier beer. Nice. We’ve mentioned their booth before, and you can also check out more bands in the photobooth on their blog.
Secondly, we heard from Jeff from Comedy Photobooth, who let us know about the videos of comedians telling jokes inside photobooths - and if you were curious, all of the videos are shot inside photochemical booths. We’ve got the site listed in our Projects section now, and we’ll watch as it grows.
We’ve neglected to mention the ubiquitous Tonight Show “phony photobooth,” a series of videos which show unwitting photobooth-goers being freaked out by a talking photobooth, but it’s out there, and everyone seems to have seen it. Along those lines, we came across another photobooth prank video, in which a woman in a photobooth asks passersby to hold articles of her clothing, and it becomes apparent she’s taking off all her clothes in the booth. The clip seems to have originated on a Fox reality show called “Sexy Cam” (anyone ever heard of it? No? Didn’t think so), and the booth setting looks suspiciously like a mall in Canada.
And speaking of Canada, on an altogether much more interesting note, we caught word of a show in Vancouver called “Requiem for a Photobooth: 3 punk bands, 4 shots, 1 minute of silence,” by the artist Femke van Delft. More information on the project can be found on her site, and on this local blog. The show seems to have ended this past week, and we welcome any more information and first-hand reports on what it was like.
In late 2007, we received an email from director Graham Rathlin, who was working on a short film set in a photobooth and needed a real booth to shoot it in. We helped get him in touch with the folks who manage Berlin’s fine booths, and a few months later, he sent us a link to his finished short, titled Little Snaps of Horror. You can view the film on icewhole.com.
And finally, from the Coincidence Department, we’ve got two “About Us” pages from Chicago-based organizations that use photobooth photos. Now, we know that Chicago is America’s photobooth capital, but even this is a little strange.
First, from skinnyCorp, the folks behind the phenomenon that is Threadless, a page featuring a number of shots from the same booth, which you can see on their site and archived here.
And secondly, the Neo-Futurists’ Ensemble and Alumni page (archived in our Web section), featuring dozens of black and white photobooth photos of past and current members of this Chicago theater collective.
Brian | 11:06 PM |
Ban photobooth montages?
July 27, 2007
It seems that for some critics, filmmakers have gone to the well one too many times with the photobooth montage. While we still enjoy seeing the photobooth scene recur in films as a testament to the enduring popularity of the photobooth, it has long been our contention that someone needs to try a new approach to using the booth. In a review of No Reservations on E! Online, Dezhda Mountz writes
From the fumbling-first-kiss scene to the inevitable photo-booth montage (shouldn’t these just be banned forever?), bits of the movie are simply overdone.
Brian | 8:41 AM |
Add The Break-Up to the list
June 2, 2006
As Ed Blank of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes in a review of The Break-Up, the tradition of photobooth photos as relationship montage is alive and well in 2006; it’s a wonder that it hasn’t gotten old yet. We’re not complaining, but have these people seen any movies before making this one?
After a montage of wacky photo-booth snapshots, which passes for the courtship, we cut straight to the stress.
We’ll see whether they’re real photobooth shots or not, and get a page up for the film once the DVD is released.
Brian | 8:09 AM |
Movie additions from Paris and Spain
May 14, 2006
More additions from the backlog of “to do” items, this time, two films with photobooth appearances. First, Paris, Texas, one of at least three Wim Wenders films to feature a photobooth or photostrip (we’ve already got his Faraway, So Close! posted, and we’re looking for Alice in the Cities). It’s also not the only time Nastassja Kinski appears in a photostrip; her clever appearance in Terminal Velocity has also been duly noted.
Second, we have Crimen Perfecto (or Crimen Ferpecto, depending on whom you believe), a dark comic farce from Spain from a few years back. The main characters squeeze into a photobooth, though one is a lot more wiling than the other.
Brian | 6:23 PM |
Netflix windfall: Movie updates
February 19, 2006
With a recent re-entry into the world of Netflix, I’ve got a clutch of new entries to the Movies and TV section of the site. From 1987, we begin with Best Seller, starring Brian Dennehy and James Woods. Then, we have the Philip Kaufman adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel Rising Sun. Next, the teen black comedy Jawbreaker from 1999. Then, from 2001, the Adrien Brody vehicle Love the Hard Way. And who can forget Terminal Velocity, starring Charlie Sheen? And finally, we have Prom Queen, a Canadian TV movie from 2004. Rising Sun, Jawbreaker, and Prom Queen feature only photostrips, but the other three have legitimate photobooth appearances.
In addition, I came across the supposed “photo booth” sequence in the recent Land of the Dead. The oft-mentioned “photo booth” scene, which featured the men behind the recent homage Shaun of the Dead, wasn’t really a photobooth scene. I can’t think of a much better name for it, though, so I don’t blame those who described it as such in the press. It’s a brief scene featuring a “get your photo taken with a zombie” attraction at a carnival. Carnivalgoers pose in front two zombies, chained to a metal rack, as a cameraman takes a photo - it’s no photobooth, but it “zombie photo op” doesn’t have much of a ring to it.
Brian | 9:09 PM |
Photobooths in the National Film Registry
January 5, 2006
With the announcement of the 2005 selections for the National Film Registry, the number of films with photobooth or photostrip appearances in them that have been deemed by the Library of Congress to have “cultural, historical or aesthetic significance” has risen to two out of a total of 425 on the list.
David Holzman’s Diary (1968) was added in the registry’s third year, 1991, and this year, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) was added.
The National Film Registry was created in 1989, and each year, 25 films are added to the list. “For each title named to the Registry, the Library of Congress works to ensure that the film is preserved for all time, either through the Library’s massive motion picture preservation program at Dayton, Ohio, or through collaborative ventures with other archives, motion pictures studios, and independent film makers.”
Brian | 8:17 AM |
Photo Booth Zombies
June 27, 2005
CNN reports on an interesting feature of the latest “Dead” film from director George Romero. Edgar Wright and Shaun Pegg, the director/co-writer and star/co-writer, respectively, of last year’s zombie homage Shaun of the Dead, have cameo roles in Romero’s new film Land of the Dead. Carrying on the long tradition of the “photo booth cameo,” Wright and Pegg have a brief moment on screen as zombies at a photo booth. The IMDb entry for the film helpfully lists their official credited character names, both “Photo Booth Zombie.” We’ll be looking for the DVD release for screen captures.
Brian | 11:47 PM |
Photobooths go to the movies
February 26, 2005
Last night at the AMC Fenway Theater, we hit the photobooth trifecta. First, as we walked up the stairs to get tickets, we saw a giant banner for the film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (?), featuring a photobooth strip sticking out of someone’s massive back pocket. Second, after we bought our tickets and were on the way to the theater, a poster for A Lot Like Love that Aimee spotted, using four photobooth pictures as the poster image. And finally, ten minutes into Hitch a couple goes on a date and - what else? - spends some time in a photobooth, which we see from inside and out in a ten-second sequence. It’s getting big, people. Posters pictured here, and screencaps from Hitch will follow when it arrives on dvd.
Brian | 7:28 PM |
Artforum: Photobooth in conceptual art
February 10, 2005
Inspired by conceptual artist Pierre Bismuth’s nomination, alongside Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry, for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for their work on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Artforum Magazine this week took a brief look at “Conceptual Art at the Oscars.”
While Bismuth’s work behind the scenes of the film has received recognition, the article points out that is has not always been so. Der Fotomatonreparateur (The photobooth repairman) by German art collective Die Tödliche Doris, is given as an example of an instance in which conceptual art has likely inspired a film (in this case, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie), but has not been recognized.
See the Photobooths in Movies and TV entries for Eternal Sunshine and Amélie. Also check out more examples of photobooths in art.
