Hotline (2014 film)

Synopsis

Hotline explores telephone hotlines throughout the United States. We meet Brad Becker of the GLBT Hotline, Youree Dell Harris (aka Miss Cleo, formerly of the Psychic Readers Network), the Homework Hotline in Nashville, Tenn. We meet the telephone volunteers at the Anti-Violence Project, Alan Ross of the Samaritans in New York. Jamie Blaine is a crisis counselor in Nashville, Tennessee. Brent Furlong is a pastor who runs Go Time Ministries in Pennsylvania. Tonya Jone Miller runs the Bay City Blues sex-line in Portland, Oregon. We see another telephone sex worker known only as Gypsy. We meet Jeff Ragsdale, the eponymous Jeff, One Lonely Guy hotline out of New York.

Production

Shaff, a former telephone psychic and suicide prevention hotline volunteer as well as reality television producer and director, shot the film at various locations across the United States. In post-production, Shaff worked with both the film's composer, Jess Stroup, and the film's editor, Charlie Dugan, on a score which utilized an analog dial tone theme. "The jumping off point for working on the score for Hotline came after I listened to a Radiolab piece about phone phreaking that featured a blind boy with a difficult school and home life who said that he found comfort in the sound of a telephone dial tone," Shaff explains. Shaff used the crowd source funding website, kickstarter, to finance portions of the project.

Release and distribution

Hotline screened at IFC Center on November 17, 2014 as part of DOC NYC festival. Gravitas Ventures released the film in select theaters and on iTunes and VOD on November 18, 2014.

Awards

On August 9, 2014, Hotline won First Prize for Best Feature Documentary at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.