"No, I actually had it first. It’s a long and winding road. What happened was, I was in post-production on 8mm and there was a bidding war for this script called Phone Booth. My agents called and told me that every studio and every producer were bidding on this hot script by Larry Cohen, and if Fox gets it they want me to do it with Mel Gibson. I read the script and loved it, but I had also written a script called Flawless and I’d found out that morning that De Niro was probably going to do it. So when Fox called me in, I said, ‘Look, I love you guys, I love this idea and I love Mel but I think my script is going to go ahead, so goodbye’. Then I went off and made Flawless and Tigerland. I’m not sure what happened during the two years that followed – Mel dropped out, I don’t know why. The Hughes Brothers had it for a while, Steve Gaghan was involved for a while, I heard Brad Pitt’s name for a while, Jim Carrey was in and out, Michael Bay and Will Smith had it for a long while…but I don’t know why any of that didn’t work out. When I finished filming Tigerland, I went back to Fox to edit and the head of Fox 2000 came to see me and told me they’d never gotten Phone Booth off the ground and wondered if I’d still be interested. I said sure, and that I had this great kid I found for Tigerland, Colin Farrell. They said ‘Colin who?’ and we went through all of that, and then Jim Carrey called, said he’d always been interested in Phone Booth and if I did it, he would do it. I didn’t really think it was Jim’s part; I actually thought Jim would be better as the caller. Having seen The Majestic, I think Jim was looking for a part where he could play an ordinary guy, not just play ‘Jim Carrey’. So we talked about doing the movie together but after a while he called me to say he had cold feet, which I understood because it never felt right to me, it didn’t feel like the right fit. By that time, I had Tigerland put together and we showed it at the Toronto Film Festival. It was so well-received, and the head people at Fox said, ‘Okay, we get it, Colin’s great. You can make Phone Booth with him but he’s still an unknown, Joel, so here’s a dollar to go make the movie.’ Which is why we ended up having a 12-day shooting schedule – it’s all we could afford."