An anxious voice at the other end of a telephone line listening to crisis after crisis may make the difference between helping the lonely, the broken and the hopeless… or losing them. Beth (Tessa Thompson) is a volunteer crisis helpline volunteer who gets on the phone every night to provide some comfort to the distressed.
Therein lies the theme of The Listener, written by Alessandro Camon (The Messenger) and directed by Steve Buscemi. Camon spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about creating a tense, contained thriller set in Beth’s apartment. Camon co-wrote The Messenger with Oren Moverman which had some thematic overlap with The Listener.
“I’m interested in characters who do this kind of job. Let’s call it witnessing, listening, delivering bad news and bearing witness to human pain,” reveals Camon. The screenwriter wrote his screenplay during the pandemic which “made the experience of loneliness, the need for interaction and the need for somebody to listen all the more acute.” He claims the pandemic served us a diet of fantasy and escape – none of which were going to save us from the stressors of our daily lives. “I think there was a sort of cultural redistribution of respect in our society during that time.”
Alessandro Camon
Camon was also compelled to write The Listener through his volunteer work in the prison system and juvenile halls. It inspired Beth’s character and those she listens to each night. Beth is part of an army of unsung heroes in our communities that many take for granted.
In addition to his experience in the legal system, Alessandro also spoke with experienced counsellors who served in the military and helpline operators in other environments to augment his knowledge of this essential service.
“And of course there are always some small creative liberties that you take just to turn it into a story. But I try to describe the job accurately.” A number of mental health organizations have endorsed The Listener.
I think being a good listener boils down to emotional intelligence
Camon believes the most successful listeners are those that listen without judgement. “You actually have to be able to do focused, intentional listening. And you have to be able to empathize. You have to be able to care and actually feel about the person you’re talking to, knowing that you’re not a guru, you’re not a priest, you’re not a doctor, you’re not somebody that is going to give them prescriptions for life.”
Writing A Contained Thriller
Helpline crisis counsellors typically work in crowded call centers wearing a headset while looking at a screen. This bustling work environment creates countless opportunities for character interactions and heart-wrenching drama.
Camon ditched this idea and settled on setting his film mainly in one room in Beth’s apartment and her dog Coltrane. He made this curious decision because it “opens visual possibilities.”
The early drafts of The Listener had all the characters on screen so the callers were seen in their own environments. Camon showed these drafts to Oren Moverman and Steve Buscemi who asked, “What if we never see anybody, but Beth?‘” Alessandro was immediately sold on the idea which would make the film more focused and intense. We only see Beth dealing with the callers’ most intimate troubles, anxieties, and fears without ever putting a face to a voice in the shooting script.
Camon knew the “visual possibilities” of setting a feature film in one apartment were going to pose a challenge in sustaining a movie for its entire duration. “It really puts you in her head in a way that actually only a film can do,” he adds.
The scenes in The Listener had to be broken up so the movie didn’t end up being a monotonous stream of callers. Beth gets up, stretches her legs, feeds her dog, and reflects on her work to break the grind.
“You have to shape a film like this in a way that is very intentional and has the feeling of real life where things are not tidy. It was important to have a rhythm that feels believable. You have phone calls that are very short and others that are long. You have conversations that are resolved, and others that are completely unresolved. You cannot have a linear progression. Also, you cannot have a binary, mechanical base where you go from a man to a woman, to a man, to a woman. You have to mix it up in a way that feels authentic,” he muses.
A vital skill of a helpline operator is to keep a certain emotional distance from the callers because you may or may not hear from them again. They are on a first name basis with their callers and never use their real names or reveal personal details.
“You have to make a personal connection, but you have to be careful not to make it about yourself. It’s not about your personal history or your personal opinion. There is a lot of selfless generosity that is required to do that. There’s a lot of humility. You really cannot bring ego to that job. You have to listen and you have to be very patient and very humble.”
“In the last conversation, Beth makes a decision to reveal something about herself and eventually reveal her real name which is a breach of protocol. She realizes this may be a time when she has to do that. It’s not for her personal satisfaction or to assert the authority of her comments. It is because the connection with the caller has to be deeper in this case.”
Healer and Healed
Beth’s breach of protocol by revealing herself to a caller show’s a maturity and intention in her actions. She too is healing alongside the caller.
Alessandro Camon describes telephone helplines as a “peer-based, much like AA. The people that work for this kind of helpline were callers at some point. Or could have been.”
“You get a lot out of this kind of work. You learn a lot about life and about yourself. And you have the opportunity to engage in very deep, intimate, intentional conversations that you don’t really have in your regular day,” ponders Camon.
To engage in a conversation about life and real emotional pain makes it worth it. That’s the true value for all helpline operators.
