Paul Rudd embraces movie set phone ban
Paul Rudd no longer takes a cell phone to movie sets with him.
The Clueless star has admitted he became too attached to the device so he made a decision to leave it in his trailer whenever he was working - so he embraced an onset ban by director Tom McCarthy while shooting new movie A Statement.
Paul - who stars in the new drama alongside Paul Giamatti, Tatiana Maslany, Amy Ryan and John Turturro - told Variety: "I don’t go to sets with a phone. I haven’t done that for a while now.
"It’s important to put it down. Anytime. They’re horrible things. I’m addicted to it like everybody else. They’re facilitating our own destruction."
He went on to reveal Spotlight director McCarthy enforced a "very strict no phones policy" on the set of A Statement and the actor is convinced it brought the cast closer together.
Paul said: "The world has changed since cell phones have existed. We don’t look at each other or talk to each other quite the same way.
"Now, [with the phone ban], we were forced to really spend time with each other and talk.
"Working on a movie set in 1980, we’re dressed in a certain kind of way. It felt like: 'Oh, yeah. I remember this. This feels like it used to feel when people sat around and spoke to one another'."
Amy Ryan also opened up about the phone ban during The Statement's premiere at the New York Film Festival and she admitted it forced the cast to talk to each other throughout filming breaks.
She told the publication: "What happens is there’s a five-minute break and people are connected. 'Hey, what are you doing? How’s your morning? What do you think of this scene?'
"I equate it to like when you quit sugar. In three days, it’s out of your system. You don’t miss it! And hopefully, it becomes like a toy you’re gonna get sick of."
The Statement tells the true story of a climate conference which took place in Florida in 1980 and brought together experts and politicians resolved to tackling the issue of carbon emissions in the US. The film hit cinemas on October 3.
