The Parlor (2001)

A group of people are gathered in a room, which is a "live" depiction of a typical Internet chat room. Some pretends to be much younger than they are, to chat up minors. Two of them falls victim of their own scam in a surprising way.

Director:

Geoffrey Haley

Writer:

Geoffrey Haley

Stars:

Ian Vogt, Reggie Lee, Scott Alan Smith

3 wins.

Cast

Cast overview:
Ian Vogt	...	Skater
Reggie Lee	...	Slappy Sue
Scott Alan Smith	...	Jerry
Jan Hoag	...	Bambi
Richard Riehle	...	Beth
David Starwalt	...	Schizo
Jesse McClurg	...	Joey
Mariana Geschke	...	Mandybear
Aaron Henry	...	Freaker
Matt Hannigan	...	Security Guard

Storyline

A group of people come together in an anonymous waiting room. All are wearing name tags. As they exchange small talk, though, we realize there's something odd: some of them are saying things about themselves that are clearly false, like the middle-aged man "Beth" and another middle-aged man hitting on a 14-year-old girl.

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Plot Keywords:

internet chat | internet | homosexuality | closeted homosexual | coming out | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Short

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

6 October 2001 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bandshell Entertainment, Muse Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

11 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

The poster of the butterflies at the start of the short reads "When a collection of brilliant minds, hearts and talents come together... expect a masterpiece."

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Quotes

Bambi: Anybody wanna talk to me? Anybody!?
Beth: This sucks... I'm outta here!
Bambi: [Saddened] Anybody...?

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Crazy Credits

Special thanks to everyone at "Six Feet Under"

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Connections

References Bambi (1942)

User Reviews

Fantastic, but...

I think that this short is so enjoyable, that I had to show all of my friends and family, so that they could understand the awareness and problems it was giving us. It portrays the dangers of chat rooms (so hilariously.) It uses a waiting room to visualise the chat room; you've got all the characters in there, so you can see them for who they really are, and for who they are trying to disguise themselves as, for example blatant use of lying about age and gender (e.g. you've got a huge 40 year old bloke posing as a 13 year old girl named Beth) - not only did it show the dangers of talking about sexual things on chat room, it also shows the dangers of trust; could you really trust meeting someone from a chat room, when there is such common use of disguising ones self in the chat rooms? I think that once seeing this, you are more alert and suspicious about trusting people online; and this film may be a good way to make parents' children aware of the modern day danger of the Internet and its many chat rooms. The only thing I think that would have made this more interesting, is if they had put more focus on all of the characters. Granted that the main focus on 'slappysue' and 'skater' was needed for the twist; but I also feel that exploring the results of the conversations between the other characters would have put more insight into the point that this short was trying to make.