Payphone Scenes From “Scarface” (Strong Language)

I only watched as much of this as necessary to figure out where the New York scenes were, having been tipped off by a friend that Scarface contained a couple of NYC payphone scenes. I don’t mind Al Pacino but I do not like this kind of movie, with blood and guts and excessive cursing.

Despite my attempted avoidance I managed to catch Al Pacino shoot off someone’s face, and the second scene is filled with expletives.

The first scene, with Al Pacino in a phone booth, is located at 41st Street and Tudor City Place.

We don’t see much of the payphone enclosure in the second scene but it’s a style you’ll still find on the streets, having weathered the decades. You might not recognize them from older images, though, because today most of them have advertising panels on all sides. Ads did not appear on New York’s outdoor payphones until 1985, two years after this was filmed.

From this I learned that there used to be a Pan Am heliport at East 60th Street on Manhattan’s far east side. Numerous online sources say it closed in 1998 but in fact it closed in 1988.

It’s gratifying to see the mighty Queensboro Bridge (today called the Ed Koch/Queensboro) get some screentime. I have walked the length of that bridge hundreds of times. The Roosevelt Island Tram also makes an interesting cameo, seen floating above the East River as the camera pans toward the payphone.