{"id":869997,"date":"2026-10-04T02:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T02:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869997\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T02:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T02:02:09","slug":"paul-rudd-says-smartphones-are-facilitating-our-own-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869997\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Rudd Says Smartphones Are ‘Facilitating Our Own Destruction’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPaul Rudd<\/a> plays the moderator of the first-ever meeting dedicated to solving America\u2019s climate crisis in \u201cA Statement<\/a>,\u201d the latest film from Oscar-winning director Tom McCarthy<\/a>. Set at a Florida beachside resort in 1980, the film follows 20 experts who spend a weekend in a conference room and \u2014 analogous to \u201c12 Angry Men\u201d \u2014 hash out their differences over how to draft a statement to Congress about the effects of carbon dioxide emissions on the climate.<\/p>\n

\n\tRudd found himself more connected to the sprawling ensemble cast, which includes Paul Giamatti, Tatiana Maslany and John Turturro, by leaving his smartphone in his trailer, a practice he claims he\u2019s now followed for some time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t go to sets with a phone. I haven\u2019t done that for a while now,\u201d he told Variety Saturday evening during the film\u2019s world premiere at the New York Film Festival<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s important to put it down. Anytime. They\u2019re horrible things. I\u2019m addicted to it like everybody else. They\u2019re facilitating our own destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRudd revealed that McCarthy enforced a \u201cvery strict no phones policy\u201d on the set of \u201cA Statement,\u201d which he found brought his castmates closer together and made filming feel more like a play.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe world has changed since cell phones have existed. We don\u2019t look at each other or talk to each other quite the same way,\u201d Rudd said. \u201cNow, [with the phone ban], we were forced to really spend time with each other and talk. Working on a movie set in 1980, we\u2019re dressed in a certain kind of way. It felt like, \u2018Oh, yeah. I remember this. This feels like it used to feel when people sat around and spoke to one another.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmy Ryan, whose character delivers a sobering wake-up call to the group at the film\u2019s climax, encouraged other filmmakers to follow McCarthy\u2019s lead. The absence of notifications and doomscrolling, she said, \u201cdefinitely made the work much more rich.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat happens is there\u2019s a five-minute break and people are connected. \u2018Hey, what are you doing? How\u2019s your morning? What do you think of this scene?\u2019\u201d Ryan explained. \u201cI equate it to like when you quit sugar. In three days, it\u2019s out of your system. You don\u2019t miss it! And hopefully, it becomes like a toy you\u2019re gonna get sick of.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Rudd plays the moderator of the first-ever meeting dedicated to solving America\u2019s climate crisis in \u201cA Statement,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[346086,165,45374,85073,74,197621],"class_list":["post-869997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-a-statement","tag-mobile","tag-new-york-film-festival","tag-paul-rudd","tag-technology","tag-tom-mccarthy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}