In a class about the worst movies of all time, one of my students asked what it means when an actor “phones it in.” Fair question. It sounds as though the actor literally performed over the telephone, and that is surprisingly close to the joke behind it. Before email, reporters away from the newsroom could “phone in” a story by calling an editor and dictating it. People also phoned requests and comments into radio programmes. At this point, “phone in” simply meant submitting something from a distance. Then it became a theatre joke. In 1938, when Thornton Wilder’s Our Town became a Broadway hit with almost no scenery or props, a newspaper columnist joked that the next step would be to have the actors phone in their parts. By the 1950s, “phone it in” was being used for a routine, uninspired performance, even when the actor was physically present. Now, if you “phone something in,” you do it with very little effort or enthusiasm. Have you watched a film where you could tell an actor was phoning it in?