Portrait of An Artist as An Answering Machine
Produced by Valerie Velardi
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In contemplating the telephone answering machine, what better place to turn than Los Angeles---a town known for its phones. It's a city that never shuts up, or so the statistics would make you think, with telephones, cell phones, pagers, and voice mail boxes.

Writer, comedian and actor Taylor Negron is from Los Angeles. He's best known as the guy who delivers pizza to Sean Penn in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." Taylor averages between 17 and 27 phone messages a day and he's one of those people who saves his tapes. Independent producer Valerie Velardi sifted through two months of Taylor Negron's messages and created this portrait of an artist as an answering machine.