Background and development (pictured in 2009) appeared in the music video.|alt=American actor Tyrese Gibson pictured in 2009 at the San Diego Comic-Con.
New York magazine reported that the concept of the video involved Beyoncé as she bails Gaga out of jail. In published photos from the set, they were seen shooting in a car called the "Pussy Wagon", which
Uma Thurman's character drove in Quentin Tarantino's 2003 film
Kill Bill: Volume 1. The two wore "destroyed denim pieces" designed by Frank Fernández and Oscar Olima. Other concepts of the video involve scenes at a diner and appearances from singer
Tyrese Gibson and rock band
Semi Precious Weapons. In February 2010, Gaga commented, "What I like about it is it's a real true pop event, and when I was younger, I was always excited when there was a big giant event happening in pop music and that's what I wanted this to be." She explained the deeper meaning of the video to
E! Online: There was this really amazing quality in 'Paparazzi', where it kind of had this pure pop music quality but at the same time it was a commentary on fame culture [...] I wanted to do the same thing with this video [...] There certainly is a Tarantino-inspired quality in the ['Telephone'] video [...] His direct involvement in the video came from him lending me the Pussy Wagon. We were having lunch one day in Los Angeles and I was telling him about my concept for the video and he loved it so much he said, "You gotta use the Pussy Wagon." On February 15, 2010, Gaga posted three
film stills from the music video. They depicted her in three settings: a kitchen where she wears a plastic chef's hat and a telephone hairdo; a diner with her dancers, where she is seen wearing an American flag patterned bikini and bandana; and a black-and-white photo of her in a hat made from multiple triangles and corded telephones. On , more stills of the video were posted online. After a delay,
Filming Because of Gaga's and Beyoncé's busy schedules, director
Jonas Åkerlund and cinematographer Pär Ekberg had to finish filming in two days while coordinating multiple locations, dance numbers and extras. They spent most of their preparation time scouting locations and discussing the script and shot lists. To ensure a natural look while properly showcasing the outfits, makeup, props and art details, Ekberg took a minimalistic approach to lighting that involved shooting without a big pre-light and adding a beauty light for the artists. Åkerlund utilized a mixture of
hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide lamps (HMI) and
fluorescent fixtures to light the prison interiors and the diner scenes that were filmed at The Four Aces Motel in
Palmdale, California. He used a Briese beauty light for close-ups and singles. Prison scenes were filmed at
Lincoln Heights Jail. Using three cameras that ran almost constantly, the cinematography team could capture about 150 setups per day. For the kitchen scene, which was shot in a prison storage room, Åkerlund wanted to evoke a "clinical feel" and create "a mix of a kitchen and a laboratory". The majority of the video was filmed on
Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, which Åkerlund considered one of his favorite film stocks. During post-production, the team wanted to keep the colors true to the
original negative, with minor adjustments for
contrast and
grain.
Synopsis The music video is over nine minutes long and serves as a continuation of "
Paparazzi", where Gaga was arrested for killing her abusive boyfriend by poisoning his drink. Inside a women's prison, two guards put Gaga behind bars and strip her naked while several other inmates mock her. One of the guards comments: "I told you she didn't have a dick", referring to the rumors that Gaga is
intersex. Gaga then answers a call from Beyoncé and begins to sing the song. She performs the first verse and chorus with other scantily clothed inmates and messages Beyoncé on the cell phone, thanking her for bailing her out. This is followed by a bridge featuring Gaga in a yellow caution tape outfit designed by
Brian Lichtenberg. Other fashion pieces were designed by
Thierry Mugler, Atsuko Kudo and Gaga's own creative team, Haus of Gaga; the video was outfitted by
Nicola Formichetti. Gaga gets inside the Pussy Wagon with Beyoncé, Honey Bee, a reference to the character Honey Bunny in Tarantino's film
Pulp Fiction (1994). The two briefly talk and travel through the desert to stop at a diner. After exchanging a silent dialogue with Bobo (Gibson), her misogynist boyfriend, Beyoncé poisons his drink but fails to kill him. The video features an intermediate sequence called "Let's Make a Sandwich", where Gaga is seen wearing a folded-up telephone on her head and preparing a sandwich in a kitchen, while dancers cavort behind her. According to James Montgomery from
MTV, "Telephone" helped Gaga's ascent to the upper echelons of pop stardom, alongside others on par with
Madonna and
Michael Jackson in terms of showmanship.—but still "better than anything else out there". Matt Donnelly from the
Los Angeles Times and Monica Herrera from
Billboard praised the scenes with the fight between inmates; the former approvingly called it a video "packed with[...] poisoned diner food, an army of headpieces and lots of Gaga goodness". Some reviews praised Beyoncé, called "always fierce" by Jennifer Cady of
E! and the video's "best part" by
Amy Odell from
New York. Others focused on the video's fashion and aesthetics. With "Telephone", Gaga made "much stronger pop-art statements", wrote stylist
Robert Verdi. In a 2021 article,
Variety named it Gaga's best music video based on its outfits, calling it a "phenomenal fashion feast". Some reviews commented on the video's feminist themes. J. Jack Halberstam argued that the music video portrays a powerful image of sisterhood that aligns with the intimate bonds seen in movies such as
Thelma & Louise (1991) and
Set It Off (1996). Interpreting this review, theater theorist Bess Rowen wrote that Gaga's portrayal of women in her work challenges the conventional images of women in society, making her work relevant to modern feminism. Caryn Ganz of
Rolling Stone believed it "is certainly cinematic and oddly feminist, and gasps at a larger statement about consumer culture". Ganz called the video a "mash-up of lesbian prison porn, campy sexploitation flicks and insidery winks at the two divas' public personas", noting, "If Quentin Tarantino and
Russ Meyer remade
Thelma & Louise as an orgy of
product placement with fiercely choreographed interludes, this would be the result". The same year, Gaga expressed dissatisfaction with the video in an interview with
Time Out. Although Gaga believed she and Beyoncé worked well together, the incorporation of numerous ideas left her "brain throbbing", and she expressed a desire to have edited herself more. In a 2020 piece for
The New York Times, Lindsay Zoladz found this self-criticism unfair as she believed the video to be "one of the wildest and most watchable pop artifacts of its era, a defining moment in the music video's migration from MTV to the unruly internet". Some reviews were less enthusiastic. Labeling the video's narrative incoherent, Alyssa Rosenberg of
The Atlantic disliked the use of a women's prison, muscular female prison guards and situational lesbianism.
Armond White stated that it "epitomizes the insanity of the contemporary pop mainstream" and pays "homage to Tarantino's influence" in distorting "pop culture pleasure into nonsense".
Analysis José M. Yebra of
University of Zaragoza and Aylin Zafar of
The Atlantic recognized feminist themes in the video. To start his analysis, Yebra wrote that Gaga is criminalized although she is a victim of domestic abuse. The all-female prison, named "prison for bitches", alludes to Gaga using the word "bitch" to mean female liberty. Her metaphorical freedom there is solidified by scenes where she engages in lesbianism, despite being in chains, and where her song "
Paper Gangsta", a track about "girl power", plays. As such, Yebra concluded the prison becomes, ironically, a place free from male abuse. Zafar interpreted the scene with Beyoncé and Gaga eating
Honey Buns as a reversal of the objectification of women through food. She saw the scenes featuring
Wonder Bread and
Miracle Whip as a challenge to the gender stereotype of the "perfect housewife" portrayed heavily in 1950s pop culture. According to Yebra, this stereotype is subverted through Gaga, who embodies a
drag queen and a murderer, along with her flamboyant dancers, in an unexpected setting—the kitchen of an American middle-class family. 's 2003 film
Kill Bill: Volume 1. Katrin Horn saw the car in "Telephone" as a symbol for "freedom, mobility, and unity" between Gaga and Beyoncé, as opposed to in Tarantino's film, where it visually represents the sexual objectification of the female protagonist.|alt=Gaga sitting beside Beyoncé who is driving a yellow colored van. Gaga wears a giant hat on her head. A pair of dice hangs from the rear-view mirror between them. Katrin Horn, a
postdoctoral fellow in
American studies, analyzed the video's portrayal of sexuality. According to her, it was inspired by the "
lesploitation" genre of
B movies, known for their objectification of women's bodies and minimization of violence against women. The video subverts the genre by casting a muscular performance artist as the object of Gaga's desire, portraying female bodybuilders as prison guards and adding a "lesbian happy ending". It additionally portrays women—whom the "
heteronormative culture" would normally reject—as attractive and places conventionally beautiful women in contexts that challenge their sexual allure. Horn further discussed how the video combines elements of the
rape-revenge and
road movie genres to create a new narrative that emphasizes female empowerment and solidarity. In the book
Lady Gaga and Popular Music: Performing Gender, Fashion, and Culture, Lori Burns and Marc Lafrance drew parallels between "Paparazzi" and "Telephone", and argued that Gaga's videos are not merely promotional but integral parts of her artistic production. For them, "Paparazzi" and "Telephone" are thematically linked works that form a broader narrative. They viewed the dance sequences in the videos as key moments in which the common themes and central narrative problems become apparent. Burns and Lafrance wrote the music videos represent two different ideas, but understanding how these oppositions are constructed is essential for fully comprehending their themes and meaning. "Paparazzi" shows a glamorous lifestyle of affluence and success, whereas "Telephone" represents crime, violence, poverty and vulgarity. The videos' chromatic elements also contrast with each other—"Paparazzi" uses opulent and refined colors, and "Telephone" employs cartoon and pop art hues. The authors believed these differences link the themes of Gaga's larger artistic interest in celebrity culture and its relation to spectacle and surveillance. In a comparison of the videos for "Telephone" and "Video Phone", author Robin James wrote that
misogyny in rap music is often used to "scapegoat black men", making them seem solely responsible for it although it is also common among
white supremacists. James opined that to support post-racial and post-feminist ideologies, the modern media has updated this trope by having female characters eliminate such misogynist black men. She found "Telephone" reinforced this belief: Gaga and Beyoncé form a "cross-racial bond" through their need to defeat the stereotypically misogynistic black man, thus confirming that the white supremacist patriarchy is indeed "multi-racial". ==Accolades==