How ‘The Conversation’ Captured the Essence of Paranoia

Francis Ford Coppola’s classic suspense is an aural fixation on the concept of surveillance

One of the idioms I hate is often framed in a question like: “Can I put a bug in your ear?” First off, uh, no, you can’t put a bug in my ear. Second off, even though the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms will have you believe the phrase has something to do with giving someone a hint, “bugs” are also errors in programming code. Or, better yet, the miniature microphones used to listen in on our conversations, which, thanks to the proven surveillance of our digital lives, might be one in the same.

Given this latter meaning, a “bug in the ear” would be like a “camera in the eye” and a harrowing invasion of privacy, the ramifications of which are well explored in our fictions and films. (Anyone see the latest season of Black Mirror?) In these depictions, our sympathies are often aligned with the surveilled, for we are them. But almost as often, our stories explore the experiences of the people who are listening in — the bug in people themselves and their inner lives. For my money, the best of breed in this microgenre is writer-director Francis Ford Coppola’s ode to audio and…