Fans of Leonardo DiCaprio’s film keep treating a humble Humboldt County grocery like a tourist landmark, hunting a pay phone that was only a movie prop and never stayed in the store.
Roughly a year after One Battle After Another hit screens, visitors still stream into Murphy’s Market in Cutten, California, looking for the telephone from a chaotic Leonardo DiCaprio scene. NY Post reporting on the fan traffic makes one point plain: the phone is gone because it was never the store’s to begin with.
Employees now spend part of their shifts explaining Hollywood basics to people who shopped there for milk long before the cameras arrived.
The Paul Thomas Anderson film cast DiCaprio as Bob Ferguson, a washed-up revolutionary racing to find his missing daughter. In the sequence tied to the store, the character blows up on a pay phone, shouts for an old ally, and forgets a password in a full meltdown.
That meltdown is what people came to reenact. What they found was ordinary retail life.
Ciara Vest, a five-year Murphy’s employee, told SFGATE the questions never really stop.
“They ask about it all the time,” Vest said. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s not real. Well, it’s real. It’s somewhere. But it’s not here.’”
“They ask about it all the time. And I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s not real. Well, it’s real. It’s somewhere. But it’s not here.”
In place of the prop phone, fans pose with a PRIMO water refill machine, storm the aisles to copy DiCaprio’s panicked sprint, and crowd the checkout for cheap sunglasses like the ones on screen. Jennifer Sherman, another Murphy’s worker, said the public restroom has become part of the tour as well.
“It’s got the same seat they put in for the movie,” Sherman said.
“It’s got the same seat they put in for the movie.”
One group even held up parking-lot traffic while filming the storefront. A neighborhood market built for locals suddenly had to manage selfie logistics.
The production day back in 2024 gave Cutten a preview. About 80 onlookers lined up across the street to catch DiCaprio working. Vest said the actor stayed locked in character while the crew ran the moment again and again.
“We watched them do it over a hundred times, I swear,” Vest said. “But it makes you appreciate the process. And it’s been really cool to have a lot of people seeing our store, being like, ‘Oh, I go there. I shop there all the time.’”
“We watched them do it over a hundred times, I swear. But it makes you appreciate the process. And it’s been really cool to have a lot of people seeing our store, being like, ‘Oh, I go there. I shop there all the time.'”
That is the split screen now. Hollywood needed a working grocery for a few hours of controlled chaos. The town kept the aftermath for a year and counting.
Staff have talked about putting in a mock telephone so visitors have something real to photograph. Vest sees a straight customer play, not a museum project.
“I think it could probably bring more customers,” she said.
“I think it could probably bring more customers.”
California already knows the spectacle grocer model. Erewhon pulls crowds with premium branding and celebrity gravity. Murphy’s Market pulled them with a prop phone, a restroom seat, and a DiCaprio sprint down ordinary aisles.
No city task force designed this. No tourism board issued a press kit. A film crew left, fans showed up, and a small store in Humboldt County had to decide whether to cash in or just keep restocking shelves.
Main Street did not ask to become a set piece. When the cameras move on, the locals are the ones left directing traffic, answering the same question, and deciding whether a fake pay phone is worth the extra business.
