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The Casting Process: How A Casting Director Finds The Right Face
Imagine Matthew Modine, walking on top of an aircraft carrier alongside a gangly Anthony Edwards and saying, "I feel the need, the need for speed," and then high-fiving our beloved Goose.
Or Tom Selleck, bushy mustache and all, running from a two-story boulder as he tries to find the lost Ark of the Covenant.
What if Henry Winkler, the Arthur Fonzarelli, serenaded Olivia Newton-John from the bleachers of Rydell High.
Well, it almost happened. Firm offers were out to these actors to play roles that were thankfully made famous by Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, and John Travolta, respectively.
How we feel about the faces we watch on screen is an essential piece of movie making, and finding these faces is one of the most under-appreciated sciences of this business.
Casting directors are hired by producers expressly to find the right face for every character that appears in a script. It may sound easy, but it is far from it.
The Process
When a producer has a script and, more importantly, real money to make his or her film, hiring a casting director is one of the top priorities. The producer will send the script out to casting directors, and a casting director has to agree to want to cast the script. Like any other member of a film production, a casting director must choose the work they do carefully. Casting a bomb is akin to an actor or a director laying a creative rotten egg: it is a career setback.
Clearly, casting director Joseph Middleton enjoyed "Stolen Summer." He detected a warm, character-driven drama, and it didn't hurt that he and producer Chris Moore had collaborated before on "American Pie" and the sequel.
Once a casting director is on board and has broken down the character list, he will send the "breakdown" out to the town, and the sharks begin to feed. Meanwhile, he or she sits down with the producer, the director, and the studio, and the parties involved will come up with wish lists for the principal parts. Once the "wish list" is drafted, a casting director returns to his or her office with a long list of names that everyone has agreed upon.
Usually, a casting director will have an assistant or a team of assistants, and they will begin calling actor representatives to check for availability. "Is so-n-so available for four weeks in the spring?...This guy is doing a movie in the Czech Republic for the next two months, she's having a baby next week, he's counting his money this summer." Unavailable, cross them off the list.
The casting director now has a list, pared down to only actors that are available to work in the location and time in which the movie is shooting. Now, "available" does not mean interested. Here comes the hard part.
Submitting scripts to actor's agents is a delicate juggling act. Joseph cannot simply send out a bunch of scripts to scores of actors, and hope that something sticks. He will make fast enemies that way. But he also cannot send out one script to one actor and wait for an answer. We'd still be waiting to hear.
Big stars tend to be "offer only." That is, they will not even read a script unless there is a firm offer on the table. If they like it, it's theirs. Julia Roberts auditions for no one.
For the other 99% of the acting community, however, it does not work that way. Most other actors look for good scripts, or opportunities to work with talented people. Actors who scrounge for work send their headshot in for any role where they remotely fit the description. If they are lucky, they will audition for the casting director. If they are even luckier and are called back, they will audition again for the director and producer. But a movie is not cast in a bubble. Finding the right faces has everything to do with chemistry.
For the casting director, the real challenge is to pick a headshot or reel out of a pile of thousands, and know you are looking at a future star. Casting requires a knack for seeing the diamond in the rough, someone with an intangible quality that audiences will relish.
When Joseph cast "American Pie," no one had heard of Jason Biggs, Tara Reid, Chris Klein, Shannon Elizabeth, or the several others who made up the ensemble cast. The success of that movie has a great deal to do with the casting of a group of kids that gelled. The sequel cost a lot more because these new stars demanded more money, but that is a different article.
In the case of "Stolen Summer," Joseph could offer no real money to any of the actors. Everyone was to be paid "scale," the legal minimum for union actors. That Joseph cast well-respected and highly talented people for the movie is a testament to his reputation and skill as well as to Pete's script.
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