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Pete Jones - Casting
There are so many surreal moments for me when I look back at this adventure, but the process of casting "Stolen Summer" and working with actors has left the biggest impression. When I finish writing any script, and most of the time while writing the script, my mind wanders to that fantasy world of "How great would this actor or that actor be in this role?"
Who am I to think Emma Thompson or Sean Penn would work with me? In Emma's case, her agent contacted us. It ended up she wanted to spend the summer with her baby in London (is there a better reason not to work?), but she loved the idea of Greenlight and liked my script. Sean Penn? I think he and Philip Seymour Hoffman are the two best actors working today. Was it a pipe dream? Yeah, probably, but it was worth the shot. What's the worst thing these actors could say to me? No? Please, that's the most common reply to anything I say. I'm used to it.
Watching this episode, I feel Aidan Quinn doesn't get the credit he deserves. Aidan just wanted to make sure that if he were to make this movie, the movie would have a chance at being good. I remember talking to Aidan and Aidan telling me that a 20 day shoot with a first time director with children in nearly every scene would be impossible. A 25 day shoot would be really tough, but the extra five days would give us a fighting chance to make a decent movie. Decent? That's not the goal. Aidan laughed. Of course that's not the goal, but when you're on set and everything that can go wrong does go wrong, the only friend you have is time. The man couldn't have been more right, as the HBO reality TV show documents.
I have a hard time watching this episode only because the actors I did choose see that they might not have been our first choice. When I talked to Kevin Pollak and Bonnie Hunt about it, I was amazed at how professional they were. Both said that's just the nature of the beast. In the end, I am stealing a line from Aaron Sorkin here, but a lot of these actors may not have been our first choice, but they were the last choice and the best choice.
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