Casting Ouch! A Star is Found (Book Review)
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A film stays with you when you begin to identify n actor with a role he played in it. Marlon Brando becomes synonymous with Godfather. What if Ernest Borgine and Ryan O’Neal played the roles of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino? Humphrey Bogart was not the first choice for Casablanca-George Raft was. Critics who sniggered that Daniel Craig was a loser as the new James Bond ate humble pie after he took the world by storm.
“Imagining these roads not taken helps illuminate the kind of magic that can be generated when an actor’s persona, talent and style mesh perfectly with his or her role.”
Who visualizes the actor in the role for a film? The Casting Director (CD). They have the vision, wisdom, power and influence to pick out a star from a thousand faces. They are the first to be recruited into the production team. The first call the director makes is to the CD. The director’s dependence on them is crucial to his film’s success. Yet every technician including lighting, sound, costume, hair stylists and make-up are considered for an Oscar or an award. Not a CD. Probably there is this fear that the director’s role in shaping the actor may get diluted if he shares the honour with the CD.
Jane Jenkins and Janet Hirshhenson’s book, A Star is Found” reveals the painstaking process and the unimaginable lengths they go to in search for the perfect actor for each role big or small.
The actor fears the Casting Director at auditions more than the director. His fate is in their hands. If he can impress the CD half his battle is won. It is like walking into the lion’s den. The CD is well aware of his or her own power to make or destroy a career. The CD is armed with the actor’s background, his body of work, yet focused on the character and be open to judge the hundred s who come too read at the audition. The CD is just as burdened with anxiety as the actor. Every CD has his or own way of working, preferences, favourites, and list of requirements.
How does the director pick the right actor for his film? How does he know that this is the actor who will suit the role? Danny Boyle has famously said, “With every film you make you have what I call the “bathroom moment” where you look at yourself and you think, “OK this is the one”. Alright, he was not talking about the actor but about movies, but it can apply to casting too.
There are some unique factors which influence the selection of actors for a film in India which are common to the industry elsewhere. What is the film’s budget? What is the hero’s price? Who is sleeping with whom? Which pair has great on-screen chemistry? Which actors will punch each other’s face if they are in the same room? Which actresses will tear each other’s hair out if cast together? Which star pair has broken up and can never be paired again? This guy is from the small screen, how can I take him to the silver screen? There is also pressure from the producer to select his girl/boy friend. And then of course….the not-to-be-ignored midnight call……….
Every Indian film buff has heard how an unknown actor named Amjad Khan became a legend after Sholay. Danny Denzogpa walked out at the last moment and Amjad went on to be the most celebrated villain of Hindi film history. There are stories of how a girl is picked up in a shopping mall or a hunk at a gym and cast in a film. A girl in a group dance catches the eye of the director. He singles her out, trains her to become Madhuri Dixit. That is every aspiring actor’s fantasy. We heard of a ‘Casting Director’ for the first time when Dolly Thakore was entrusted with the job for Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’. It generated much gossip about Naseeruddin going to London to audition for the main role and how Kasturba’s role was yanked from under Bhakti Barve’s nose by Rohini Hattangady. The task was all the more daunting because faces resembling some of our national leaders had to be discovered from among the actors. Jinnah, Nehru and Gandhi are still fresh in the country’s memory but Alyque Padamsee, Roshan Seth and Ben Kingsley were accepted by the audience.
Loveleen Tandan made news for her skills in recruiting the right faces for the Danny Boyle film Slumdog Millionare besides co-directing the film. Life turned into a fairytale for a few lucky slum kids and a little-known model called Frieda glittered in the stardust showered on her. Darsheel Safary became an overnight star after Taare Zameen Par and is hailed as the best child actor ever in our film history.
Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins, two of the top casting directors in Hollywood “who have cast everyone from the Harry Potter kids to the new James Bond offer an insider’s tour of their crucial craft¬¬- spotting stars in the making.” Janet and Jane met at Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studio. When it closed down, the two teamed up and started their own -‘The Casting Company’ in 1981. As partners and unlike most others, they still work from their own permanent office.
This book is a movie buff’s delight and has the most exciting first hand anecdotes about unknown actors who later became famous Hollywood stars. The films they have cast read like a dream list. The Godfather, Da Vinci Code, A Beautiful Mind, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Holiday, Jurassic Park, A Few Good Men, Home Alone, Ghost and Apollo 13 which we all love and remember are just a few of them.
The book is more than just a voyeur’s delight. It gives an insight into the hierarchy and intricate layers of networking that goes into casting for a film. Because of the nature of this website this article is going to be more than just a book review. It is intriguing to learn how Hollywood works.
A casting company gets a Call. They read the script before meeting the director for his vision about the roles. “The typical Hollywood script contains roles for fifty to a hundred actors. The sheer volume of parts can be daunting let alone the commitment we both feel to finding candidates who are truly right for each role, actors who fulfill the director’s vision and help the movie reach its best potential. We take our cue from Konstantin Stanislavski, “There are no small parts, only small actors.” Casting is a complicated almost alchemical business. To be a good casting Director you need instinct, patience, and the ability to remember hundreds of diverse faces, voices and performances. ” “Where will we find the people we need? Will the Director like our choices? Will the actors upon whom we finally decide say yes? Will the studio (Producer) approve”?
They read the script, make notes (breakdowns) about the characters and then begin networking among casting agencies all over the country. They have their own files and head shots (8×10 photos) and videos of auditions, but every film has its unique requirements. There are some casting agencies that do only crowds and others who deal exclusively with special needs like jugglers, children or ethnic faces.
Jane consults the office files for suitable roles. The manager of a star is not permitted to contact casting agencies directly. It is the job of an agent. Janet contacts agents of prospective stars and calls up casting agencies on location. If they are filming in New York then they will use the local agencies in New York and not actors from L.A. This is a sensible rule and saves costs for the producer. The logistics are also less complicated.
They usually reject jobs when they cannot connect with the director and his expectations. They are ‘reluctant’ to take any film that has extreme violence or is degrading to women. If a producer or director expects them to use personal contacts –as against the normal channel of agent and manager- they give it a pass. This stand has given their Casting Company a respectable reputation and high status.
Talking about the actors, they say: “Here is a rough outline of the Hollywood hierarchy: At the bottom of the ladder are the Wannabes. They are just out of acting school, still trying to get a Screen Actors Guild card, an agent or even head shots (a portfolio).
The Unknowns are actors no one has heard of yet! Next are the Working Actors who normally are called to fill up important side roles like best friends, doctors, cops etc. These actors may move up one day to become Names–actors whom we remember by name. Right at the top currently are Super Stars like Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, Brad Pitt and Will Smith. Of course the names on these lists vary every year.
“TV stardom can be a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to casting a film. A–list producers may not want an entire cast of actors who can be seen every week for free.” This is true even though many stars came out of television-Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Bruce Willis, Jennifer Aniston, Will Smith, Denzel Washington – to name a few.
Jane recounts her meeting with Michel Wilson who was telling her about the kind of face he wanted for a new Bond girl. She was listening passively until he asked her why she did not take notes. “I thought I’d wait until I got the script”, she replied. The producer laughed at her naivete.
“This is a Bond movie,” he told me. “Top secret! You are not getting a script.” They went on to cast Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. Even at these auditions for British James Bonds in London they were expected to be secretive, always undercover and represent themselves as casting for a television pilot or a small film.
It is quite amazing to know to what unbelievable lengths they could go to select a character that has just one scene in a film.
Casting for A Beautiful Mind was a great challenge according to them. Russell Crowe was fixed first but the rest of the characters like his wife Alicia, his best friend and the girl who could play the Sexy-coed took months of auditions. Russell Crowe was actually told to read (audition) with the short listed smalltime actresses who could be the Sexy Coed. The single scene required her to react to his line ‘So could we go right to the sex?’ with shock, revulsion and anger. She has to slap him on the face. Crowe took quite a few slaps till they found the right girl.
Jane and Janet have some helpful suggestions for actors who have to audition. Try to be calm, they say, even when you are asked to return for a second audition. The needs of the producer changes with every script change and that could be the reason for rejection. Sometimes you may ‘be too good for the part’ or the colour of your hair could be against you. Some times the director is bound to select his girlfriend, sister or someone he has worked before. The general idea seems to be that one can never assume anything about a casting director at any given time. One casting director may hate your smile but another may love it as simple as that! Go for every meeting, audition, occasion with a cheerful, willing, professional attitude. You may make a favorable impression that will remain in the casting company’s mind and they may file this attitude in their minds for future reference. “The less personally you can take everything the better off you will be.” Easier said than done!
“Kindness and courtesy are key ingredients in whatever success we’ve been fortunate enough to have. Neither Janet nor I would ever treat an actor that way
(-arrogantly, rudely, keep him waiting for hours etc) and we‘ve even had to fire assistants who did.” Beyond a basic belief in being nice, though, their courtesy is rooted in self-interest, they aver. Maybe that awkward actor will turn out to be the next Dustin Hoffman or Robert de Niro. Maybe he is just nervous. “Take Julia Roberts, a young Unknown whom we cast for Mystic Pizza. “What can I say? She was Julia Roberts even then, and somehow that shone through. Beneath the sloppy clothes and the uncertain attitude, I could sense exuberance, a warmth, and unself–conscious sexuality that would make her character (Daisy) touching and even humorous.” At that meeting Julia was wearing baggy jeans and an oversize shirt and had not yet read the script. Jane told her to come back the next day in a dress that might suit the character. “The next day Julia showed up in her sexy clothes-and there was Daisy, standing in our office.” Roberts went on to make a big splash in Mystic Pizza, Steel Magnolia and Pretty Woman.
There are a hundred more anecdotes in three hundred pages of this hard cover book published by Harcourt Inc (2006) and has an easy style that makes it read a bit like gossip. The format of the book has Janet and Jane speak one after the other but the writer Rachel Kranz, has failed to give them a specific identity in thought or style. The book reads like a dreamy sequence from the movies. Everyone is good, talented, beautiful and courteous. Though names of some stars who were rejected for a role are mentioned, even veiled reports of star tantrums and flashes of anger are significantly avoided. There is just a hypocritical whisper about the casting couch.
In their three decades in the industry Jane and Janet have discovered stars like Alec Baldwin, Tom Cruise, John Cusack, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio. Andy Garcia, Diane Lane, Tim Robbins, Joaquin Phoenix and many others right up to three James Bonds. What is disappointing and quite unbelievable is that there is not a single photograph in the book. A subject like this demands illustrations and one expects rare photographs, shots of auditions and scenes from iconic films to complete the experience.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Awesome stuff. Could you please give ISBN details of the book? Will try and order it.
And just a thought – most casting directors are women(?) Or so I’ve observed…
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NV:E-mail: tradepublicity@harcourt.com
This is the email address of their publisher.Although I would like to believe that women have the intuition, instinct and feel necessary to cast, I doubt it is true.
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Thanks for letting the world know !
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Scrapmanic: Thanks. You are the world!!!
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