VIII. The Casting

How the human element changes everything in the casting process

In her prescient book Sleepless in Hollywood, veteran producer Linda Obst describes how the film industry transitioned from what she calls “The Old Abnormal” (spanning roughly from the 1980s to the early 2000s) to “The New Abnormal” (frankly, from the release of Iron Man on). Obst rightly laments that a few decades ago, a studio could still anchor its slate with a couple highly profitable tentpoles while taking risks on a host of small character-driven movies that didn’t need to post sky high box office returns. But with the Marvelization of the entire industry, and the advent of the foreign box office as an important profit driver for American studios, small original ideas have essentially disappeared in favor of wall-to-wall blockbusters with increasingly absurd budgets that all must be highly profitable.

What makes Obst’s book really interesting, though, is that along with the broader change in strategy by the studios, she also describes at length the changes in the lifestyle of those who are supposed to execute this new strategy: “The New Abnormal, with its fewer movies and pitch meetings, its tiny expense accounts, and its centralized buying in the executive suites, has transformed the jobs of execs, agents and producers, as well as the whole process of how movies are bought and developed. All the lively interaction that went on between execs and producers to generate alliances and commerce, all the dinners and power lunches went kapoof! (…) How did the rocking glamor capital of the world end up with execs acting like nerds from Silicon Valley?”

Obst wrote this in 2013. A decade later, the execs are the nerds from Silicon Valley. Reading Obst’s descriptions of peppy story note discussions during in-person pitch meetings, and execs green lighting small dramas on gut instinct alone in the before times is like reading about life on a different planet. At one point, she writes, “the absence of the pitch [meeting] has radically changed the lives of all Hollywood execs, producers and writers. I imagine fewer dates, romances, marriages and partnerships because that’s how all of us met!” Pitching over crab cakes during martini lunches has been replaced by Soylent and spreadsheets, socializing and romance by AI script coverage and zoom meetings about “content”. No wonder the movie industry is circling the drain. An industry that once teemed with storytellers is now but a repository for bloodless managers of IP.

A similar phenomenon was described earlier this year in a Vulture article about the vanishing art of casting:

“I was just at a restaurant the other day, and a couple of servers were two actors whose self-tapes I had watched a couple hours earlier. One of them I just booked on a show the week before,” says Tiffany Mak, a casting director based in Vancouver. “They don’t know me, and I didn’t say who I was, but these are people who I’ve watched hours and hours of their tapes over the last few years. I’m just staring at them going, Good for you. They sometimes forget that there’s a human who’s pushing for them.” Casting directors used to be a face and a name. Now they’re an email address.

Throughout the article, casting directors make the point that their “new abnormal” of self-tapes and online submissions are a poor substitute for working with actors in person and over time:

“I didn’t get a B.F.A. to sit in front of the computer for 12 hours a day,” says Doctor Odyssey casting director Tiffany Little Canfield. She and others are making a concerted effort to return to in-person auditions as much as possible. “I learn so much about how an actor works from the first ten seconds they walk in a room,” says Finn. “Can they take a note? Can they adjust, even if it’s not exactly what’s right for the scene? In a self-tape, you’re seeing one choice. Maybe that choice is going to get you the part, but what happens if it’s a two-hour movie and you read only three scenes?”

As much as our world is mediated by screens and algorithms, the human element simply cannot be replaced and never will be, the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world be damned. Casting The Big Pay Off brought this home for me once again. We started the process online which does make things easier, and saves time and money. But once we identified our top candidates, we rented a rehearsal space and brought the actors in to work with them in person before making our final decision. It is a crucial step not only because you need to see an actor in the flesh to determine if they truly are right for the role (I’ll get into that in more detail below) but there is another, less discussed aspect to this as well. It might sound strange but setting up a physical space for others to come to, shooting the shit with the actors, doing creative work with them— it’s fun! It’s what this job is all about! It makes your project feel ever more real! And actors, increasingly used to the sterile online-only casting process, appreciate it as well. (The ones who don’t or only want to do self-tapes are not right for you. Trust me.) Casting the right actors is crucial for your project. Give it all you got by seeing actors in person. And if nothing else, prioritizing the human touch in your project wherever you can is a quiet act of resistance against the tech overlords and AI bros. Let’s bring back some of that pizzazz and glamor of the Hollywood before times!

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Casting The Big Pay Off was always my biggest concern from the beginning. Our main character is a 17-year old kid named Amin who cons rich adults. He needs to be witty, charming, confident but also vulnerable and have a certain amount of teenage insouciance. I needed an actor who could portray all this and look young enough to pass as 17. Amin’s girlfriend Rachel is two years older, acerbic and tough, much more mature than Amin but with a real sweet spot for him, and naive in her own way. Their chemistry is key for the movie and for each character to be believable. Again, I needed the actress to look young enough to pass as a teenager but have serious acting skills.

We received over two thousand submissions for the two roles on Actors Access. For those who don’t know, Actors Access is a platform where productions can post their projects, and actors or their agents can submit by sending a resumé and video reel.

Our first approach was to weed out all the actors who upon first glance looked too old. This narrowed the field by hundreds of people. Next, we had to view the reels of everyone that was left. Reels are compilations of clips that show the actors’ performances in various movies and TV shows they’ve appeared in. Reels for young actors can be tricky. Because they’re still at the beginning of their careers, more often than not they’ve only appeared in student films or shorts which, all due respect, can vary wildly in quality. It’s not easy to make a determination about someone’s acting skills when the dialogue they deliver is bunk and the staging is amateurish. So to be fair to the actors, we invited everyone to submit a self-tape that we thought was able to deliver dialogue competently in their reels no matter what the production looked like.

Self-tapes are video recordings the actors make of themselves performing a scene you provide to them from your script. It’s at this point that you can start making a determination if someone could be right for the role. A few things become apparent: do the actors understand the text; do the actors have an understanding of the character; can the actors interpret the character coherently; are the actors able to offer an interpretation at all, or are they just rattling off the dialogue without adding any seasoning; do they stick to the text or do they adlib; if they adlib, does it add any value; and last but not least, considering all the limiting factors of a self-tape, are the actors believable in the role? And if they aren’t exactly, could they be with some direction?

From the initial two thousand applicants, we ended up receiving about one hundred self-tapes. Based on what we saw, we invited ten actors to read for us in person. As one of the casting directors quoted above says, there are so many things you can tell about an actor once you see them in the real world. The human element can change everything. Intangibles like charisma and attitude come into play. An actor who seemed perfect on tape can suddenly feel flat, someone who was average on tape can suddenly crackle alive. I’ve seen both happen in the past. This time around, one actress who I thought was perfect for the role of Rachel brought the completely wrong energy to the role in person and wasn’t able to adjust it even after I gave her directions. She’s a great actress, just not right for the role. It happens.

Another important thing for the in-person call back is to have the actors perform the scene in a few different ways. It’s crucial to see if they can take direction and tailor their performance based on your feedback. At the same time, one of the most important characteristics an actor has to have for me, especially for a lead role, is that you can’t see them act when they’re acting. If I ask them to perform the same scene in two contradictory ways (for example, once shouting aggressively and once whispering in fear) I want to see the same character expressing two different emotions, not an actor performing those emotions. I want the performance to vanish and the character to emerge. It is impossible to get that from a self-tape. This can only happen in person, and it is the role of the director to get the actor there, then capture the character on camera in the finished film. This means there needs to be enough trust between director and performer. You can only get there by working with them in person.

Lastly, you need to find out who the actor is as a person and if they will be a positive presence on set. Maybe an actor is perfect for the role but a huge asshole— it’s not worth dealing with, especially not on a small shoot with little budget. You need a group of people who respect each other and work collectively towards the same goal. You’ll need to feel out if the people you cast can fit into that collective. You can even glean from the way they respond (or don’t) to emails, or how difficult it is to schedule them (or if they get there on time) if they’re reliable or a pain to deal with long term. This is not to be underestimated on a small-scale production. Too often this gets ignored but in my opinion it’s as important as the actors being good performers. I will happily forego working with a difficult genius in favor of a solid performer and good person who will deliver the results I’m looking for without any head aches.

After seeing ten actors in person, we were ready to put out an offer to the male lead. For the role of Rachel, we had two actresses we really liked, so we had the three of them come back in for a chemistry read. We had them perform a scene together so we could see which pairing was more believable as a couple and could get the emotionality right. It became apparent quite easily which actress would be the right choice for us. So on the day of the chemistry read, we were able to offer the lead roles to both of them. From two thousand submissions down to two over the course of a little more than a month.

And now the real work can begin…