Anthology ·
Casting
Three filmmakers, unprompted, on the casting director as second author
- Citations
- 16 citations
- Commentaries cited
- 8 commentaries
- Approximate length
- ~1,100 words
§1 The casting director is the first hire
Three filmmakers in the corpus volunteer the same point unprompted: the casting director is named, credited by full name, and treated as the second author of the film.
Wes Anderson
And the casting director on this movie was Doug Aibel — a very good casting director, who's very discriminating. Has a very good eye for them, and also has the absolutely key thing for casting roles like this: he is totally relentless.
Wes Anderson
Well, we got our casting director, Doug Aibel, on very, very early — and we spent, I want to say, six or eight months or something searching for them. There were lots of people auditioning.
Francis Lawrence
It was something. Denise Chamian, my casting director, instantly sent her over.
James Cameron
The casting director, Mary Selway, and I had to meet every member of the North American registry from British Actors' Equity who was interested in being in this film, before we could bring anyone from the US. I think we must have met and auditioned 3,000 people.
The constraint Cameron describes (Pinewood-era British union rules limiting how many Americans the production could fly over) is itself a craft note: it forces you to widen the search and meet 3,000 actors before you cast anyone you actually had in mind.
§2 “There’s no movie if they aren’t great”
Anderson states the operating premise of the chapter most plainly.
Wes Anderson
It was very clear, when Roman and I had finished this script, that the crucial thing was going to be who plays Sam and who plays Suzy — our two main characters. There's no movie if they aren't great.
§3 The actor you didn’t have in mind
Across three different decades, three different filmmakers describe the same moment: the casting that worked was not the casting they planned for.
Wes Anderson
Yeah, also I remember when we were casting Rushmore — Jason was not really what we had in mind.
Wes Anderson
That was my first casting thought of this movie was: "Boy, I would like to have Bill and Fran together — to have them married in this story."
James Cameron
I just read him in a lineup of actors in the normal casting methodology, and I thought he was really interesting — that he could play this really sincere but slightly smarmy guy who could then turn evil.
Taylor Hackford
He's played by Chris Bauer, who's a fabulous young actor — I discovered in New York. I didn't discover him, but I found him in the casting process. He had gone to Yale. He doesn't look like this. It just shows the chameleon quality.
§4 The actor who came with the location
A small but recurring sub-pattern: sometimes the right person was already in the room, working a different job.
Wes Anderson
So we cast him in the scene because he sort of comes with the house. I was thinking, like, "What perfect casting." But he actually came with the house.
Richard O'Brien
She was cleaning for Jim when we were casting for the stage production.
Richard O'Brien
Jim Sharman found her on the streets of London. She used to — what do you call it? — busk. She was doing a bit of busking, a bit of housekeeping.
§5 Casting against your better judgment
A specific kind of casting story: the actor you knew came with structural problems, and you took them anyway because the role demanded it.
John McTiernan
Here is Sonny Landham. In order to cast him, insurance company insisted we have a bodyguard. Not to protect Sonny — but to protect other people from Sonny. This giant huge man, six feet six inches tall — not Sonny, the bodyguard — who was assigned to follow Sonny twenty-four hours a day.
John McTiernan
I cast him because I wanted a writer on the set.
§6 Casting as a budget problem
Cameron, twice, frames the casting question as inseparable from the production economics.
James Cameron
They had a limit on how many Americans they could bring over. So they auditioned a lot of Englishmen for that role.
James Cameron
I encouraged the actors to customize their own costumes and armor.
§7 Synthesis
Sixteen casting passages from seven films across four decades yield five recurring craft observations:
- The casting director is the first hire, and they are named. Doug Aibel (twice, Anderson). Mary Selway (Cameron). Denise Chamian (Lawrence). When the commentary turns to casting, the speaker reaches for a person (the one who did the work), not a process.
- Volume is not negotiable. 3,000 actors for Aliens. Six to eight months for two child leads on Moonrise Kingdom. The work is the search, and the search is long.
- The right actor is rarely the one you planned for. Jason Schwartzman wasn’t what Anderson had in mind for Rushmore. Bill Paxton was a face Cameron picked out of a lineup who turned out to be exactly the rare register the part needed (sincere → smarmy → evil). Chris Bauer was “found” rather than “discovered.” The format of casting is I had a plan and was surprised.
- The location does some of the work. The man who came with the house in Life Aquatic. Patricia Quinn cleaning Jim Sharman’s flat before Rocky Horror. Little Nell busking in London. Casting at the budget tier of these films is partly noticing what is already in the room.
- Insurance is a casting variable. McTiernan’s bodyguard-for-Sonny-Landham is the chapter’s edge case: not “we wanted him for the part” but “we wanted him for the part and the production had to physically contain him to get him on set.” The casting decision and the production decision are the same decision.
The chapter writes itself once the corpus is searchable. The editorial work (what to keep, what to cut, how to order the quotes within the section, how to phrase the section breaks) is where the book’s voice lives. The quotes belong to the filmmakers; the architecture belongs to the editor.
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Commentaries cited