The casting director

The casting director was a guy named Bob Weiner, who's since passed away. He was a brilliant young guy who was not really a casting director. He was a writer for The Village Voice, which is a counterculture newspaper in New York, still going. And he would see every play and every unusual or foreign film. So he had a wide range of knowledge about actors around the world.

19:10 · jump to transcript →

If this prisoner escapes from custody, I'll make you testify in open court about how we made a fool out of you. Now get the hell out of here. If you cross me or bullshit me, I will dedicate my life to put you back in here. Bob Wiener, our casting director,

1:01:50 · jump to transcript →

Client got busted smuggling 50 pounds of cocaine. I should be able to get him off, though. Bob Wiener, the casting director, brought me virtually every... Well, everyone in the film. And he had run into Dean Stockwell somewhere, or he had seen him in something, and I only knew Dean Stockwell as a child actor. But then I saw Dean Stockwell in Paris, Texas. And then I subsequently saw him in Blue Velvet and realized that there was much more

1:04:46 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence

One of the things that I wanted to do... There used to be a little more footage of Joel, kind of back home when he got suspended, and you can see compared to the, kind of, the color and the textures and things in the environments we have here, it's actually quite bland. We shot everything in pretty much white environments, made it as bland as possible, so that you get this feeling that it's just not the kind of life that he wants. That he likes living internationally, and he likes working, and he likes the mystery, and he likes the intrigue, and he likes the work. The last thing he wants to do is be at home and be in an office. And so we made it as drab, and as lonely as possible. He wants a daughter... someone to take care of, and he'll pay for it. So here you see some of the work I was talking about in terms of the development of Sparrow School. This idea of figuring out what people need. But you can see in a moment here, it's actually gonna lead into a bit of a harsh lesson from Matron about having to get over what disgusts you. To make people believe that you're attracted to them, or that you're willing to do specific things for them. Yes. - Correct. Though, we mustn't be so judgmental. We all have our passions. His happen to be rather young. Anya, come here for a moment. This is Sasha Frolova. She was actually one of the first people other than Jen that we cast in the movie. It was something. Denise Chamian, my casting director, instantly sent her over for the role of Anya, which was actually expanded a little bit originally in the script. Give him what he wants. And I liked the idea of seeing what a school like this could do to somebody that's fragile. And so, she slowly falls apart. You used to see in some of the scenes that I think we have in deleted scenes, you used to see Dominika helping her out, and seeing some of Dominika's humanity in helping Anya out. Part of what I really like about this sequence here is that Matron knows that Anya's never going to be able to do this. Really, what the whole point of this is for her to crumble so she can make a point to the class about how part of the training here at Sparrow School is to get over the things that might disgust you, and that you're gonna have to learn the tricks of the trade to be able to do the horrible things you're gonna have to do in this job. And that also thematically was important for me because it needed to be horrible. This is not a glamorous world. I didn't want it to be a glamorous world, and I didn't want Dominika to think it was a glamorous world. I wanted Dominika to hate it and to hate her uncle for dragging her into this world, so that she would want nothing more than to get out of the world. ...brings blood to the groin. Manipulation of the nipple... I remember on the day watching this sequence and I still do, and I just think it's a real original. I've just never seen anything like it. With Charlotte and weeping Sasha. Yeah, I'm really proud of the sequences that we did here, at Sparrow School. You must learn to love on command.

34:19 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence

In the book, this portion of the story took place in Helsinki, but since we ended up shooting in Budapest, we just decided, "Why cheat Budapest for Moscow and Helsinki, "and why not just have the Helsinki part take place in Budapest?" So we decided to use Budapest for Budapest, which was nice and really fun. And this is Thekla, who's a Dutch actress, who read for the part of Marta and is playing Marta, obviously. But I remember seeing her reading for the part of Marta, and she was quite good, but Marta was described as being a little rough. And Thekla, to me... She is a very, very beautiful woman, and there's something very sophisticated about her, in a weird way. I don't even think I ever told her this, but there's something about her. When you see her in person, she feels like she could be part of a royal family or something. There's just something about her. So I actually asked her to read again. And she wasn't wearing a ton of makeup. But I just wanted her to sort of try and tone down whatever she had done in terms of, like, nice lighting and the hair and all this kind of stuff, and to do it again, because she couldn't be quite as beautiful as she really is. And then it was perfect. She sent me a new tape that was not quite as glamorous as the original. Usually two men on a girl. No relationships to speak of. That woman right there that we just tipped up from is Valentina, one of the costumers who has worked with us many, many times on all the Hunger Games movies. Again, another one of the cameos. And this is Douglas Hodge, who my casting director brought in. I think, yeah, Denise brought him in to play this role, and he just, I think, did a fantastic job playing Volontov.

50:44 · jump to transcript →

Francis Lawrence

So, are you Satisfied? This was an interesting day. So we were actually shooting in the Gellert Hotel, which is a famous old hotel in Budapest. It also has some of the most famous baths and pools in Budapest. Budapest is very famous for its thermal baths and things. It was a relatively straightforward scene. Always kind of fun to do the research on the polygraph tests and see what kind of guinea pig is actually gonna sit and get polygraphed in front of a bunch of people. As we all learn how to operate the machine and how to do it. But it was a night that Jen had not slept for whatever reason. This really rarely happened, but she had not slept at all, and was, you know, had a fair amount of dialogue, even more so than is in the scene now. And it was just driving her crazy, because her mind just wasn't working. I mean, she's usually really, really, really good with dialogue, and doesn't forget anything. but she was getting really frustrated. And surprisingly, that day, for being so tired, the accent really stuck. and that was something that we worked on with everybody. I mean, it was interesting with Jen... My idea for the accent in general was to do a very, very light Russian accent for everybody. So what I did was I first started with my casting director, and we went out and cast some young women who were Russians, but had lived in America for a long time, so who had light accents, and we recorded them speaking. And we got Tim Monich, a dialect coach, involved, and he had some recordings. And we combined all those things and handed them off to Jen, and also hired some men to hand off to the men, and so they had voices that they could listen to. And then Joan Washington was the dialect coach that we used on set. But there was a fair amount of training and reference that we had for everybody in terms of the accents.

1:28:04 · jump to transcript →

My name is Alex Cox, and I am the director and writer of Repo Man. And my name is Vicki Thomas. I'm the casting director. And I'm Michael Nesmith. I was the executive producer. My name is Cy Richardson. I was Light and the guy who did Bad Man. It's Juicy Bananas. My name is Xander Schloss. I am a PA and the late Fox Harris' driver-turned-actor. I play Kevin. I'm Del Zamora, and I played Lagarto Rodriguez, the older...

0:16 · jump to transcript →

so when we had the we had the premiere it was at the Venice which it doesn't even exist anymore the Venice International Theater the Venice the Fox Venice yeah there's Rowdy Harrington who became a director John LaFia another director John LaFia became a director Amy Ness is a producer Debbie Diaz a writer I heard about her recently Debbie Diaz works all the time Michael Chinich great casting director Harry Gittes Harry Gittes producer Tom Boyd he was the guy who went yeah

1:30:29 · jump to transcript →

Bill Paxton

Everybody's archetypical in this thing. I don't remember all the stuff hanging off of Mark. Chicken bones. I look like a boy. That's what we liked about you. Was this the day, Michael, you were passed out by the lockers and Sigourney walked by and said "There's my leading man"? Am I mistaken with another day? Somewhere around in here. I had to audition. They made you audition for Fox. No, it wasn't for Fox. They had a limit on how many Americans they could bring over. So they auditioned a lot of Englishmen for that role. 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.

34:24 · jump to transcript →

Bill Paxton

Carrie Henn, who plays Newt, was an astonishing find. Mary Selway, our casting director, and her associate, Sarah Jackson, searched throughout England and, in fact, I think the entire British Isles, trying to find a young girl who could portray this character. And we had every young girl who wanted to be an actress, or whose parents wanted them to act, to come in and audition. Almost all of them had done commercials, and every time they delivered a line they would smile. Of course, this is a little girl suffering from traumatic stress. She's watched her family wiped out, every other person on the mining colony wiped out, and I think we probably had 500 little girls on tape. And Carrie was found at a US Air Force base in England. Her father was a US serviceman serving there. And she came in and auditioned, never having acted even in a school play, and was dead on from the very first reading. She's such a good little actress. Has she done anything since this? She has a normal life. She did not pursue acting as her career. One of the things that we were very concerned about was whether or not this film would traumatize her. It's very intense and unlike now, where we could composite creatures in seamlessly, or create one digitally, she really was terrorized by the alien warriors in the film, and she understood it was make-believe. Her parents were tremendously supportive and she really had her feet on the ground. This really is acting.

58:31 · jump to transcript →

And you used a lot of these guys over and over again in the next movies. Yeah, I tried, but it has proven much more difficult in the United States than in Holland to use the same people all the time. But somehow it doesn't work that way here. And also you go from casting director to casting director and they all have their favorites. In Holland I always worked with the same casting director for all my movies. So we assembled kind of a group

1:40:40 · jump to transcript →

like Ingmar Bergman did, or be it director Howard, Jerome Crabbe. Or John Ford had his stock company, but it's hard to do now. I think that happens when you work with the same casting director, then you can do that. But if you change casting directors, you get new people, and it's difficult. They have always their own favorites, you know. Still, there's a lot of names here that come back in my movies.

1:41:09 · jump to transcript →

was a little broad, and I kept looking for the right feel and right tone for this character, and I'd seen a movie called... It's a lie, I hadn't. My casting directors had this movie called Zebra, and they said, look at this kid called Michael Rapaport. So we needed a guy who was a little bit of a klutz, and I saw Rapaport and Zebra, and he was great, perfect. So...

40:47 · jump to transcript →

But he's charming and he's funny, and I thought, God, he came in and read for me, and after the first reading, I just turned to my casting director and said, it's his, he's got it, this guy's great. But he's got that impish little leprechaun smile, but at the same time, and he's got those sweet eyes, but very dangerous eyes at the same time.

1:15:17 · jump to transcript →

Commentary With Kathryn Bigelow And Jeff Cronenweth

He loves ending and opening on exits, and he did it numerous times with Harrison, and such a master. And the cast, I had two extraordinary casting directors, a woman named Mallie Finn and a woman named Mary Selway.

1:14:07 · jump to transcript →

Commentary With Kathryn Bigelow And Jeff Cronenweth

Mally is pretty much responsible for the actors who came from the United States, Mary Selway from the actors that came from Europe and Iceland, and then Ross Clydesdale who's responsible for the wonderful actors that came from Canada. So these three casting directors who really brought to one place these amazing faces and actors from all over the world

1:14:33 · jump to transcript →

heads of model agencies, casting directors, whatever. But somebody in L.A. had mentioned her to me, and she was starting to do a little bit of modeling. And we met with her, and I was very impressed with her because she was really a very unusual girl and had an interesting background. And I...

33:02 · jump to transcript →

Yeah, he's in The Blob and he's in Die Hard 2. I think Carmine Foresta was a real TA cop who, you know, was part of the background. Great job of casting Alex Gordon. Alex Gordon was a New York casting director. And I believe based on the way it's spelled, it was a she. But again, what a great eye.

1:42:28 · jump to transcript →

Filmmaker Paul Davis

It's funny, Rufus Deacon, who played the little boy with the balloons, he was one person that I did manage to track down for the book of an American werewolf in London. And it turned out that the reason, the way he got the role is that his mother was best friends with Debbie McWilliams, who was the casting director on this. And Debbie has gone on to, you know, she cast all the James Bond movies. So she's had a very prolific career, post-American werewolf.

1:12:31 · jump to transcript →

sort of get your mates around you to work, it's always much more pleasant. So I always have a list I give a casting director of people I like and it would be nice to be working with. Of course Cubby Broccoli was the producer and Michael Wilson, who produced together with Cubby, would always

11:24 · jump to transcript →

Well, the casting director was Gail Stevens. She was actually married to... ...Danny Boyle at the time. And Danny wasn't famous, actually, when we were doing this... ...but why he became so famous after that. But Gail was doing the casting and...

7:13 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

So, and even looks at him when he goes away. Now we have Robbie's chicken and ribs and introducing Courtney Cox in her first motion picture. And she did a great job. She had very natural quality and I liked her right away. Vicki Thomas, my casting director, brought her to my attention. She had just done the Springsteen dance video. I got a going away present for you, but it isn't wrapped.

20:20 · jump to transcript →

It's really what I call action horror, adventure horror. Oh, absolutely. It's definitely adventure horror. It's save the girl, save the city. And honestly, Shawnee saves Kevin as much as he saves her, which is a little progressive for the 80s. You were working with casting director Joanna Ray. Correct. Who does all of David Lynch's movies and everything. I mean, her eye for talent, especially young talent.

6:57 · jump to transcript →

that was taking place i believe in memphis tennessee and he lived in northern mississippi and uh... his mom encouraged him to go ahead up and and try out for the film ellen lewis our casting director brought this tape out to us in los angeles and we were all i mean you had a big smile on your face because you had just seen this unique character that so far you hadn't seen anywhere and so we invited a number of boys out for uh... uh...

7:02 · jump to transcript →

Darren Aronofsky

Mark Margolis was actually cast by our casting director, Denise Fitzgerald. She ran into him in a supermarket and told him she had a perfect role for him. And he was like, there are no perfect roles for me. But he came in, read, and once again we cast him on the spot. He was perfect for the role. I thought he actually was too young when I first met him, which is amazing because...

24:05 · jump to transcript →

Alexander Payne

came back to L.A. and auditioned a lot of guys, I don't know, 40 or 50 guys, something like that, that just I saw, much less the casting director. I went back to Omaha and called him up, called up the front office at the high school and asked about this guy and called him up at home and said, would you mind coming to the Omaha Film Commission office to read for a movie? And he almost didn't believe me, but he came and I just showed him some sides and

21:34 · jump to transcript →

and coming up the mountains of Afghanistan. It was harder to find authentic looking extras, but I had a great extras casting director, Mito Skellen, who did an amazing job finding faces to populate the various countries that Yuri visits in the course of the film. That's not one of the extras.

17:02 · jump to transcript →

Well, originally... Outside to inside. No, originally, remember, we were going to cut. And you went, no, no, I want to do the whole... That's right. We had the whole thing set up. You had this idea a couple of days beforehand about these guys playing this game. We had our casting directors go actually to Chinatown. And they were just terrific. And they had such, you know, fantastic faces. Look at those guys. I love them. Again, listen to the footsteps, the tension.

1:46:28 · jump to transcript →

I think what is truly original in this movie is to put the focus on the family, instead of doing it in all the district. It was very important, the casting in this movie. The kids was one of the big things in the beginning, and Shaheen Baig, the casting director, she helped a lot, especially with the trainings that she had with a lot of kids from different schools. I think when you're assisting these trainings, you know, you can see clearly if the kid is going to respond and if it's going to work in the way that you're expecting.

19:59 · jump to transcript →

They got up there and got started before we did. So a lot of the good local talent up there got sort of sucked up by the bigger movies. But we were fortunate. The young girl, who I think is both very pretty and very good, who you're going to see at the door in a second, we found her in Toronto. Yes, Kristen Hager. She's great. And this is Johnny Lewis here. Yes. Mindy Marin was our casting director.

10:58 · jump to transcript →

We did a DI grade, which film can't quite cope with, but HD can, the way of the future. Clark and Evan, who are Marty and Todd, they were in the first ever read-through. Before I go out to the public with a script, when I say the public, Hollywood, I like to do one read-through with the actors. So I actually flew to LA and I said to the casting director, just get me some,

2:48 · jump to transcript →

I know a place where no one's lost. I know a place where no... Isabel Allen, what an extraordinary actress she is. I mean, I'm not aware she's acted in any professional acting before Nina Gold, my wonderful casting director, found her, but she's singing this live like all the other actors. And, you know, I think that song is incredibly important in terms of creating a connection between the audience and this character. But it does need to be sung well, and I think she sings it beautifully.

46:02 · jump to transcript →

Wes Anderson

So 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. And that's really-- There's no movie if they aren't great. 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. And along the way, we picked up all our scouts. There were lots of people auditioning, and we'd say, "Well, this one's still not quite the right one for Sam, but this is a great one. This is a kid at this moment in his life who's gonna be very interesting." And so by the time we did find the two of them, which was quite late in the game, we had all the other kids too. Jared, I remember, in his audition, was just... It wasn't his audition, it was him that really was entertaining. And Kara, in her audition, she played this scene as if she was making it up completely herself and just seemed completely authentic. And they were great to work with. They were very invested in the movie. And sometimes when you work with very young people, they learn the script and they know it better than anybody on the set. And they know everybody's lines. And they brought some special kind of emotion that only they know that has to do with they're really that age. They're really like these people. They understand them in a way we can only try to recall. If the movie works for them, it works because of these guys. Yeah, I remember seeing the tests, and Jared just stood out. I remember thinking, you know, he had such a different energy than I expected in our lead role 'cause we had sort of described him with his corncob pipe and kind of a little bit of a JD, and he had just this other quality, but I couldn't totally see it at first. But then, of course, it just couldn't have been better. It was just so right for it. But it wasn't really written in the way that he portrayed it. At least my mind's eye didn't see someone like Jared, but he's so one of a kind, it's hard to even imagine that till you meet him.

26:35 · jump to transcript →

So, Adam Hurtig on the right, he was the casting director's assistant in Winnipeg, and he was helping me out with all the auditions, and as he was playing all these parts, I thought it would be great to get Adam in the movie. Yeah. He's very good. And who's the other detective? It's Kristen Harris. Yes. - Kristen Harris. Both fantastic. And right this way, we've got the beautiful dining room. The walls used to be a lot darker, but it's been recently renovated to have a brighter look. Here's a little addendum. Which is nice to know that they're back together. And they need a new house. We knew that. Seem to be getting along pretty well. And this was... Remember, this was the first shooting day. It's the first scene we ever filmed in this movie. Jeez Louise. Really? - Yep. Now you're reminding me. That's hard to do. Yeah. It felt pretty strange. -/ remember... - Yeah, it just feels strange, right? I was talking to Kelly and David, they were like, "If you're doing more than seven takes, then something's wrong." I was like, "Okay, that makes sense. Fine." I'm used to a lot more back home, but here I was like, "Okay, these are rules of the game." And I remember, at the very end, the final, the basement line, we did that 15, 16 times. But Connie really nailed the... Oh, boy. Yeah. - The step into the frame and just... The very sort of pop aspect of it. Well, I guess he's finding out that they're probably still after him, or they know... He's on somebody's radar. Does this house have a... It's actually the only time in the film where we don't hear the other end of the conversation. We break our own rules and it works. - Yeah.

1:24:52 · jump to transcript →

has such an incredible face and command and intensity. At her audition, me and Carmel Cochran, the casting director, just started to, like, cry when she was saying this, which there's nothing to cry about, but she's just so intense. And I immediately got up and said, you have the role. She's something else.

1:20:25 · jump to transcript →

Tim Burton

Yeah, and then we never got the chance to do it. What happened? A boat accident. Arthur Conti playing Jeremy, I think I first met him. He was a friend of my son's. We went to school with him. But I didn't know he was an actor. I didn't know he was the grandson of Tom Conti. And then when we were casting Jeremy, Sophie, the casting director, sent in the tape, and one of them was Arthur, and so...

47:16 · jump to transcript →