The casting director

William Friedkin

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.

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William Friedkin

Bob Wiener, our casting director,

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William Friedkin

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

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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 Sy Richardson. I was Lite and the guy who did Bad Man. It's Juicy Bananas. My name is Zander 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...

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Paul Davis

It's funny, Rufus Deakin, 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.

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Roger Moore

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 G. Wilson, who produced together with Cubby, would always

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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...

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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.

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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 Johanna Ray. Correct. Who does all of David Lynch's movies and everything. I mean, her eye for talent, especially young talent.

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