Casting

He loves it. Roger, who I wrote for and I love dearly, Roger would fight on screen like a man fighting. Sean fights, fought like a man who really enjoyed it and enjoyed getting his licks in. He has that wonderful grin when he's fighting as if he already knows he's going to win. Joe Robinson, an actor and stuntman, had been Sean Connery's judo instructor before being cast as diamond smuggler Peter Franks. Robinson recalls his reaction to filming the elevator fight.

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met and worked with this man and have been the beneficiary of his fine direction. In the novels of Ian Fleming, Bond's CIA friend Felix Leiter was a Texan. Tom Mankiewicz recalls the approach to casting Norman Burton as Leiter in Diamonds Are Forever. Now, here we meet Felix Leiter. There had been several Felix Leiters. Guy tried in the whole style of this movie, when he had a fussier Blofeld, less of a thuggish Blofeld, he tried to find a Felix Leiter.

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was the fellow who found King Khan in the, that's how far back Bruce Cabot goes. He'd been in 150 movies, Bruce Cabot. Actress Lana Wood, who plays Plenty O'Toole, made her film debut in the classic 1956 John Wayne Western, The Searchers, when she was just nine years old. She got the role after her sister, Natalie Wood, was cast in the film, when the filmmakers needed an actress who could play the character at a younger age. Lana Wood remembers shooting in Las Vegas.

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So now we're coming upon one of my favorite day players in the movie. Tell me where you found this guy. Well, he actually wasn't one of the real people who worked in the same role that he's playing in the movie. But he was from the area, and I don't know exactly how we discovered him or auditioned him, but he actually gets mentioned as one of the stars of the movie because he comes so early in the credits. So when you see the...

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scrunched up on the floor between the two people in the front so that I could judge the take. And if I wasn't there, then I was riding on the running board with the camera and nearly got killed one time by an overhanging pole or something that could have just lopped my head off. Oh, my God. Well, let's talk about the casting.

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This is so, so amazing. I remember when I talked to Chris Hillman of the Byrds, he said, yeah, I think I went and auditioned for that. I'm sure he did. Yeah, I think that all the musicians at the time were really, really into trying to get into Two-Lane Blacktop. So tell me how this came about that you decided to go with non-actors. Well, I didn't. I never made the decision to go with non-actors. Every role was cast independently.

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Francis Ford Coppola

instruments and don't really play but i find as a technique that having a real band enables you to kind of control the crowd and get them in the mood and and the fact that the band actually plays this is another expense so it was another one of my requests that to the producers i was just kind of spending money for nothing the casting of the mom uh she of course is uh

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Francis Ford Coppola

well-known singer of sicilian descent morgana king a well-known jazz singer but when i met her in some audition situation she just made me think of you know the kind of handsome authentically sicilian woman that would be his wife also some of the judges they've all sent gifts there was a lot of tension on the set uh during the sequence this

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Francis Ford Coppola

And the casting period went on and on and on, and they kept asking me to test new people. I've never shot so many screen tests. We screen tested everybody. And I remember the head of Gulf and Western, which owned Paramount at this time, once said, and he had this incredible accent, he said, we have all these tests and they're all terrible. Now, all those actors cannot be terrible. We have one director. It's the director who's terrible.

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especially the geography above ground, is all completely accurate. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later on when we get to it. Again, this is a set. And one of the things that's so amazing about this picture, well, there's so many things amazing about it, starting with the casting. That guy who's at the board is a guy named Robert Weil.

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And I think it just, the casting of Shaw and bringing that aspect of the character to a mercenary soldier, I thought was a just nice little choice. Somebody once said to me, a successful movie is all or are all the little things you do right. Well, you know, in casting somebody like Shaw and then Matthau and Hector Elizondo and Martin Balsam, et cetera, et cetera, these actors bring a lot of the character's life

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and um the buck stops the unit goes oh shit um but the character is playing in the movie is named warren lasalle which is a far more waspy version than the name of the character in the book which was murray lasalle um and you know at the time especially if you were casting out of new york if you were casting wasps you would cast tony roberts or william devane uh again uh guys who um

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From this point on, from this point on, we stop looking at him in the same way. Yeah, he also becomes... Yeah, there is... He's also mad. I mean, that's... Yeah. He's right and he's romantic, but he is also insane. Isn't there a touch here of Jack Nicholson in The Shining that really he's pretty much over the edge right from the beginning? Oh, yeah, yeah. There's nowhere for him to go. He's Bruce Dern. In fact, Jack Nicholson wouldn't have done this film because he was a bit... He'd moved on to doing different types of movies. But he would have been in the frame for the casting.

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Again, according to Mark Kermode's book, the original casting for this was Larry Hagman. Of course, later on known for Dallas. But at that time, he'd been in I Dream of Jeannie playing an astral, hadn't he? And that probably was... But he decided he'd been offered a chance to direct a film.

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Here is a film which gives an opportunity to differently abled actors who couldn't get any other work. The irony is that we didn't know until the end credits that the drones were not machines. Yes, true. And it's the thing of casting amputees, people who couldn't possibly fit into the devices. Watching them now, that sort of waddling look is...

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Francis Ford Coppola

of the arch-villain Fanucci, played by wonderful actor Gastone Moschin. Of course, in my mind, I had no assurance that Robert De Niro was really gonna work out in this audacious casting idea to have some young contemporary actor portray Marlon Brando at an equivalent age, so it's one thing now that the film is

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Francis Ford Coppola

This actor is Carmine Caridi, and in the early casting shuffle of Godfather, he played an interesting role because I was so frustrated at the inability on the first Godfather to get some of the cast that I wanted, including Pacino and stuff. I thought, well, in the role of Sonny, I'd at least get

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Francis Ford Coppola

stone sculptor and acclaimed, I believe, and he was a character. Fred Roos had found him in a casting call and thought that this strong stonecutter was a presence that was interesting.

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experience with the cub going on, right? Yeah, absolutely. His response is great. He's freaked out. That's so funny. The casting on this film was really something. How long did it take? Well, it wasn't that hard because the key roles, I used people that I had always, I had worked with before, like Reggie, of course, had been in all of my films, and Mike.

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when he says his last line. It worked perfectly. But anyway, Bill was the new one to the bunch. I'd worked with everybody else, and he, uh, I had... Long Beach. I had a casting session down there. Yeah, I think I read at least four times. And were you sent there by an agent, or... Yeah, I was sent by an agent. Four or five times I read, and then I tested with you. And it was narrowed down to one other guy. And, uh...

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Nick Pinkerton

and featuring Francis the Talking Mule. It was very catch-as-catch-can for Clint until 58, when he was cast in the role of Rowdy Yates on the hour-long CBS Western series Rawhide, opposite Eric Fleming, both men playing cattle drovers.

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Fran Fullenwider, who's, of course, no longer with us. She's in heaven too. - Yeah, she is. She wrote me a wonderful letter when my husband died. What, recently? - Recently. Yeah, I'm sorry about that, Fran. And I remember she was in trouble one day, and Jim Sharman was very cross and crotchety. Well, we had to get the film done in two days, was it? How long did it take to make? - Six weeks. Six weeks. And I stopped the show. I remember your dear wife Kimi saying to me that... I stopped the show because Fran had a coughing fit or something, and couldn't go on, and he got very cross with her. So I sort of called a strike. I don't remember that, but it's been reminded. I'm quite... people were quite proud of that. You were very bold in those days. Fair. I was fair. - Fair. I thought you were red. - Honorable. Oh. - Oh. There's the beauty. - There he is, Mr. Curry. We've been-- we had a-- you know, when we... when we were casting this originally, we had a young man called Jonathan Kramer, American who is now also in heaven. That was... - Who isn't in heaven? We're lucky to be here. - Well, you and I. And... well, maybe we're luckier to be up there. Yeah. Kramer. And Jonathan was gonna do this part, and Tim came along... uh, to audition for us. And I'm afraid poor, old Jonathan... No. - ...never had a chance against this guy. But I heard it was Tim came in and said, "Let's rip it up." But did he say that? - I don't Know. I heard that, but I knew Tim before this. - Me too. Um, because I was working at the Royal Court Theatre and so was he. I was playing much bigger parts than him at the time, and he was so rather in awe of me, I believe. I'm sorry, but he did. He was very kind and admiring. - Mm-hmm. I knew him in Har, of course, because we were in Hairtogether. Of course. And I always thought he was the most beautiful thing on stage, seriously. Really? And when Jim and I were talking about putting this show on at the Royal Court, I went along looking for muscle men. I thought that would be a nice thing for me to do, is to go around the gyms and see if I could find a nice muscle man to play the part of Rocky. What a lovely way to spend your day. - Yes. And then I went into a little gym in one of those streets, George Street or Blandford Street off, um... Yeah. And who was there? And hang on, Baker Street. Baker Street, Blandford Street, George Street, yes. Yeah, you're a man of London. - And there was this gym. I went into this gym and there was very sweaty men, ugly sweaty men. You know, been pumping iron. And there was-- there was this young man who was living next door above a place called The Speed Queen. I know. The launderette. - This was a laundromat, yeah. And I thought, "That's very nice." And he asked me what I was doing, and I told him what I'd been up to. Sorry, was he in the gym? - No, he'd been-- he'd been living... He'd just come out of the flat, the apartment above The Speed Queen. So why did he speak to you? Oh, 'cause he knew you from Harr. - He went, "Hello, how are you?" I went, "Fine, and..." blah, blah, blah. - Yeah. "I've just been doing some casting." - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And next thing, he auditioned for us. Oh, God, another accident! Well, kind of. - Yes. Wonderful. And I auditioned for you singing a Jessie Matthews song. Yeah, "Over My Shoulder." It goes, One care... I told you not to play the piano because the music would put me off. I said, "I've got this." I surely would have done because I can't play the piano. I said to Richard, "Hardly." -

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Roger Moore

Now, Irka is very, very beautiful... ...but has a slight cast. When we're in an interior... This is in the stage in Paris. But Irka has a slight cast in one eye. And when she looked around at me... ...the operator looking through couldn't tell... ...whether she was looking camera right or camera left. I said, "I think it's optional."

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What a great nose this man has. He also did a really good job. Obviously none of these people had ever been in front of a camera before. Casting Bruno and Isabelle...? Because of "The Story of Adele H", Isabelle was already a big star, which wasn't true of Bruno... - No, he was a star of the theatre. ...even though he had just done "The American Friend". There were several films that had made him very well known. He wasn't a big international star, but he was already quite important for the European cinema. Did you choose the cast yourself, or was that...? Yes. I decided that myself. And Kinski as we will see. We always knew we would not make the film without Kinski. That makes sense. For Kinski... The strange thing is that even though we haven't seen him yet, you can already feel his presence. The whole film works towards that. You get closer to him. Right, that is the result of the dialogue, images, and the text. We planned how we would work towards that. In total, I believe that Kinski is in the movie for less than 17 minutes runtime. Nevertheless, he dominates it completely. ...in the graves and the undead. That is great dialogue with the undead and... For this I read a lot of the vampire literature of the 18th and 19th century, and then used parts of it. Neither Bram Stoker nor Murnau have that. You have always been interested in liturgy and things like that, right? Maybe that's the result of a traumatizing religious period when I was younger. When I was 14, I converted to Catholicism. Texts like that, liturgies, or very ritualistic things... The ritual itself. All that resonates somewhere in the background in many of my movies. Along the street... The ritualistic and liturgy necessarily are connected with the film structure and the music. Yes. I also noticed that frequently you use references to the music of the Middle Ages... Yes. Without it being spherical. It confuses me...

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