Topics / Performance

Casting

134 commentaries in the archive discuss this, with 762 total mentions and 48 sampled passages on this page.

By decade

1930s

1
1940s

1
1950s

4
1960s

4
1970s

12
1980s

31
1990s

24
2000s

37
2010s

12
2020s

8

Across the archive

ranked by mentions · click any passage for the moment in the transcript

technical · 1h 22m 3 mentions

Underworld Awakening (2012)

Gary Lucchesi, Richard Wright, James McQuaide
director · 2h 15m 3 mentions

Avengers Age of Ultron (2015)

Joss Whedon
director · 1h 38m 3 mentions

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016)

Jake Szymanski
scholar · 1h 32m 2 mentions

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Terry Sanders, Robert Gitt, F. X. Feeney, Preston Neal Jones
1. Now, of course, James Gleeson, wonderful character actor, oddly enough, was not originally cast in the film. No. They had another actor who was not as well-known, and Lawton was not happy with his performance. So after trying twice to do the same scene with Billy and Uncle Bertie... Emmett Lynn was his name. Emmett Lynn, that's right. Thank you for remembering. He just gave up, and a few days later they were shooting
  
  16:16 · jump to transcript →
2. Did you shoot these? No, no. It's a great choice of an owl. That owl is so well cast. It's a hard world for little things. Yeah, that's beautifully counterpointed in a minute or two when she's talking about how children are manned at its strongest. Yeah, yeah.
  
  1:22:00 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 49m 2 mentions

Dr. No (1962)
1. A little background on actor Timothy Moxon, who plays Strangways. At the time of Dr. No, Moxon was making his living as a charter pilot and crop duster in Jamaica. But before he moved to the Caribbean, he had been an actor in London, where he knew director Terrence Young, which led to Moxon being cast in the role of Strangways. Actor Anthony Dawson plays Professor Dent. Dawson appeared in many films for director Young, beginning with They Were Not Divided in 1950 and continuing with Action of the Tiger in 1957.
  
  2:52 · jump to transcript →
2. Sean Connery seemed an unlikely person to become one of the world's top actors. He grew up in the impoverished Fountainbridge section of Edinburgh, Scotland. He joined the Navy at age 17 and was discharged three years later. He took a series of menial jobs before traveling to London for the Mr. Universe tryouts. There, he auditioned for a part in the chorus of South Pacific. Soon, Connery became serious about acting, and in 1957, he was cast by Terrence Young
  
  23:12 · jump to transcript →
cast · 1h 39m 2 mentions

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Richard O'Brien, Patricia Quinn
1. Oh, look. Nice car, that, that woodie. Yes, and what was the tape playing? Was it Nixon? Nixon's-- which I... I don't like that speech being played, actually because it locks the movie into a time frame. I thought it was terribly clever. And that late November evening wasn't in time with Nixon's speech. Speech. And, you know, there's lots of things. Now we see this motorcyclist here. Those people who played Transylvanians were on the back of those motorbikes. They would have to go to the studio this very night, dress up, put all their Transylvanian gear on, and then put motorbike leathers on as well. Yeah. - And then go out on these motorbikes. They didn't drive them themselves. No, no. They had motorcyclists. They paid pillion passengers. Yeah. And, as Ramon Gow said, you know, I said, "Why are they coming in to do this? It could be anybody wet in the dark. And he said, "Could be a gorilla with a pipe, luv." Gorilla with a pipe? But I'll never forget the first day I saw the Transylvanians, 'cause they were rehearsing in a room in the house. And we didn't have Transylvanians in the play, and suddenly this door was open, and I don't want politically noncorrect, but it was so freaky because they were freaks. Sorry. - As indeed we all are. No, speak for yourself. And in the amazement of tall, small, fat, thin, you Know... You lost a sense of norms, you do. Sense of center. Yes, and I saw all these people dancing doing the "Time Warp," and I almost collapsed. I couldn't believe it. I thought... Because I didn't know they were going to be in this. I didn't know there was a cast of Transylvanians. No. - No. Well, when I went into the room and David Toguri was rehearsing them, Well, when I went into the room and David Toguri was rehearsing them, Well, when I went into the room and David Toguri was rehearsing them, and Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon was standing amongst these people, with hugely different, physically, SO very... I'll never work again for using the word "freak." It seemed to me that Susan and Barry, who most people would say are relatively good-looking human beings, seemed just as freakish. There was no standard. The standards had disappeared. Yes, that's what freakish-- yes, right. And that was interesting.
  
  12:03 · jump to transcript →
2. 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." -
  
  23:38 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 28m 2 mentions

Phantasm (1979)

Don Coscarelli, Michael Baldwin, Angus Scrimm, Bill Thornbury
1. 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.
  
  43:49 · jump to transcript →
2. 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...
  
  44:46 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 44m 2 mentions

The Draughtsmans Contract (1982)

Peter Greenaway
1. Peter Greenaway
  
  body language that the man had, and I think it's always a characteristic of casting. I always held a somewhat, maybe to some people, reactionary point of view that actors can really only play one person, and that's himself or herself. So the casting is extremely important for me. So though it's not entirely Fellini casting, that is to say, characters chosen not because of the way they speak or the way they emote, but simply because of the way they look, that would certainly be important for me.
  
  49:28 · jump to transcript →
2. Peter Greenaway
  
  There's also a way that the casting sessions for me, which are often very troublesome and anxious times, because I am so fearful of not finding the right characterization for the character I want. But I do believe that through extreme, I hope, hard work, but also a certain amount of luck, we found here two characters were absolutely fitted for the roles that I had written. As I have heard tell, a talented draftsman,
  
  49:57 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 45m 2 mentions

Predator (1987)

John McTiernan
1. John McTiernan
  
  This is Shane Black, he is a writer. I cast him because I wanted a writer on the set. And I just, I loved his work. And he's got a great wise-ass manner.
  
  8:20 · jump to transcript →
2. 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, 24-hours a day, and always know where he was. To keep Sonny from getting in a fight or hurting somebody.
  
  17:45 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 32m 2 mentions

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

Howard Deutch, Lea Thompson
1. Lea Thompson
  
  Here's Elias Koteas, who actually plays Skinhead, and auditioned for John Hughes for a different movie. And John called me when we were casting. He said, "You got to see this guy." And the minute he walked in, I knew. Oh, my God. John had, like, found another unique kid. He was great in it, and I thought, grounded in a comedic reality that was a very tough tightrope to walk. Getting laughs and being real at the same time is difficult.
  
  8:36 · jump to transcript →
2. Lea Thompson
  
  I wonder if that was in the script. Yeah, that was in the script. - Was he supposed to be bald? You can remember, I can't. - No. But as I was shooting, I went, "Oh, my God. I cast the wrong guy, 'cause he's bald." And then John said, "It's funnier that way."
  
  22:27 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 40m 2 mentions

Say Anything (1989)

Cameron Crowe, John Cusack, Ione Skye
1. It didn't feel like it was coming from way down deep inside. And when he finished the audition, he just sat around talking with us and he was Joe. So we had him read Joe and it was like a slam dunk. He is Joe at this point in his life. I love this because he's trying to, he's trying to reason with him. Yeah. So what's up? She's a human being. Why do you think I keep her tapes? Gonna be valuable someday. No.
  
  27:18 · jump to transcript →
2. But better yet, you're acting it so great. I felt like I was a fly on the wall a little bit. Well, I remember it's, you know, I think so much of film is casting chemistry and script. And of course, that's the most obvious thing anyone's ever said. But I don't think if I was making the movie with someone other than Ione, we would have been as good as it was. I mean, at least from my end.
  
  52:18 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 56m 2 mentions

RoboCop 2 (1990)

Paul M. Sammon
1. Paul M. Sammon
  
  And I know the best thing to do when you find yourself in a situation like that is to stay calm and let people run their course. And I asked Frank what was the matter. I found out, and everything was cool. This guy with the hot dog was a real hot dog vendor. They're going to kick somebody's ass. That's the way he really talked. That's why he was cast. He was a local that everybody loved. And so he's an actual person. OK, all these four tawarsas, this is a Budweiser plant. This is a beer plant outside of Houston.
  
  1:00:38 · jump to transcript →
2. Paul M. Sammon
  
  where you would walk in and you'd meet one of the guys from The Beards. I've forgotten the name of the band now, but a very famous Texas blues band. And you would also have southern barbecue in places that were just like holes in the wall, and just incredible food, incredible culture, incredible music, and a great feeling of camaraderie among the cast and crew.
  
  1:49:41 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 48m 2 mentions

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

Michael Mann
1. Michael Mann
  
  And if you look at the braid on General Montcalm's coat, they have woven in shadow as if the braid, in fact, three-dimensional and cast a shadow on it. This is also highly accurate and elaborate, but it's not the kind of thing you could just rent from a costume house. You have to do it yourself, which we did. And it was, again, one of those fortuitous circumstances, such as the fort, where either the real uniforms didn't exist
  
  1:04:41 · jump to transcript →
2. Michael Mann
  
  Running in is Shingachgook. Shingachgook, played by Russell Maines. It was an idea early on in the casting. I never forgot an image I'd seen in the early 70s of the two leaders of the American Indian movement in a standoff against the FBI at the Wounded Knee Reservation. Two leaders were Russell Maines and Dennis Banks. I thought it would be...
  
  1:42:04 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 54m 2 mentions

Alien 4 (1997)
1. Pitof, was that making fun of Americans, the way those soldiers are chewing gum? Yes, sort of. It's very Jeunet. And they're chewing in sync. And it's... Yes, it's... - Making fun of Americans. Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis made this fake Sigourney. It was a real pleasure to work with this guy. Here's our first shot. The body of this little girl was based on photographs of Sigourney as a child. Then we worked them into a sculpture based on a life cast of an actress that the casting agent got for us. Look at this beautiful morph. Oh, yes, indeed. We morphed to Sigourney as an adult. That face looks an awful lot like the way she looked in Alien 3, when we took a life cast of her. That's right. And we used a body double to cast the body, didn't we? That's right. And we used a body double to cast the body, didn't we? This is the surgery scene. That was a nice little mechanical chest I made with some digital help there. The laser beam is digital. So it's part of my stuff as a second unit director. That's right. This was a fun little surgery scene, with some of the interactive tissue. Silicone chest that was laid on top of Sigourney. I love the look of this. Darius Khondji did a great job. The way the slime looks is almost metallic-looking. It's got such a beautiful reflectivity. Isn't that great? I love this. It's really disgusting. How it's... Then pop! The head pops.
  
  3:31 · jump to transcript →
2. I remember these signs - this is the psychological tests - and Jean-Pierre had something specific in mind, in terms of the primitive drawings of apples and pears and cows and cherries and things. He went through an amazing amount of artists trying to get primitive-looking drawings of fruits and little tidbits. It turned into such an assignment. He couldn't find anybody who could nail that style. Which had something to do with what he had seen as a Child - basic, primitive illustrations, which actually come back in his film Amélie. We get a sense of that naive, childlike graphic thing, which comes from a children's book, which, I think, is a really big deal in Jean-Pierre's imagery. I love Dan Hedaya. I love the Coen brothers' movies. You remember, he played in Blood Simple, the first movie of the Coen brothers. Interesting casting. I wondered if Jean-Pierre would have picked Dan Hedaya had Jean-Pierre grown up in America and seen Cheers. I love the lighting. You had a lot of lights coming up from the floor. Exactly. We used an optical process, and the folks were very nice with me because they made all the prints in the world with the process. And it was very expensive. And they made maybe 3000 prints with the process. The name of the process is ENR. It was invented by Storaro, the Italian DP.
  
  8:49 · jump to transcript →
scholar · 1h 14m 2 mentions

Baise-moi (2000)

Kat Ellinger
1. Kat Ellinger
  
  They're both lost souls. They're both at breaking point. And so they team up and this wonderful friendship arises through that. And one thing that always interests me is when you look at older interviews with the directors and, say, the cast, a lot of the comparisons are made to Thelma and Louise. Now, obviously...
  
  30:04 · jump to transcript →
2. Kat Ellinger
  
  especially with Karen Back and started to discuss them. She was looking to cast people in the film for the parts of Manu and Nadine who would be comfortable with doing hardcore. But even Karen Back's story seems like this tragic, oh, well, if you're going to involve yourself in that, then, you know, it has this ring.
  
  1:11:18 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 36m 2 mentions

The Whole Nine Yards (2000)

Jonathan Lynn
1. Jonathan Lynn
  
  Michael Clarke Duncan, who plays Frankie Figgs, is an old friend of Bruce's. They worked together on Armageddon. And when we cast him, he'd just finished shooting The Green Mile. You're in the right place. In which he plays a very different kind of role. Extraordinarily gifted actor with a presence
  
  20:21 · jump to transcript →
2. Jonathan Lynn
  
  we were able to shoot the film fast is because we rehearsed for a couple of weeks with all the cast. And because as a result, I was able to have a complete shot list in my head before we started the movie. We didn't storyboard anything. It wasn't all drawn out. But I think we began the movie on day one with my knowing effectively every shot in the film. And that saves an awful lot of time.
  
  1:31:25 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 34m 2 mentions

Heaven (2002)

Tom Tykwer
1. Tom Tykwer
  
  favorite scenes in terms of what how strange can directing be sometimes you meet you have to cast two actors the milk van driver and this woman who enters the car now and when you do the casting you tell them what the scene will be they're going to do and the only thing they do is they meet and they have sex and then they split up again that's all they have to do and still you know they're very ambitious interesting and
  
  1:03:12 · jump to transcript →
2. Tom Tykwer
  
  And casting those actors, you can imagine, is very strange. You tell them, this is what you have to do, and then you ask them, how would you do it? And then you make a little rehearsal of that scene. But nobody has met each other before at all. So it's a very, very strange and confusing situation where I always wonder, what kind of a job have I got myself into that I have to put people into this weird situation?
  
  1:05:09 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 45m 2 mentions

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
1. What's your fucking suggestion, Carrie? What's your brilliant reason solution? Oh, you're going to make this about our shit now? This isn't about us. I agree. It's not about us. It's about Joel, who's an adult, okay? Not Mama Carrie's kid. People get confused here because her name is Carrie, and then Jim Carrey was cast, and so they're wondering why he's talking about Jim Carrey there. We've had that problem more than once in focus groups. There is some, like...
  
  24:24 · jump to transcript →
2. But I remember watching Jim in Living Color. At the end of the show, they all gather together and dance. And Jim was like this big guy. He was one of the only two white actors in the cast. And he didn't know how to interact because everybody was dancing hip-hop. And he didn't know the move. And he feels so lonely. And I think that's one of the reasons I thought he would be great for Joel.
  
  1:18:06 · jump to transcript →
multi · 2h 6m 2 mentions

V for Vendetta (2005)

James McTeigue, Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving
1. James McTeigue
  
  Hi, I'm James McTeigue. I'm the director for V for Vendetta. Welcome to the In-Movie Experience. Something I thought I'd put together to guide you through the film. V is a very complex film politically, thematically. And I thought it might be nice if we could get the cast and the crew and myself... ...to talk about things that, otherwise, you wouldn't get to know about. SO, enjoy.
  
  0:02 · jump to transcript →
2. For three nights we closed down Trafalgar Square... ...1N Whitehall and outside the Houses of Parliament. And logistically it was really tough. We could only shoot from 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. We had, probably, between the cast and the crew members, 1000 people... ...every night to move around in a very concise and succinct manner... ...and Terry Needham, who was the first A.D... ...I think he did an incredible job on that. When you do crowd replications... ... you know, the traditional way, and people will have seen... ... you shoot various passes and versions with the crowd standing in different places... ...and then you can add all those layers together to create your final shot. The shooting restrictions we had when we were on location... ...at Trafalgar Square and down at Parliament... ...Was SO, SO tight, that the amount of time we had... ...there was no opportunity to do anything special for visual effects. It was literally, try to get what they could for the main photography. What it does is you also have to be very concise... ...about your storytelling. We were able to use a lot of alternate takes, different angles... ...to build up the crowds. And the digital V figures were mainly used for the overheads. Obviously, a normal film day is 12 hours. And when you're condensed down into a 4-hour period... ... your appetite is always bigger than what you can ever achieve. That was a microcosm of that kind of, you know, filmmaking.
  
  1:59:35 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 42m 2 mentions

Underworld Evolution (2006)

Len Wiseman, Brad Tatapolous, Brad Martin, Nicolas De Toth
1. Hats off to them. You got to do it upside down. It's very tricky. Don't leave him here. I could have a big trench where the guy tried to do it in my yard and it just does not work. I have a comment also on his performance. John, I thought he was a good casting choice for
  
  1:11:28 · jump to transcript →
2. Patrick, I don't know if you had a falling out with Guy, but Guy deserves a lot of props on this, too. Well, you haven't mentioned his name the whole movie. Guy, Guy. That's right. Guy. I'm sorry, Mini. You got so caught up. And all the cast. I've got to say, I was very fortunate to get such a great group of people together, and I was very happy with the performances, and it was great to have that.
  
  1:39:30 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 35m 2 mentions

28 Weeks Later (2007)
1. 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 →
2. Catherine was the first person that Juan Carlos chose in the casting of the film. I think I felt a connection immediately with her because she... You know, this character needs to show two things, which is she is a mother and she is a survivor, as well. So this strength, it's noticeable with her, but at the same time she's so tender and you understand why she's asking for the kids.
  
  38:50 · jump to transcript →
director · 1h 0m 1 mention

Mark of the Vampire (1935)

Kim Newman, Stephen Jones
1. Yeah. Another thing that strikes me on the casting is it's entirely possible that when they first thought of doing this, they intended to go with a London setting because it's full of British actors doing British voices. Now, this scene here, which is the first time we see, you know, Bela Lugosi and his possible daughter.
  
  14:19 · jump to transcript →
cast · 2h 17m 1 mention

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

Nicolas Roeg, David Bowie, Buck Henry
1. and he named one or two others, and this person said, well, that's not a cast, that's a dinner party. A point well taken, and why wouldn't somebody want to be with the dinner party rather than just a cast? They were all either friends of mine or people I had admired. The location was interesting, which is always of some importance to me. It's nice to work outside of Los Angeles and in a place as...
  
  11:46 · jump to transcript →
director · 2h 3m 1 mention

Moonraker (1979)

Roger Moore
1. 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."
  
  1:21:17 · jump to transcript →

Related topics

Other topics that frequently come up in the same commentaries.