Photo Source: Fox Searchlight
One of his most recent trips was to Hawaii to work on Alexander Payne's "The Descendants," headlined by George Clooney as Matt King, a landowner who awkwardly attempts to reconnect with his two young daughters after his wife is seriously injured in a boating accident. The idyllic setting contrasts with Matt's inner turmoil as he discovers that his wife was having an affair at the time of the accident; he later takes one daughter on a search to find his spouse's lover.
Jackson has worked with Payne on all of the writer-director's features, stretching back to 1996's "Citizen Ruth." Says Jackson, "The way our relationship started is he's from Omaha, Neb., which is very near where I live in Iowa. He came back here to do 'Citizen Ruth,' and I did all of the atmosphere and location casting. I cast 37 speaking roles in that film, and the same with 'Election' and 'About Schmidt.' The relationship just sort of evolved. Suddenly, tapes that were coming in from the casting people in New York and casting people from L.A. were being filtered through us. We'd sit in Omaha and say, 'Who fits this and who doesn't?' Because let's be blunt, when you're making a film that takes place in an area like Omaha, certain people are going to fit and others aren't. They're too urban, too refined, too sophisticated. It just doesn't ring true, and if it doesn't ring true, I don't want it. If I can't sit back and say, 'I believe that this person,' meaning an actor, 'works at a Dairy Queen in Omaha, Neb.,' I don't want this person on the screen, and I'll lobby heavily to not include them."
Not only will Jackson cast the leads, but he'll also coordinate the day players hired for location and atmosphere. "We just have this thing about anybody that's going to get in front of that lens; they need to be sort of filtered through me," he says. "My philosophy has always been that casting a film is like painting a picture. Although Alexander is the artist, I'm that little guy who worked with Michelangelo and mixed up colors. He would bring the colors to him and say, 'Hey, look at this blue I just came up with. Can you use it?' and he either uses it or he doesn't. You're creating a landscape, a giant moving portrait that changes constantly. But there's always a single tone, a single idea, an overriding theme to it." The CD suddenly stops, laughs, and says, "Wow, that sounds so pretentious."
Once Clooney was cast, one of the biggest challenges was finding the right young actors to play Matt's daughters, rebellious 17-year-old Alexandra and precocious 10-year-old Scottie. It was essential to find girls who were believable as kids going through a difficult time and who were also professional enough to hold their own with an A-list star. Another key role was Sid, Alexandra's goofy boyfriend. "The two daughters were a challenge and the boyfriend was a challenge," Jackson says. "Once we knew we had George Clooney, once that was in the bag, then it became 'Who do I believe is his kid?' "
For Alexandra, the final choice was Shailene Woodley ("The Secret Life of the American Teenager"). But she almost didn't make the cut. Payne had seen her audition twice and rejected her, but her agent, Ryan Bartlett at Paradigm, persuaded Jackson to take another look. The CD insisted that Woodley take on the character of the defiant teenager for the reading: "I said to her agent, 'Tell her no makeup, crappy jeans. I want an attitude and the vibe that this chick does not want to be in this room and she doesn't give a s--t who Alexander Payne is. She'll come in and do it and then leave.' She did and she was great. She left the room, and Alexander looked at me and said, 'That's it.' "
The role of Scottie was equally difficult to cast. "We looked for Scottie for the entire time," Jackson recalls. "She was cast just days before she had to leave for Hawaii." They found the then 9-year-old Amara Miller, from Pacific Grove, Calif., through an emailed video audition. Apart from an elementary school play, she had no previous acting experience. "Sid, on the other hand, was cast from a self-made tape that randomly came in to me over the Internet," says Jackson of Nick Krause's submission. "It was really, really poor quality, but I loved the guy. I just thought he was hilarious. But the quality was so poor, I had to write them back and say, 'Do it again and this time get closer, get better lighting.' And they did. I showed both of the tapes to Alexander, and I could tell he was really curious. Then when we were in casting in New York, it turned out [Krause] was on the East Coast with his mom, and he flew up to meet Alexander. This was it. He was cast."
For many of the supporting roles, Jackson and Payne made similarly unusual choices. For the wife's lover, they cast Matthew Lillard—perhaps best known as Shaggy in the "Scooby-Doo" movies. That seems like a bizarre pick for the guy who takes a woman away from George Clooney, but Jackson loved Lillard's warm, funny quality—elements that would have been attractive to Elizabeth, Matt's neglected wife. Elizabeth is played by Judy Greer, known mostly for her comedic work ("27 Dresses," "13 Going on 30") but who has a powerful dramatic scene in the film. "I have such tremendous respect for improv artists and comedians," says Jackson. "I firmly believe if you can do comedy, you can do drama, because all of comedy is born out of pain. If you can do that, it is worth my while to look at you as a dramatic actor."
Other interesting casting decisions included TV and film action star Robert Forster as Matt's tough-as-nails father-in-law, Beau Bridges as Matt's laid-back cousin Hugh, and Mary Birdsong and Rob Huebel, two actors best known for their comic roles, as Mark's longtime friends.
"We always start with asking questions based on character, based on tone, based on known entities, which is usually the text," Jackson says. "It's a very theater-oriented approach when you think about it. 'Who do I believe in this?' Those are the questions we ask ourselves, and then we try to find the people who best embody that. That's the way we work. We never have conversations about 'Oh, this person's really big in Indochina; there will be a lot of DVD sales.' It's all about the text, the believability, and the reality of it. 'Who's going to break my heart more when they say this?' 'Who's going to make me laugh more when they do that?' That's how we whittle it down. Then obviously there's all this external stuff, like Actor X simply isn't available during this time, so forget it. Or Actor Z won't work for the kind of money we can afford to pay. There's some of that, but not much. So the challenges were just finding those people that we believe."
Casting Director: John Jackson
Director: Alexander Payne
Writers: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash, based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Starring: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Nick Krause, Amara Miller, Mary Birdsong, Rob Huebel, Patricia Hastie
The Pitch: A Hawaiian landowner (Clooney) tries to repair his strained relationship with his two daughters (Woodley and Miller) after his wife is injured in a boating accident.
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