As we celebrate our third year of honoring the best achievements in feature casting, it should be noted that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences recently turned down the Casting Society of America's appeal to have an Oscar category recognizing the area of casting‹again.
There is a dominant opinion in this industry that casting is a collaborative effort in which the casting director is not the sole person responsible for finding the talent to fill a project. Truth be told, sometimes the director or producer does have more of a hand in casting. Yet, isn't that the nature of film? Every great film is the product of collaboration, and whether or not a casting director can take full credit for finding each and every actor, isn't it time that CDs be recognized for their vital contributions?
The editorial staff at Back Stage West has chosen six distinct films that exemplify great casting choices worthy indeed of an Oscar nomination for Casting, if there were such an award. Before we get to our nominees, however, we'd also like to mention some of the runners-up in this year's consideration: among them, Ros and John Hubbard for Waking Ned Devine, Rick Montgomery for There's Something About Mary, Mali Finn for Your Friends & Neighbors, Sheila Jaffe and Georgianne Walken for Slums of Beverly Hills, and Ellen Lewis and Debra Zane for Pleasantville.
Henry Fool, written, directed, and produced by Hal Hartley, is one of those rare exceptions that is also worth mentioning. While Adrienne Tien was listed on the film's credits as the "casting coordinator," no casting director is credited, which leads us to believe that Hartley is primarily to thank for the discovery of Thomas Jay Ryan, a New York stage actor making his screen debut in the demanding title role, and the hiring of co-lead actors James Urbaniak and Parker Posey.
One Bad Apple
Looking at some of the other runner-ups, the phrase "One bad apple spoils the bushel" comes to mind. When you think about it, this homespun bit of wisdom really doesn't make much sense in terms of fruit picking‹but when applied to the fragile science of casting, it's true. A number of films this year almost earned our imaginary statuette, but were eliminated because of one poor casting choice or another.
A performer who doesn't appear to be part of the world created by the casting director instantly pulls you out of the reality of a film. There are degrees to bad choices, of course. Melanie Griffith in A Stranger Among Us or Sharon Stone as Gloria are jaw-dropping, universally acknowledged bad choices. But, more often, an actor is just a little off‹a bit too contemporary in a period piece, say, or slightly too glamourous among regular joes. These "bad apples" may not spoil the film, but they prevent it from reaching a higher level, simply by distracting the audience‹taking them, if only briefly, out of the moment.
For example, Gods and Monsters was a film greatly appreciated by the Back Stage West staff. Ian McKellen as the wonderful, waning James Whale and Lynn Redgrave as his holier-than-thou hausfrau Hanna were two of the finest casting decisions of the year. In fact, all the way down to a very authentic Rosalind Ayres as Elsa Lanchester and Jack Betts as the aging Karloff in little-more-than-cameo roles, casting director Valorie Massalas stayed true to a world of fading Hollywood glories contrasted by Southland suburban savorlessness. How disappointing then that Brendan Fraser, despite good intentions and his (visible) hard work in the role, couldn't quite rise to the emotional material, particularly in later scenes. He wasn't George of the Jungle campy, by any means, but he also wasn't a weighty enough match for McKellen or Redgrave.
Similarly, in The Spanish Prisoner, casting directors Kerry Barden, Billy Hopkins, and Suzanne Smith should be applauded for trusting that Steve Martin could handle serious Mamet, for remembering that Ed O'Neill had some chops before Married With Children, and acknowledging that Campbell Scott, when given the chance, can be the quintessential everyman, reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock. However, Rebecca Pidgeon's wiseacre secretary brought to mind Jennifer Jason Leigh's painfully mannered performance in The Hudsucker Proxy. Sure, she's the writer's wife‹and the director's, for that matter‹but the casters have a responsibility to the material as well as to the creative team. Pidgeon by no means ruined the excellent thriller, but she was enough of an annoyance to water down some otherwise sparkling scenes.
CDs Barden, Hopkins, and Smith‹who incidentally won our accolade for their work on The Last Days of Disco‹are also responsible for perhaps the smartest casting choice of the year: former brat-packer Ally Sheedy, as the reclusive, once-famous photographer Lucy Berliner in the dark urban love story High Art. Rarely does a performer's persona meld so seamlessly with a character. Who Sheedy once was added a layer to the text, but more importantly, what she could do as an actress today made an otherwise flatly morose meditation rich and colorful and gave us new appreciation for the performer. Beyond Sheedy, however, the ensemble offered less interesting turns. None was awful, but none was able to reach Ally Sheedy's admittedly raised bar of high art.
Enough about the also-rans, on to the nominees!
Mary Gail Artz and
Barbara Cohen
Rushmore
While most films about high schoolers offer either a sanitized fantasy world of mini-adults or the distorted-hindsight view of vengeful former nerds, Rushmore is among the few films about the pre-legal-age set that gets it right. Among the most strikingly successful elements of this peculiarly earnest comedy about an obsessive 15-year-old know-it-all named Max is its clear-eyed casting by Mary Gail Artz and Barbara Cohen.
Of course, Artz and Cohen can't claim credit for finding two of the leads. For the role of Max, director/co-writer Wes Anderson had seen and rejected 1,800 young actors nationwide when Bay Area casting director Davia Nelson, attending a party at Francis Ford Coppola's Napa winery, met Coppola's 17-year-old nephew, Jason Schwartzman, who was cast soon after. And the sneakily brilliant Bill Murray was courted directly by Anderson for the part of the dissipated tycoon Blume.
But the rest of Rushmore's unique world was peopled by Artz and Cohen, whose intelligent youth casting (from 1983's Bad Boys to last year's Simon Birch), as well as their work for demanding auteurs (John Boorman on Beyond Rangoon, Desmond Nakano on White Man's Burden), made them a good choice for Rushmore. So though we've seen Mason Gamble as a precocious, freckle-faced tyke before‹i.e., as Dennis the Menace‹he's something of a revelation as Max's quietly loyal, refreshingly average sidekick, Dirk.
Ditto Olivia Williams, whom few saw or remembered as Kevin Costner's squeeze in The Postman, as the pale, pretty, tentative English schoolteacher for whom Max falls; Seymour Cassel, a fine actor too often relegated to the direct-to-video bin, as Max's stalwart father; Brian Cox, as the permanently grimacing school dean; Sara Tanaka, as a tenacious young match for Max; Stephen McCole, putting a wistful Scottish twist on the school bully, and the rest of the Blume clan‹tight-lipped Kim Terry as the cuckolded wife, redheaded Ronnie and Keith McCawley as the twin sons (whom Artz reportedly discovered roughhousing in a Blockbuster video store).
This is not the generically "universal" dramatis personae of most high school flicks. Indeed, like The Last Days of Disco, it doesn't seem to have been cast at all. This sort of intuitive, inevitable sense for the human dimensions of a filmmaker's vision is what the best casting directors have. Artz and Cohen are clearly among the best.
‹Rob Kendt
Barden, Hopkins, and Smith
The Last Days of Disco
Whit Stillman can't seem to live down the rumor that with each new project he simply casts his friends. His uptight urban professional "dialogue" films are so well cast that they typically seem to be a real group of buddies the director just happened to catch on film.
The rumor must be a frustrating one to dispel for casters Kerry Barden, Billy Hopkins, and Suzanne Smith, who populated the filmmaker's latest talky, angst-ridden comedy The Last Days of Disco, for Stillman spends much more time on casting than the vast majority of directors. In fact, Stillman still holds open calls for his films.
Despite these cattle calls, of course, the ensemble members for Disco were hardly unknowns. However, no film this year has employed more legitimately talented up-and-comers with such varied backgrounds and without a single "A-list" star.
According to Stillman, Mackenzie Astin, who plays the sensitive and oppressed ad man, was the first cast. The director noticed him as Hemingway's best friend in the otherwise mediocre In Love and War. It's telling that the first person cast was not one of the two lead women. Obviously, this was not a project in which the stars who carry the film were first sought out and then the minor characters filled in.
The casters for Disco were never afraid to explore any available avenues‹or any good tip, for that matter. Chris Tellefsen, editor of Metropolitan and Barcelona, as well as Kids and Gummo, suggested Chlo" Sevigny for the lead role of repressed publishing trainee Alice Kinnon. Sevigny was not the obvious choice for the Hampshire grad, with her past roles as club girl and rural waif. However, Sevigny was so right in the part, it transformed her persona in a single project. She seemed to be that over-educated, sincere young woman and her earlier roles now seem like stretches.
Casting Brit Kate Beckinsale as the acid-tongued self-obsessed Charlotte Pingree was also not the obvious way to go. But Stillman and his casters must have recognized that no one delivers insincere compliments and cutting barbs like Beckinsale. And there is a certain natural progression from the affectation of the London posh to that of the cool Manhattan urbanite.
Interestingly, Chris Eigeman and Whit Stillman both felt that another project together might reveal a certain unhealthy stasis in their work. Therefore, the casting directors searched high and low for an actor‹not Eigeman‹to capture the ridiculous, hypersensitive nightclub manager Des McGrath. However, as Stillman put it, "After extensive looking, we found that by far the best "new Chris Eigeman' was, in fact, the current Chris Eigeman."
Like Sevigny, Matthew Keesler, as the enthusiastic disco defender and assistant district attorney, turned out to be perfectly suited for a role that no one would have expected him to play. After seeing his performance, it's hard to even recall the actor as the dull auto mechanic/ Corky St. Claire love interest in the hysterical Waiting for Guffman.
Also excellent in smaller roles are Juilliard- and New York theatre-trained Matthew Ross as the women's socialist office co-worker, and newcomer Tara Subikoff as their insecure roommate. (Subikoff was previously seen as Helen Hunt's fellow waitress in As Good as It Gets.)
Beyond the ensemble, the casting directors deserve additional credit for the club patrons, an outrageous batch of dancers, performers, and semi-celebrities, who gave the movie the fast-moving atmosphere of a real New York club in the '70s, where everyone might be famous if you could only get a better look at them.
Let's hope casting directors encourage Stillman to continue to use his "friends" in all future projects.
‹Scott Proudfit
Denise Chamian
Saving Private Ryan
Steven Spielberg's World War II epic Saving Private Ryan captivated audiences and critics alike with its devastatingly real account of the horrors of war‹from a human perspective, as opposed to a tactical one. Casting director Denise Chamian brought together a talented ensemble of lesser-known actors to flank the film's star, Tom Hanks.
Chamian told Back Stage West in an interview last year, "We wanted to find new faces because we didn't want audiences coming with any preconceived notions about who these actors were." With Hanks the only actor attached at the outset, Chamian set out to recruit a group of men who make up this company of tired soldiers with one final mission to complete before they could go home.
Though the ensemble completed 10 days of boot camp to further add to the realism of the film, it is the casting choices that make the military unit such a believable battalion. "All of those guys have a heart and soul about them. We did a really careful job of picking those people," Chamian said.
Seasoned actor Tom Sizemore delivers a stoic performance as veteran soldier Sergeant Horvath, while Edward Burns plays devil's advocate as wisecracking New Yorker Private Reiben. Matt Damon offers a subtle performance as the loyal yet bereaved Private Ryan, the object of the mission. And Jeremy Davies acts as an unflattering mirror for the audience as a corporal who has never seen battle suddenly thrust into the rain of showering warfare.
Chamian also enlisted the talents of new faces, including Vin Diesel as the tough yet gentle Private Caparzo, Giovanni Ribisi as the squad's dedicated medic, Barry Pepper as the Southern Bible-quoting sniper, and Adam Goldberg as a Jewish private with a point to prove. "In the case of Adam Goldberg and Vin Diesel, there were no parts for these guys, but we saw them and fell in love with them, and [Spielberg] had the writers write parts for them," Chamian said.
As deserving as this film may be for Best Picture, it is just as worthy of praise for casting a group of relatively unknown actors who delivered performances that made viewers forget they were actors and remember the brutality of the last "good" war.
‹Behnoosh Khalili
Ellen Chenoweth and
Kathleen Chopin
Affliction
Word has it that the role of Nick Nolte's brutal, alcoholic father in Affliction was passed on by a number of top actors over 60. Thank goodness they did, because the legendary James Coburn resurrects his career with full bravado in this gritty story about a grown man (Nolte) who succumbs to the violence and despair in his genes.
Nolte, who executive-produced Affliction, is surrounded by an insurmountable team of actors, in addition to Coburn, who lend a refreshing air to the project. Besides Coburn, Sissy Spacek is also a great choice for the film, proving again that she is an actress who deserves to be seen much more on the big screen. As Margie Fogg, Nolte's love interest, she paints an innocent, wholesome, and ultimately pained character. Willem Dafoe, whose talents are likewise under-used of late, is also appropriately cast as Nolte's brother Rolfe.
Affliction also boasts some very fine performances by a number of well-known stage actors in supporting roles. They include Tony award-winner Mary Beth Hurt, Steppenwolf member Jim True, and veteran actress Marian Seldes, seen recently in the Mark Taper Forum's production of Tongue of a Bird.
What stands out most is that all of the actors in the film serve the material, rather than the other way around. While some actors have more screen time, and Nolte's character is clearly the focus of the story, a true ensemble cast was collected.
‹Jamie Painter
Ann Goulder
Happiness
Todd Solondz told me in an interview last year that he was not familiar with Philip Seymour Hoffman before casting the actor in Happiness. That's where a good casting director can truly uplift a project, as Ann Goulder did. While Solondz was ultimately the one who decided on his cast, it was Goulder who brought the actors in Happiness to the filmmaker's attention. There are so many great casting choices in this film; and while audiences were divided about Solondz's disturbingly comic film about sexual depravity, mutilation, and other dark topics, it's hard to argue with the cast assembled.
There are some amazing revelations among the actors, particularly Dylan Baker, a New York-based stage actor who took the biggest risk of his career playing the controversial role of Bill, a loving father and husband who tragically succumbs to his pedophiliac impulses. Stage actress Jane Adams is also superb as Joy, a na™ve, pathetic soul in search of meaning in her life. Also outstanding is Rufus Read, who was only 10 years old and had never acted before shooting Happiness. Read is perfectly fit for Bill's awkward, quizzical son on the verge of discovering his sexuality.
Better-known actors, such as Camryn Manheim, Jon Lovitz, Cynthia Stevenson, and especially Hoffman also take rewarding risks in the film. The scenes in which Manheim and Hoffman pair off are by far the best moments in Happiness, and Goulder deserves her share of the credit for knowing these two thesps would work well off one another.
‹Jamie Painter
Francine Maisler
Out of Sight
You know the great thing about novels and prisons? They bring different kinds of people together. As Charles Dickens knew, stories about people from wildly different social backgrounds can be instantly compelling.
Elmore Leonard knows it, too. His novel Out of Sight focused on the meeting of white-collar criminals and wasted hoodlums, the witless, the penniless, and the shameless in a Florida state penitentiary‹and the explosive results these chance cohabitations can produce. Francine Maisler, who cast the darkly funny film based on Leonard's book, and her associate of seven years Kathleen Driscoll Mohler, stayed true to the excitement of this divergent mix while populating the project for director Steven Soderbergh.
Before Out of Sight, who would have imagined George Clooney, Catherine Keener, Don Cheadle, Steve Zahn, Jennifer Lopez, and Albert Brooks in the same film? But as Maisler explained in a recent interview, "When I'm casting a film, especially a comedy, I just think about who I would enjoy watching. And more than anything, I want to show people something they haven't seen before."
Great casting means matching up actors with roles they seem born to play (Luis Guzmán as the comically sadistic Chino, say, or Ving Rhames as the good-hearted bonecrusher sidekick Buddy Bragg), but also throwing in some talented actors you never expected to see when you walked in the theatre (Albert Brooks as the cowardly, hypocritical billionaire Richard Ripley, or Nancy Allen as his no-nonsense mistress). The creativity behind these little surprises make the believable world of a well-cast film exciting, too.
Said Maisler, "Steven [Soderbergh] was open to creative ideas. When I came to him with the idea of Nancy Allen, he knew what to do with it. Other directors might have seen that as stale, without the right angle."
Filling a world as diverse as Out of Sight means being open to non-traditional casting‹not only in the sense of putting Latina actress Jennifer Lopez in the lead, but looking for the right person for the role even outside of the acting trade. For the hulking simpleton White Boy Bob, Maisler followed up a tip from her friend, producer Stacey Sher, about an ex-football player she knew. Keith Loneker as Bob was ideal, and much more believable than a hundred other trained actors might have been.
Of course, the cherry on top of Out of Sight's cast was Michael Keaton, reprising his role as the dull, gung-ho FBI agent Ray Nicolet‹a part he created in Jackie Brown. What better way to instantly legitimize the world of the film? But more importantly, like Leonard's novel and Soderbergh's film, it was just cool.
‹Scott Proudfit