8/1/23
Newsletter #414
The Crack of Dawn
During the runs of Hercules and Xena we worked with an absolutely wonderful casting director named Diana Rowen. The way a casting director works is that they bring in a lot of actors to read for a part – maybe 50 to 100 – then they winnow it down to who they feel are the ten best. That process is extremely important, and puts the casting director in a powerful and responsible position. If indeed about nine out of ten actors are eliminated by the casting director – it could easily be more; it’s rarely less – before the producers or director see anyone, they have a huge impact on the show. When you hire a casting director, aside from their ability to run the casting department, you’re hiring their sense of taste. Your show will represent their taste in actors. If they don’t like hams or scene-stealers, or even method actors, the producers and director will never get to see them. Therefore, to some large extent, you are staking your movie or TV show on them.
Of course, the producers and the director have the final say. On TV shows – not movies – the director and the casting director choose who gets the part, although the director gets to make the (sort of) final decision. The producers review those decisions and accept or reject them, except on TV where you’re moving very fast from one episode to another and, from my experience, the producers rarely intrude. Producers do make the biggest casting decisions, like who are the leads, and who are the guest stars. These actors don’t audition. The producer makes a deal with their agent, then they show up to shoot their scenes. I really liked all of the guest stars, none of whom I chose.
Many directors don’t like casting, and, as I’ve seen, will talk on their phones throughout the entire casting session. Those producers are known as “assholes.” Not only are they not helping, they’re an annoyance.
For the most part, Di Rowen and I cast all the parts in my episodes. I instituted a game that Di was happy to play. She would give me a piece of paper with the names of the ten actors that she chose from 100, that I would now watch on video with her. The game was that we both chose the actor that we liked the best, and marked their name, but kept it secret. At the end we would show each other our choices, and nine times out of ten they were the same. This wasn’t necessarily because we had such similar taste; it was because frequently one actor was clearly and obviously better than everyone else. No question, they got the part. It’s certainly not always that clear, but it often is. And this is where an intangible element comes into play. At it’s very best it’s called “Star Quality,” but on a more routine level it’s simply that the camera likes them. The camera doesn’t like everybody, and beauty and attractiveness are not necessarily the criteria. Here's a perfect example – Danny Trejo. The camera loves him, and I suspect he’s never made even one Most Attractive list. And with an enormous amount of respect for Danny, acting-wise, he's not Daniel Day Lewis. Nevertheless, the camera loves him. If there are ten people in the shot, you look at him.
Bette Davis was not beautiful. However, she was so fucking great that if the script called for her to be beautiful, she could play it and convince you. One of my favorite movies is Jezebel (1938), directed by William Wyler, that got Bette Davis her second Oscar, and it called for her to play beautiful, and you never doubt it for a second. When Bette Davis is in the shot; the shot is about Bette Davis, whether she’s got the dialogue or not. Whatever “it” is, she’s got it.
As I say, it’s an intangible. And just being attractive hasn’t got a thing to do with it.
OK, “Inclusive Standards.” As I look at that issue from 2,500 miles away, I cannot help but think, “That’s the powerful, non-creative faction of Hollywood, attempting yet again to quantify, qualify, mechanize, and democratize art.
I like this example. On Sandford & Son, which had a predominately black cast, if Redd Foxx got a script he didn’t think was funny enough, he’d holler in his gritty voice, “Get me my Jews!” One of whom was the producer, Norman Lear, who turned 101 last week. Happy birthday, Norman. The wacky title music was by Quincy Jones. What am I saying?
Inclusion and exclusion are a big part of movies and TV, and always have been. We were the ones thinking about and dealing with this issue long before “woke” or “Inclusion Standards.” This is the non-creative faction sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong. We’re the guys who came up with “color-blind casting” a long time ago. A brilliant example of that is Unforgiven. Since the script did not specify the ethnicity of Ned (Morgan Freeman), the co-star of the movie, Clint Eastwood used color-blind casting by asking, “Who would be the best actor for the part?”
But as far back as 1989 when I made Lunatics: A Love Story, and a major part of the story involves a street gang in L.A. Well, the L.A. gangs are black or Latino. But I wasn’t taking sides. The gang represented the city, so I put everyone in: Latino, black, white, and this being Detroit, an Arab. My lead gang member, George Aguilar, was Native American (he’s passed on now to the happy hunting grounds).
Here's another perfect example. The ranking astronaut in my film, Alien Apocalypse, is named Chuck in the script. I was thinking of Chuck Heston when I wrote it, but I didn’t specify in the script what he looked like or his ethnicity. I shot the film in Bulgaria. The best actor I met there was Michael Cory Davis, a black American with long dreads. The second that I met him I cast him in the part, then asked, “Will you cut your dreads?” He said flatly, “No.” I said, “In the future astronaut captains have dreads.”
I’m rambling. But don’t tell me who to cast. Fuck you. You can take Inclusion Standards and shove them up your fucking ass. It’s a monumentally stupid idea.
I pulled up the shade at 5:48 and it’s still black out.
Here’s a picture of me in front of a giant lightbulb I just found on the internet.
Dawn will crack momentarily, I’m reasonably sure of it.