The Casting Director

The casting director; well what can I say? If I say the wrong things and slag the casting directors off one of them may read this one day and take offence. Then what would they do? Stop giving me work? Who knows?

A lot of people who are not in the business, don't know anything about it or just don't care, think the the casting director is the person that casts films and TV – stage and the rest of it – but they don't; or do they?

They should really be called a casting producer just like you have celebrity producers of talent, associate producers, line producers and the like.

Some castings directors are good and some leave a lot to be desired and some, just like in all walks of life, relish what bit of power they have.

In Los Angeles casting directors are trying to get on to the awards list so as well as an Oscar for the actors there will also be one for the casting director.

So what do they do?

Well they charge anything from $40,000 - $60,000 to cast your small budget film in Hollywood; for big budget movies it's a lot more.

For this they will provide a full staff and use of their office – if they have one. If it's a studio film they will use the office at, maybe, Warner Brothers or Paramount. If they are in those studios they will be getting a lot more than $60,000. Some casting directors have permanent offices at the big studios and they still work freelance.

Their staff will be made up of assistant casting directors who will be fully fledged casting directors one day so you need to be nice to them when you meet them; this instruction is drilled in to us so when we go into the offices we are even nice to the typist (you never know) and the janitor!!!!

Sometimes they advertise or put a call out for somebody or something special like a Clark Gable look a like. That happened in Hollywood when we lived there and I remember the line of Clark Gables along Melrose Avenue one day. I wish I'd taken a camera as it was a sight.

 Rather like the one above where they put out a call for black cats.

When I first started I got to know two very famous casting directors – Miriam Brickman and Maude Spector. They both gave me work – Miriam died in the seventies but the great thing about her is that when I called her she knew she didn't know me so she called me in for a chat. She had given people like Alan Bates and Susanah York their first breaks, I believe, and she got me a small role in my first film called The Ragman's Daughter, directed by Harold Becker.

I would call Miriam on a regular basis but I would never call her Miriam – always Miss Brickman. Well I was from the sticks, walking around some of the most beautiful streets in Mayfair – she was in Half Moon Street – like some hick in a city for the first time. I was in Half Moon Street on Saturday and it is still as beautiful with wonderfully shaped buildings and chauffeurs standing in the street; it's another world.

I would also call Maude Spector on a regular basis too and she, or her assistant, Anne, would never moan at the regularity of my calls. One day she brought me in to see a film producer about a movie and a few weeks later I was booked. I noticed that when I went in to the office, which was actually her apartment in Park Lane, she was dressed to kill; as was Anne. They looked lovely and made me feel they had gone to a lot of trouble to meet me.

Maude Spector was the first casting director to mention Sean Connery as James Bond, even though she didn't get the credit, and I believe she was one of the first freelancers.

A little story here – in Los Angeles they have a strange way of casting. The casting director calls you in for the audition, then you get another call if you get a callback and then, if they really like you, they put you on avail – this means you have to keep yourself available for the period of the job; but they can drop you and they do.

Last year I was 'on avail' but they wanted to see me again (it was for a commercial) and when I went in, there were two others 'on avail' too. An assistant casting director said to me 'if you are lucky enough to have the privilege to work with this director, he does some really great national commercials.'

One day Maude Spector introduced me to Tobe Hooper who gave me nearly 3 months work in his movie; when I finished the job I called and thanked her and she said 'Don't be so silly, Chris; we were lucky to get you.'

Struck me as a huge difference between that coke sniffing hysteric and Maude Spector.

So what do they do?

They are supposed to go and see as many actors working as they can; this is done by going to the theatre most nights, covering actors performances on TV and movies and meeting as many as possible.

They will have some kind of office, as above, or they may work from home, and actors will send their head shots and resumés for them to file away.

When the casting director is hired on a movie they will show the files they have chosen to the director, or verbally tell them who they like for the role, and then the casting director will arrange a pre-read, and audition with the director or put it straight onto tape for producers and the director to look at later.

When the successful actors are hired, the casting director will do the deal with the agents, try to arrange schedules, if there are slight conflicts, and then look forward to their next job.

Because of the rarity of the casting directors – mainly one per film – and the plethora of available actors, the casting director is sought after by the actors. It is the actors job to get to know the casting director and sometimes the casting directors doesn't like it if an actor is too persistent. Gone are the days of the old school casting directors like Maude Spector and Miriam Brickman.

What most of the casting directors don't realise is that some of us actors are intimately acquainted and related to some very powerful actors and producers and once in a while we might be asked our opinion. I have recommended a casting director 3 times – that's how I know how much they charge. A director has asked me because they don't know any – why would they?

Some casting directors give seminars and charge actors for the privilege of attending them. The actors go because they might get to meet the casting director and be recommended for a job? Or they might learn a few tricks? Or they might not. There are loads of companies who arrange these seminars in Los Angeles and sometimes you get the assistant to the casting director's assistant; and are we nice to them? You betcha!!

I read on the Internet about a certain casting director who does not recommend 'networking.'

Obviously she has never worked in Hollywood where 'network parties' take place. There's a bar on Sunset Blvd where, once a month, actors who subscribe to a particular casting service go, with their head shots under their arm, and meet casting directors. Does it do any good? I don't know. I went to one once, felt a fool, and walked out!!

This same British casting director, by the way, doesn't recommend sending taped auditions along to the casting director or director.

There is one huge movie star from Ireland who got his sister to hold the video camera and sent his audition off to a film director and he hasn't looked back so in the words of that great screenwriter, William Goldman, Nobody Knows Anything.

If you are an aspiring actor or director take no notice of anybody.

But you know what? I don't mind the casting directors even though these days they are more like gatekeepers who keep the actors and directors separate. I can understand that as directors can't go anywhere without actors bothering them – they even get women throwing themselves at them – so I have heard.

In Los Angeles I once heard someone say 'Gone are the days when you could have an extra for lunch!' I wouldn't bank on that statement.

Ireland.

O Ireland my first and only love
Where Christ and Caesar are hand and glove!
O lovely land where the shamrock grows! (Allow me, ladies, to blow my nose).

It certainly is a hell of a place to write beautiful lyrics and poetry about and sure 'tis no wonder as the place is a mythical mixture of fact, fiction and fantasy.

But Ireland is two places; the north and the south, just as I am three men: the dreamer, the fantasizer and the pragmatist.

The dreamer in me would like to see one Ireland with the north and the south joined together as it used to be, like conjoined twins separated not long after their birth; in my fantasies I see that but the pragmatist in me knows this will never be.

It's true that the Republicans will one day out number the Loyalists and why wouldn't they? The Republicans are mainly Roman Catholic who are not supposed to practice birth control - so go figure!
But how many Republicans, living near the border in the 'so called' Northern Ireland, even though they would die for Ireland, would want to live there? That's a question I heard recently.
The Republic of Ireland, the South, have no National Health Service like the north so how would the Northern Republican fancy paying fifty Euros (€50) per visit to go to the doctor? How much is a Euro (€ )? About 80% of a pound (£) which is about 50% more than the dollar ($).
If they take two children to the doctor they will pay €100 whereas in Britain, which currently rules the 'so called' Northern Ireland, no money changes hands. Health care is not dependent on your job and if you have no job, or you are a child or a senior you still don't have to pay. In fact when tourists go to hospitals here in emergencies I have heard that there is no paraphernalia or logistics to even charge the tourists.
You will never know how much a visit to the doctor costs, how much you have to pay for surgery, blood tests or even hospital stays or outpatient visits living in Britain; and the 'so called' Northern Ireland, as I have mentioned, is ruled by Britain.

They know all these things in America but not in any part of Britain. In some parts of Britain like Wales, and I think Scotland, prescriptions are free too, as they are for the over 60s in the rest of the kingdom.

If there ever would be a vote in Ireland for ridding the place of the partition there would also have to be a vote in the South and how many people in the South would welcome a further million people with a certain percentage of them being on welfare. You couldn't just take their welfare away so they would need to be compensated; so would the tax payer in the south welcome this further burden? The Celtic Tiger is resting so who knows?

I have heard people in America say 'Get Britain out of Ireland' without knowing the facts. A lot of people have died for Ireland and all that has been won didn't come without bloodshed. I think over two thousand people died in the province during the troubles from about 1969 to 1994; these were from both sides with additional deaths in England – or the mainland as some people call it.

Louis Mountbatten

I think The Queen said, when she visited Ireland, that no one hasn't been affected in one way or another; she lost her uncle who was assassinated off the coast of Ireland when he was holidaying there. There was talk at the time (conspiracy theorists) that he was assassinated by the British Government as he was a CND supporter but the people who believe that are the same ones who think Princess Diana was murdered.

By the way she was never Princess Diana; her official title was Her Royal Highness The Princess Charles Philip Arthur George, Princess of Wales and Countess of Chester, Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay, Countess of Carrick, Baroness of Renfrew, Lady of the Isles, Princess of Scotland. Bit of a mouthful aye?
So back to Ireland: certain surveys taken in Ireland say that the majority of the island of Ireland would not welcome a 32 county country so maybe all those people from the hunger strikers to rest of them died in vain.
However before the troubles, in 1969, civil rights were terrible in the 'so called' (you know where I mean) and if you were a Roman Catholic you would find it hard to get a government job or even a job in the police - so some good came from it, I suppose.

A Star Is Born.

Clint Eastwood.

I had a few emails after the last post about the heroes and my criticism of Clint Eastwood making the empty chair speech; and as you may have seen there was a published comment about it being a let down for my pal Jim too.

Jim put his comment straight onto the site but others wrote to me personally too which I would never take it upon myself to publish.

One email said – but he is in his 80s;  that doesn't matter; he is fairly lucid but he was taken advantage of by The Republican Party. 

He has two films going at the moment one of them is A Star is Born; I wonder if he wants me for Norman Maine? No chance; it is rumoured that Tom Cruise is going to play it.

The closest I would ever get to Clint would be by association on the dreaded IMDb; they have a little thing on there which links you with the people you have worked with and here's what it says about me and Clint:

Clint Eastwood worked with...

• Paul D. Johnson on Firefox (1982).
• Paul D. Johnson worked with you on Lifeforce (1985).
• Paul Theren on Space Cowboys (2000).
• Paul Theren worked with you on Timeline (2003).
• Kurt Smith on Gran Torino (2008).
• Kurt Smith worked with you on Kangaroo Jack (2003).
• Basil Somner on Kelly's Heroes (1970).
• Basil Somner worked with you on Lifeforce (1985).
  

Of course I don't know those people as they work in special effects, but it's kind of like the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon which was quite popular some years ago.

James Mason and Judy Garland.

the famous 'slap' in A Star is Born (1954)

But Tom Cruise playing that part seems a bit of a stretch to me; I still think of James Mason playing it in the fifties and Frederick March in the thirties.

But there's an interesting story about the version with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson; they changed the name from Norman Maine, for some reason to John Norman Howard.

The role was originally offered to Elvis Presley who would have been superb. This would be in 1976 a year before he died. He had been disappointed with his film career after such a good start with some really good films in which he was excellent. 

I remember King Creole which was based on the Harold Robbins novel A Stone for Danny Fisher. He played Danny Fisher, of course; in the book he was a boxer and in the movie he was a singer; it had a great cast headed by Walter Matthau, Carolyn Jones, Dean Jagger, Vic Morrow and Dolores Hart who later became a nun; it had to be good it was directed by one of the great directors Michael Curtiz. I loved all those early films.

In the 1976 version of A Star is Born it was Barbra Streisand who wanted Elvis to play the role; he was approached and loved the idea. He even learned the lines thinking he would play it, but when they put the idea to his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, he rejected it. He said the role of a 'has-been rock star who falls in love with a young up-and coming songstress wasn't for his boy' and that it was Streisand's film not Elvis's. So it wasn't to be; Elvis wouldn't go against the Colonel as he was the boss outside the recording studio (where Elvis was the supremo).

It sounds implausible but Elvis couldn't afford to leave the Colonel; his money was tied up and he couldn't buy himself out of the contract.

Elvis and the Colonel.

Was he good for Elvis's career? I don't think so; Elvis earned a lot of money but in the end he had to do a load of crap for it. The Colonel wasn't a colonel at all; he was never in the military.

In Britain we often wondered why Elvis never came to Britain to work – he stopped by when he was in the army – and the reason he didn't come was because Parker was an illegal immigrant named Andreas Cornelius Van Kuijk from the Netherlands; he was scared he wouldn't be let back in to the USA.
He bought Elvis's contract and took 25% of Presley's earnings right up to 1967 and from then on he took 50% - can you believe that; he made more money out of Elvis than Elvis himself and probably gambled it all away. Managers in the USA usually take 15%. 
When Elvis was playing Las Vegas, Parker would be out front selling souvenirs – what a piece of work!
One time when Elvis tried to fire him he sent someone to give him the news and Parker said he would go if Elvis told him face to face. He knew Elvis didn't like confrontation so the so called colonel stayed.
It's a pity as the role in A Star Is Born might have saved Elvis's acting career and life.

Clint Eastwood - my hero??

Neil Armstrong

There he is – the true American hero, Neil Armstrong; just like Davy Crockett. They have to have heroes in America and one of my heroes, over there, has always been Clint Eastwood. One of the greatest American directors of all time. Yes, he's up there with John Ford, Howard Hawks and Stanley Kubrick.

But now what has he done? Made a fool of himself at the Republican National Convention; he decided to support Mitt Romney but instead of making a prepared speech he spoke off the cuff as if he were John F. Kennedy or Winston Churchill and he made a right hames of it; I saw the speech, he was talking to an empty chair under the pretence that he was telling Barack Obama a thing or two and he even used the expression 'Make my day.' It wasn't a clean speech it was mumbled and stuttered with short pauses and when he said the magical three words the whole crowd chanted it.
I didn't expect him to support anybody else, as he has always been a Republican like James Stewart and Gary Cooper, but at least he has worked with left leaning actors such as Sean Penn in Mystic River, which is a true masterpiece earning an Oscar for Penn, and he directed Million Dollar Baby which won an Oscar for Hilary Swank.
So he's no slouch when it comes to directing and he has made at least four classic westerns: High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven and he was a far better actor than John Wayne.
But that's what he should have stuck to instead of making, what has become known as the empty chair speech. Sounds more like the empty head speech to me.
Early Friday morning, a tweet from the president's official account responded with a photo showing the Commander in Chief sitting in a presidential chair and the line: "This seat's taken."
Well there we are the Pres got his own back.
But isn't it terrible when someone you really admire lets you down? Why didn't he just keep his mouth shut? And what is a hero in any case?
I suppose it's someone who is brave and risks their life; all my heroes have been brave for doing something that isn't dangerous. In the space race I think Yuri Gagarin was brave – he was the first man into space.
Anyone my age will know that the TV was full of space rockets being fired into space and falling off their perches or even climbing to a few feet then falling back, then one day a man actually got into a rocket and it took off and that man was Gagarin. Okay so they tried monkeys first but it was still a big thing – then Alan Shepherd went up.
By the time Neil Armstrong went up they had it to a tee; he actually had to land the pod with Buzz Aldrin shouting out technical data to him and when they landed it was Buzz who was a few feet behind when they stayed on the moon for that two hours or so but up in the sky was the forgotten man of the Apollo 11 flight, Michael Collins. He kept the Mother Ship ready for the 2 boys on the moon to return as he orbited around it.

Michael Collins of Ireland (Mícheál Ó Coileáin)

Of course Michael Collins wasn't the only hero with that name; the other Michael Collins (Mícheál Ó Coileáin) is a household name in Ireland as he was a revolutionary leader during the civil war; he was the first Minister for Finance in the Republic of Ireland and one of the members of the committee who negotiated The Treaty, which partitioned Ireland and is the cause of the recent Irish Troubles. Even this week there are riots in North Belfast.
When he travelled to London to meet the British politicians, and consequently signing the treaty, he knew he was signing his own death warrant too and was killed while exchanging rifle fire with ambushers on August 22^nd 1922, eight months after signing the Anglo Irish Treaty.
And among my other heroes is Roger Bannister.
But getting back to Neil Armstrong, who recently died, and the other space pioneers. When space travel was on the television nearly every day of the week, week after week and being fronted by men with tiny replicas of the space ships and pods, a lot of us became bored by the same pontifications of these pundits with their same boring technical descriptions of what was going on . It wasn't until some time later, when we saw the beautiful photographs in the Sunday Magazines, that we realised how spectacular the views were that Neil Armstrong and the other astronauts and cosmonauts were experiencing.
I think it was Carl Sagan who said they should have sent a poet into space and maybe then we could have appreciated its beauty at the time. Maybe they should have sent an actor too as Armstrong is supposed to have fluffed his line on landing; he says he said – That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. And of course we only heard – That's one small step for man...
Armstrong said he was misquoted and we missed the indefinite article. So maybe an actor would have made sure we heard the a – but then he would have been telling stories about his time at Birmingham Rep or summer stock, so just as well - and look what the other actor did; he spoke to an empty chair.