In movies and theater and TV shows – in anything that hires actors – casting is the most important creative decision the director will make. Even where a director puts the camera will make no difference if the actors working the other side of the camera are wrong for their roles. Casting can be so tricky that even if you get all the actors but one cast correctly? The one bad actor will ruin the entire story. They’ll be the only actor anyone ever thinks about.
Right For The Role
From a director’s point of view, sometimes casting is “fate and destiny more than a director’s skill and talent.” Steven Spielberg said that and he’s shockingly right. In theory, casting is ninety percent of any director’s work. Sure, sure – in movies and TV shows, the director has to worry about where to put the camera, too, but even perfect camera placement will mean nothing if the actors the camera is photographing are wrong for their roles.
Sometimes, in movies, casting is fate. Ronald Reagan was Warner Bros original choice to play Rick, the hero of Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart was an afterthought.
How does one know when an actor is right for a role? Can one tell if an actor is wrong? Sometimes those choices are hard to discern. Sometimes they’re as clear as a heart attack.
“Bordello Of Blood”
As we geared up to make Bordello of Blood, we had three solid actors in mind for our leads. We never made an offer to a one of them because Joel Silver, our larger-than-life executive producer, had ideas of his own for the leads. And reasons of his own for having those ideas.
In a horror movie, the lead’s important but the villain is more important than anything. “Tales’” first feature, “Demon Knight” had an excellent villain in Billy Zane. Billy’s bad guy is funny, terrifying and relentless – perfect for a “Tales From The Crypt” movie. In “Dead Easy”, we would have had a complex villain caught between two worlds – this one and the afterlife – with the villain so desperate to get back to this world, he doesn’t care that it would cost the soul of his son. “Bordello’s” villain – Lilith – had no particular end game in mind. That came around to bite us in the end – like a vampire prostitute.
11 responses to “Episode 2: “How Not To CAST A Movie””
[…] wreck look tidy. It’s what happens when sausage making replaces Hollywood movie making. From the casting of its stars to the choice of shooting in Vancouver, every decision the creative team made backfired on them […]
[…] textbooks, looking for examples of extreme physical mayhem to put on screen. Unfortunately, agreeing to pay Dennis Miller a million bucks (half a million more than was in our budget for the lead) forced us to leave Todd back in Los […]
[…] day players – all Canadian. There was even more tension between Dennis and our Canadian crew. The crew had soured on Dennis almost as soon as he’d arrived in Vancouver. First, because he was rude. Second, because he was rude to them for being Canadian. That was weird […]
[…] the homeless guy (who kills the landlord and cuts him into steaks). The best casting was the actor Victoria Burrows wanted for the landlord – the source of those steaks: Meatloaf (the musician and actor […]
[…] true, jaw-dropping story about Hollywood sausage-making told from the sausage point of view. You’ll hear about big stars with even bigger egos and Hollywood producers behaving like psychopaths. You’ll thrill to waves of wretched excess, […]
[…] If you haven’t heard season one yet, we highly recommend it. […]
[…] season one of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast, we spent a long, long, long time talking about casting. If you remember (or, if you don’t), casting was among our most significant failures while […]
[…] Casting a movie or TV show is make or break. We all know what happens when an actor inhabits a role completely. Also we know what happens when an actor and a role conflict with each other. Example: casting Donald Trump as President Of The United States. Curious as a stunt, utterly pointless otherwise. In fact, dangerous. But, Trump as simply a literal performer prancing about a literal stage (or movie set)? Then he becomes entirely “take him or leave him” – the way he was. Far easier to leave. And, maybe, to love, too? I know – that seems twisted. Bizarre. But, there’s a road in my Life I chose NOT to take and now I wonder about it: I almost cast Donald Trump in “Tales From The Crypt”. And, I sorta kinda wish I had… […]
[…] a film or TV producer’s POV, we don’t want actors to act. The camera will see it and we’ll just have to cut it all out. There are differences between […]
[…] textbooks, looking for examples of extreme physical mayhem to put on screen. Unfortunately, agreeing to pay Dennis Miller a million bucks (half a million more than was in our budget for the lead) forced us to leave Todd back in Los […]
[…] day players – all Canadian. There was even more tension between Dennis and our Canadian crew. The crew had soured on Dennis almost as soon as he’d arrived in Vancouver. First, because he was rude. Second, because he was rude to them for being Canadian. That was weird […]