A lot of production goes on in and around Downtown L.A., and one perennially popular location--both for its gritty industrial exteriors and its spacious, soundstage-ready warehouse spaces--is the so-called artists' loft district, roughly east of Alameda, west of the L.A. River, with First Street and Olympic Blvd. as its north/south borders. It's here where the legendary Al's Bar helped forge the local punk scene, only to close a few years ago (there's some new establishment in its Hewitt Street location last I drove by), and where Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) once did its fringe-art thing, often with a performance component. The 1980s art boomlet came and went, but the neighborhood continues to attract artists, from Cornerstone Theater Company (offices on Traction) to Zoo District (which staged its wild work at Spanish Kitchen and Art Share for an idyllic year or so). Bloom's General store, on the corner of Traction and Hewitt, remains a reliable hub. And lunch at Café Metropol (formerly Café Vignes) and sushi at R23 are still a must.

Anyhow, with all the production activity in the area, it's only natural that casting directors occasionally set up shop with their respective shows. If memory serves, Victoria Burrows and Scott Boland had an office in the area for the short-lived supernatural show "Haunted." The latest tenants to take up residence, in the district's north end, are Emily Schweber and Belinda Gardea, who are casting Gregory Nava's unique miniseries "American Family"--unique because this is the second season of the "miniseries," and unique because it airs on PBS in the spring.

Schweber and Gardea work out of a mid-sized office in a sound-proofed mini-suite within the production's workshop, where whirring and sawdust and men with toolbelts prevail. Indeed, if you enter from 130 S. Hewitt, as I did, you're directed to casting by signs through and around the soundstages, with sets from various eras of the epic miniseries--everything from a black-lit 1960s den to a 1940s-looking house--and past a big blue sky scrim to the workshop, whose loading dock address is 120 S. Hewitt (just south of First Street), an easier place for auditioning actors to enter. (But then you don't get the magical mystery tour.)

The CDs have only been there since early September, and they'll be out by Thanksgiving, by which time they'll have cast 13 episodes packed with characters for four separate storylines in three distinct eras--including finding teen and preteen incarnations of present-day leads played by Edward James Olmos, Constance Marie, Rachel Ticotin, Esai Morales, and Constance Marie. It's mainly but not exclusively a Latino talent pool they're trawling; one episode set in Iraq, with one character serving as a doctor during military conflict, will require Arab, Caucasian, and African-American actors. Ironically, it's the one episode that will be shot in Mexico, not because it represents the ancestral home of the characters but because of desert locations that can stand in for the Middle East. (A related side note: Casting assistant Brad Gilmore's last project was in Stephanie Corsalini's office on the ripped-from-the-headlines TV movie Saving Jessica Lynch, which also called for many Arab-American actors.)

Schweber comes from a long association with casting legend Mali Finn, with whom she worked as an associate for many years on such projects at the Terminator franchise, L.A. Confidential, and Titanic, meanwhile casting prestige indies on her own. Gardea has worked in various casting offices, previously with Rick Pagano and Sharon Bialy, who did theatre as well as film and television. She worked as an associate casting director on Resurrection Blvd. and as a consultant on Star Maps. Her breakthrough in casting, she recalled, was on the film Bound by Honor.

The two have worked in associate roles with other casting directors, but never in partnership, and they admitted they're still figuring out how to divide the duties. On one point, the division of labor is clear: The bilingual Gardea auditions any character who must speak Spanish on-screen. For his part, assistant Gilmore goes to the showcases: When I visited, he had just been to one at the Court Theatre put on by CBS and Nosotros.

It's an all-in-one operation there on Hewitt Street; we could hear the sound of playback from an adjacent editing room. Writer/director Nava is so immersed in writing, shooting, and editing that he doesn't often have time to join the CDs for casting, so they put all the readings on tape--an advantage, they explained, because it takes some pressure off the readings and allows Gardea and Schweber to work with the actors to get their best take on tape for Nava's consideration.

The miniseries format means they're not casting and shooting for airdates, one episode at a time. Instead, it's more like casting a giant 13-part movie that will shoot, as movies do, out of sequence, and finish by one production deadline. In a way, then, it's like casting a feature, only much bigger--and, given time and budget constraints, a lot faster.

Indeed, they're usually having to cast so quickly, they said, that they're using whoever's right for the part, represented or not. The day I visited, they were trying to figure out how much singing one elderly Mexican-American character would have to do. Would he have to play guitar? Was he supposed to be a pro? Well, one advantage of having their office east of Downtown: They're a short drive from East L.A.'s famous Mariachi Square, the town's most famous outdoor waiting room.

Art Walk

I completely forgot where I was for a few minutes this week. Allow me to explain: I was being shown around the welcoming, art studio-like environs of John Papsidera and Wendy O'Brien's office (the company name, which I'd never seen in credits before, is the puzzling but evocative Automatic Sweat).

I'd come into the entry from the alley off Robertson and promptly felt at home; it's designed with taste I would describe as East Village, or maybe even L.A. artist's loft district: Raymond Pettibon originals on the wall, art books and curiosities on the waiting room table, those crinkly soft-light Ikea lamps strategically placed, some diffuse natural light. In short, ultra-hip but not at all forbidding. It's too bad, O'Brien said, that they feel they've outgrown the space and are looking around Culver City for a bigger office.

Papsidera and O'Brien's big project this year was HBO's dark Dust Bowl fantasia Carnivále. There were also a few big studio pictures, Catwoman and Secret Window, Secret Garden, and two indies, The Woods and Broken Lizard's Club Dread. Their resumé is eclectic that way: It includes art-house favorites like Memento and Another Day in Paradise, cable movies like And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself and Live From Baghdad, and studio fare like Dickie Roberts and Dumb and Dumberer. Before they came together, O'Brien was the Vancouver casting associate on a show you might have heard of, The X-Files, and Papsidera cast such underground fare as Independence Day and Austin Powers.

Now they're waiting to hear about a Carnivále pickup and trying to put together an HBO film called Lackawanna Blues, based on Ruben Santiago-Hudson's popular one-man show, with Halle Berry as executive producer and George C. Wolfe slated to direct. Santiago-Hudson won't play the lead, not only because the piece is based on his youthful past, but because he's not a big enough name. As Papsidera and O'Brien's assistant, Clear Hadden-Gunther, explained, casting for a prestige cable film is as name-driven as indie films have become: Get the star attached, and then you can make the "personal" art-house film or the Emmy-worthy cable MOW.

When asked if she has any advice for actors, O'Brien gave a strikingly self-effacing answer: "Our goal here is to have it be as comfortable and supportive as possible; that way the actors do a better job, and we do a better job. Once they get here, my job is to do as much as I can to make it feel good for them. So I have no tips for them."

While O'Brien credits Papsidera with the art collection, this good host's attitude must have a lot to do with how at ease the place made me feel. And how confused I was when I stepped back out into the alley off Robertson. I'd been somewhere else. I'm not an actor, but if I had been there to audition, I feel like I could have done amazing work in that cozy space--or, probably just as important, it felt like if I'd stunk up the room, it would not be so humiliating somehow. How could it be, in a place where a piece of Barbara Kruger text art states, "Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise"?

Goldstein's Big "Job"

Independent casting director Beth Goldstein had worked in many casting offices over the years--Dava Waite's, Carol Goldwasser's, Leslee Dennis', Tracy Lilienfield's--but hadn't broken out above the associate level. So after casting the award-winning indie short The Long Walk Home, last year she landed her first big feature, The Job, directed by Kenny Golde, and scored a small coup: She persuaded a slightly skeptical producer to hire Daryl Hannah in the lead.

Her argument was that Hannah's career tends to go up and down, much like John Travolta's, and that the filmmakers might be lucky enough to catch her on an upswing. Goldstein was aware then of Hannah's part in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill--hence the Travolta-comeback connection--but she wasn't aware that Hannah would soon be riding a wave of positive exposure, adding acclaimed roles in Northfork and Casa de los Babys to the Tarantino gig. (And let's not forget Hannah's recent Playboy spread.) Also cast in The Job, about a hitwoman who becomes pregnant, were Brad Renfro and Alex Rocco. Goldstein compared its tone to a cross between La Femme Nikita and True Romance.

Earlier this year Goldstein worked as an associate on the comedy pilot Come to Papa, slated for a 2004 midseason pickup, and was a casting associate on The Hughleys for its last two seasons.

Now that she's cast a feature on her own, will she go back to casting-associate work?

"Most people move up with the casting directors they work with," she said. "But a lot of people I've worked with like to work alone--they're not looking for partners. They've been great to work with, but I've only been able to move up so far. So I need to look for other projects."

In other words, for another Job.

It's Not All Relative

A few major, established pros aside, casting directors' names aren't quite the branding currency that actors' names are. And until Gary Zuckerbrod achieves his dream of unionizing the profession, there's no guild to inform a new member, Sorry--there's already someone with that name.

In the interest of clearing up possible confusion among attentive actors, here follows a quick guide to CDs who are and are not related:

* Mali Finn (currently casting Around the Bend and Dark Water) and Sarah Halley Finn (currently casting, with partner Randi Hiller, the features All Day Long, Crash, and Stealth) are not related--not even, as Sarah's name might suggest, by marriage (lately we've seen her listed simply as Sarah Finn).

* Bonnie Zane (Drew Carey, George Lopez, Miss Match) and Debra Zane (most recently Terminal and Matchstick Men) are sisters.

* The spelling should give you a clue, but some folks still assume that Meg Liberman (Grounded for Life, King of Queens) and Amy Lieberman (the Mark Taper Forum's resident CD) are related. Silent "e" says they're not.

* Shawn Dawson and Eric Dawson, it hardly needs to be said since they share a casting suite at Ulrich/Dawson/Kritzer (Lyon's Den, 1-800-MISSING, CSI, Dead Zone, and Nip/Tuck), are brothers.

* Libby Goldstein (Six Feet Under, Mister Sterling) and Beth Goldstein (profiled above) are not related.

* And, though it's a common name, we had to check--but no, Anne McCarthy (casting the features Bayou and Sahara) and Jeanne McCarthy (with Juel Bestrop, casting the feature Are We There Yet?) are not related.

Apparently nepotism--at least, of the familial variety--is not as strong a force in casting as it is in other industry fields.