Eight hundred to 1,000 submissions: That's the average number Vicki Rosenberg's casting office gets for each role it releases through Breakdowns, according to Alexis Frank, her associate on the shows Judging Amy and Joan of Arcadia. Most of those submissions come from agents and managers, but a fair amount are from self-submitting actors who manage to find out about the roles (we wonder how).

That average number, multiplied by the large guest star roster they've got to fill for each episode, means that Rosenberg and Frank aren't likely to release those roles more widely to the general acting population through the trades or through Actors Access. Frank has no bias against unrepresented actors--"I love it when actors submit themselves if they're not represented," she said--but mentioned that budgetary limits don't allow her to hire many non-union actors, since each would need to be Taft-Hartleyed to work on a union TV show.

Speaking of union matters, Joan of Arcadia is one among a number of new single-camera series that are being shot under an AFTRA rather than a SAG contract. Here's the digital divide we heard so much about during the campaign for SAG-AFTRA consolidation: Joan is shot on digital, which represents savings on the production and postproduction end, but not, Frank insisted, on the talent side.

"Actors aren't going to work for less than they do on SAG TV shows just because it's digital," she said. The production savings do mean the show is shooting in California. Maybe the solution to runaway production is simpler than we thought?

She did have one warning for self-submitting actors: Don't bother to submit on outdated parts. She and Vicki are usually setting up auditions the day of and the day after they send out a breakdown; the parts are usually cast within a few days. A submission that comes two or three days after a breakdown is released, in other words, might as well not be sent. With numbers as high as Frank mentioned above, her office doesn't need any more mail than is absolutely necessary.

Blonde Submissions

The book isn't due in stores until next May, but the TV movie is already being cast. We're not talking about the new Harry Potter tome but about another teen-centered piece of fiction: Britney Spears' first novel, yet untitled, which she's co-written with her mom, Lynne. Lynne and Britney are executive-producing the MOW with Rob Lee and Larry Rudolph for Lions Gate Films, and it's slated for air on the cable netlet ABC Family.

The outline of the book doesn't sound like too much of a stretch from Heart to Heart, the non-fiction autobiography Spears co-wrote with her mom a few years back: According to the breakdown, it's about a "pretty, talented girl with an exceptional singing voice and a driving determination to succeed," who "shares a close bond--not to mention a trailer home--with her sexy, colorful mother, Wanda."

Casting director Jason LaPadura, who also casts the music-themed NBC series American Dreams with his partner, Natalie Hart, admitted that the movie's lead, 17-year-old "Holly Lovell," is a character "not unlike" Britney. But she's not Britney. Yes, she must "sing and move well," and she will be Caucasian, but he said that Holly could turn out to be a brunette rather than a blonde.

"I need somebody who can act and sing and put over a song, à la Britney," LaPadura said. "I need to see that they can really sing well in a pop style with a lot of confidence, but I also need to see that they can act." A mere "special skills" listing of "singing" on a resumé won't cut it; he's looking for actresses with a lot of lead roles in musicals, "no matter where they've done them." He's been surprised at the number of submissions he's gotten from young women who are in rock bands, and he and Hart are also working some of their American Dreams music connections for recommendations.

And though he and Hart are used to casting a music-themed series, this won't be like an Equity call, with an accompanist who can play your song in any key. "I'll have them sing some pop song, either to music they bring in on a CD, karaoke-style, or they'll sing it a cappella. We don’t have a piano here."

Of course, the moment of truth for the "young, fresh face" LaPadura hopes to cast will be the session with the executive producers who've based the script on their own lives. "I'm not casting the Britney Spears story," LaPadura emphasized. "But we might end up casting someone who looks a lot like Britney."

Family Affairs

Speaking of ABC Family, Patricia Noland recently set up shop on the Disney lot as a casting consultant for the cable netlet, which produces original movies and has a modest hit with Knock First, a teen decorating series from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy producers Scout Productions.

The "consultant" title, as opposed to a "head of casting" position, reflects some uncertainty about exactly what she'll be doing at ABC Family. That's because Anne Sweeney, who comes from Disney's cable division, was only recently hired as the new head of ABC Family, and, as Noland confessed, "None of us are quite sure what that means. I assume the movies of the week will continue, since they're doing so well. And the old regime was developing a teen bloc. But it will be a couple of months before we know exactly what the new direction will be."

Knock First is a reality show which "makes over" teens' rooms, so Noland isn't ruling out more reality programming on ABC Family, for which she would expect to consult the producers on any celebrity element--say, a special edition of Knock First in which teen stars' rooms are done over--and find hosts. But finding non-actors to populate reality shows--though it's a very involved process that requires casting skills, and may even be honored with its own Artios award next year--is not what a pro like Noland would be hired to do.

Instead, her files are full of young talent from the NBC teen shows she used to cast for Linda Mancuso and Peter Engel, including Head of the Class. Her most recent regular gig was as head of casting for Turner Television, the since-dissolved in-house production unit for the WB network (not to be confused with Warner Bros. Television, which is a studio that produces a lot of shows for the WB network, as well as for other nets, giving it a competitive edge over a network-only operation). While there, she cast seven pilots, a few of which had short-lived pickups: Family Affair with Tim Curry and The Lone Ranger with Chad Michael Murray.

Noland began in casting with John Levey on the shows China Beach and Head of the Class, before he made his name casting ER and The West Wing. "He was my mentor, my teacher, my friend," she said of Levey.

Freudian Typo

On a live corporate theatre breakdown last week for pharmaceutical company Glaxo Smith Kline, the casting address was listed as "Danny Goldamn and Associates." Given how quotably profane commercial CD Danny Goldman can be in conversation, this was a mistake that seemed somehow comically appropriate. But it's good thing his last name isn't "Raftuck."

Casting Challenges Met

Casting director Vicki Huff and her associate Rick Van Noy had to cancel a number of agent-arranged sessions last week, but the agents didn't seem to mind in this case.

A breakdown had gone out for the WB's long-running family series Seventh Heaven calling for five actors in their 30s or 40s to play "mentally challenged" characters. Writer/producer Brenda Hampton told the CDs she expected they could find a few real-life mentally challenged actors and mix them with non-disabled actors playing the rest, à la the feature film I Am Sam. So Huff and Van Noy set up a number of auditions with agent-submitted actors, while simultaneously pursuing avenues to find mentally challenged performers.

Along those lines, the disabled advocacy organization Media Access pointed the CDs in the direction of Performing Arts Studio West, an acting school for mentally challenged actors run by John Paizis. And to their pleasant surprise, Huff and Van Noy found a deep enough talent pool to fill all five of the roles. "We had no reason to go elsewhere," said Van Noy. "We had set up a huge session for [non-disabled] actors to read for the roles, and we ended up canceling them all. All the agents were very happy to hear we'd found actual mentally challenged actors, and weren't concerned that we were canceling their clients."

So how did the auditions go? The performers from Paizis' school, said Van Noy, came in "totally prepared, and Vicki gave them adjustments they took in the room."

Mental disabilities have a wide range of origins and symptoms, and the actors casting were "disabled to varying degrees." None had the familiar Downs Syndrome look of Chris Burke, the actor who played Corky on Life Goes On, but Van Noy indicated that their appearance marked them in some way as disabled; one performer, for instance, had cerebral palsy. And some were already in SAG, while others had to be Taft-Hartleyed.

Paizis reportedly went with his students to the set every day to coach them. Van Noy indicated that the roles are guest star parts with considerable screen time near the episode's end. "We've seen the dailies," he said, "and they did a great job."

Which only goes to show that any casting director who thinks it's impossible to find qualified disabled actors is, shall we say, professionally challenged.

One-Stop Station

I'd been to Santa Monica's Bergamot Station for art openings, and though I didn't make it out for the show, there was an acclaimed outdoor staging of The Servant of Two Masters there a few years ago (after producer Joe Stern booted it from a planned run at the Matrix Theatre, but that's a whole other story). I didn't realize until a recent visit with Breakdown rep Dave Becker, who handles the Westside, that the same lot houses a Fox production facility.

That's where Orly Sitowitz and Stacy Pianko, who formerly cast The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, have moved to work on a new pilot, Mystery Girl. It's where Barbara Stordahl and Angela Terry's busy offices are casting the long-running Angel, the just-aired Eliza Dushku vehicle Tru Calling, and the upcoming, hotly anticipated Wonderfalls. Stordahl/Terry's assistant on Angel and Tru Calling is Carissa Chapman. On Wonderfalls, which shoots mostly in Toronto (they have a good excuse--it's about a young woman who works in a Niagara Falls gift shop), is Melissa Senatore.

Also in the facility is the production office for the currently running Miss Match. Bonnie Zane, whose main office in a cozy home on Larchmont we described in a previous column, does producer's sessions here.

You almost wouldn't notice it--maybe that's the point--but there it is, a humming TV complex just a stone's throw down the way from the Santa Monica Museum of Art and a number of major galleries and artisans. And who said TV ain't art?