If you're not familiar with The Onion--a weekly newspaper billed as "America's Finest News Source"--you're missing out on some of the droller social satire around. (Free site here.) A sampling of favorite news headlines gives you an idea of the sense of humor at work here: From the sweeping ("FAA Considers Passenger Ban") to the scathing ("8-Year-Old Accidentally Exercises Second Amendment Rights"), from the pointed ("Sheryl Crow Unsuccessful; War On Iraq Begins") to the frivolous ("Raccoon Leaders Demand Loosening of Garbage Can Lids"). Warning: Peeling The Onion can become addictive.

The Madison, Wisc.-based paper, now also with offices in New York, has become nearly as reliable a segue from post-collegiate goofing off to Hollywood writing careers as The Harvard Lampoon. Last year Variety reported that Onion writers had films in development with Miramax, DreamWorks, and New Regency.

Why am I mentioning this in a casting column? Because last week casting directors Kim Davis and Justine Baddeley released a Breakdown for a project called Untitled Sketch Movie, with some pretty quirky roles--a Phyllis Diller type, a Peruvian man, a 40-something Dutch man, and a series of "men in suits" to play white-collar workers and Secret Service agents. These made it sound interesting enough, but when I called casting associate Cate Engel, I learned the project is a pseudo-documentary based on The Onion and written by head Onion writers Todd Hanson and Rob Siegel.

I wanted to know if "Sketch Movie" meant they were looking for improv actors.

"There's no improv," said Engel. "It's all scripted. Some of the vignettes are based on Onion stories, others they came up with for the movie."

No stars are attached, but Engel said they weren't ruling out stunt cameos. How about possible lookalikes to play world leaders? She said no.

With a film based on The Onion, we can at least expect it to be multi-layered and to make us cry.

Early Pilot Report

Pilot season doesn't start "officially" until January (though don't wait for a starting gun here--there is no recognized start date). But some CDs are already lining up the pilot assignments and trying to beat the traffic jam of talent searching that happens for a few months every winter/spring.

In the case of This Time Around, a pilot presentation for ABC Family, CDs Shana Landsburg and Terri Fiddleman aren't working toward the same deadline as the network shows (which is the annual presentation to advertisers in May). So they're trying to fill the cast of this twentysomething romantic comedy half-hour before everyone's got deal memos and "on hold" agreements.

The series is based a successful MOW that aired earlier this year on ABC Family with the same title, starring Brian Austin Green, Carly Pope, and Sara Rue, about a young couple hooking up in their 20s who knew each other high school: She was a geek who loved him, and he was a jock who humiliated her. Now she's blossomed and has another chance at him--and he has a chance to redeem himself for his bad behavior.

The series picks up after the two have come together, though CD Landsburg said there will be flashbacks to their high school days, to incidents "that affected them as human beings." Though the male lead is listed as "cast," Landsburg wouldn't confirm whether former 90210 heartthrob Green would star. Pope and Rue (Less Than Perfect) are committed to other projects.

She did confirm that she and Fiddleman are trying to get it cast "before the crush" of the network pilot season, and she clarified that a "pilot presentation" is not a full pilot production, just a series of scenes. Landsburg and Fiddleman have done a number of MOWs for networks and some indie films, but this year, Landsburg said, they're "actively pursuing getting back into pilots. It's our intention to get two more pilots."

Gettting a head start on a network show is casting director DeeDee Bradley (Smallville), who's filling roles for Saving Jason, a half-hour built around tween rap star Lil Bow Wow ("Where my dogs at?"). Previously titled Mr. Logan and simply Bow Wow, the new pilot is about a gifted piano prodigy who enrolls in an elite conservatory/boarding school run by a stern housemaster, played by Murder One's Daniel Benzali. It's not to be confused with last pilot season's Bow Wow project, which was to star the young rapper as an unlikely high school teacher himself. That was to be penned by Felicia Henderson (Soul Food), whereas the new one employs veteran sitcom writer Winifred Hervey (a writer for The Steve Harvey Show, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Cosby Show) and director/producer Stan Lathan (All of Us, Cedric the Entertainer Presents, Roc).

The casting of the bald, imposing Benzali should give a clue as to the casting of the show, said casting assistant Alison Mize.

"I don't think of him as half-hour at all," she admitted, but producers were impressed by his deftness with comedy and the contrast with the diminutive lead. But the CDs aren't just throwing one-hour drama stars into the mix for the fun of it: "They're going in every direction" with the casting, said Mize.

And that's even before the scramble of next January.

Hepburn Squared

The futuristic law drama Century City, a midseason for CBS, recently set up its offices at the production site in El Segundo, near LAX. Amy Lippens (Leap of Faith, Once and Again) heads up the office, with associate Stephanie Laffin and assistant Janelle Scuderi.

A Breakdown released this week caught my attention: It's for a "virtual assistant," à la AI, who must be both pretty and articulate--in other words, the Breakdown read, "Think Kate Hepburn meets Audrey Hepburn." But maybe throw in a little Molly Shannon: "She is programmed to speak like Darth Vader as well as spout jokes and poetry."

Casting assistant Scuderi isn't sure who came up with the Hepburn reference, but she had some more details about the part: "The man that she's working for, we see in the episode beforehand that his assistants sued him, so he's not a nice man to work for." That would be Darwin McNeil, played by Eric Schaeffer. Also cast are Nestor Carbonell, Viola Davis, and Hector Elizondo, in a series from Homicide's Paul Attanasio, Gideon's Crossing's Katie Jacobs, and Law and Order's Ed Zuckerman. It's set in 2054 L.A., and it's described as "not the dystopic regimented future familiar from science fiction… And there are no flying cars."

How about flying virtual assistants?

Home Office

Casting directors move around a lot, subject to the whims of Nielsen ratings and creative differences as much as any of Hollywood's independent contractors. Those who are lucky enough to establish a home base for a number of years--usually feature film CDs who don't need to station themselves on a particular studio lot or production site--do their best to make their offices as homey as possible, to put their personal stamp on even the most unprepossessing storefront spaces.

Betty Mae Casting, headed by Mary Vernieu and Felicia Fasano, is one of the homier casting offices you're likely to visit. That's not only because it's in a house in Venice, off Abbot Kinney, but because it's surrounded by an inviting, close-knit plaza of former houses, shops, restaurants, and a nursery. It has something of the feel of the old Farmer's Market, minus the produce and meats. And Vernieu has put down even firmer roots in the 'hood: She owns the streetfront restaurant Primitivo.

It's a busy home/office, with half a dozen young assistants at various desks in the entryway, presided over by casting associate Shalimar Reodica. The multiple phone conversations all around her give it the feel of a low-key boiler room, but it's nicer than that: Some of the staff's dogs loll in the next room, and there's an espresso machine in the foyer.

"An older woman came in recently and asked if she could look around," recalled Reodica. A ploy to land a under-five role? "She used to live here 50 years ago."

Vernieu is working on a "top-secret" project from writer/director James Brooks, after wrapping up some intensive work on the Adam Sandler vehicle Spanglish this past summer.

I wondered about the casting office's name. In another example of the CDs making the place their own, it's named after a few generations of Vernieu's family: Betty was her mom, Mae her grandmother.

I noted a gallery of headshots over Reodica's desk, all of the oversized, bearded character actor Ken Davitian. Is she harboring a secret crush, or is this an ironic embrace of an unlikely subject?

"I just like his headshots," she said. "We haven't had him in for a while."

Giving a contrasting picture of CDs making themselves at home is the nearly brand new office of Weber and Associates, in the new MGM high-rise in Century City. where casting directors Paul Weber and Zora Dehorter, with associate Ivy Isenberg, keep a light, self-deprecating atmosphere in the midst of a rather corporate-styled suite of offices. They work on the syndicated shows She Spies, Stargate, and Dead Like Me, and they're casting the feature Species III, for which they're casting not one but two young hotties in roles as aliens. The original star of the franchise, Natasha Henstridge, is likely to make only a token cameo, said Dehorter.

Weber, whose right arm was in a small cast after rotater cuff surgery when we visited, sets the tone, keeping the jokes rolling. "I can't lift those stacks of pictures anymore," he said, referring to his cast. When I noted that his offices does both TV series and features, he said ironically, "Oh, we're sought after for everything." Joking aside, the busy workload means they probably won't be seeking pilots this season.

When I asked Isenberg what advice she would give actors, she had a lot to say. Here's a sampling: "Make a real commitment to acting; don't play at it. Some people wake up one day and decide to be an actor because they're pretty and they're too lazy to work a 9-to-5. Or they were the head cheerleader in Indiana. We bring in people all the time who are pretty but aren't emotionally available; they can't tap into their sadness. They use acting as therapy, but they can't perform."

Continuing along these lines, she said, "Art comes from suffering, and beautiful people are spoiled. That's why the most brilliant actors are always the craziest, because they're always checking in with themselves--'How am I doing? Who am I? How do I feel?' "

The most brilliant casting directors tend to be those who can recognize that quality and put it in its best light. A comfortable--yes, even homey--work environment is one way to put delicate acting thoroughbreds at ease.