Remember when the 1970s were uncool? It's hard now to recall that distant day when disco records were burned on bonfires and nothing got a cheaper laugh than a 'fro and bell bottoms; it was understood as shorthand for "sleaze."

That day is long past, with fashion designers and pop stars embracing '70s flourishes for some time now. A definite sign of the mainstream tide turning was earlier this year, when producers of a new Starsky & Hutch movie, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson and scheduled for release next year, made the budget-rising decision to set the film in its original period rather than give it a contemporary gloss, as did the Charlie's Angels movie franchise. One could trace this '70s chic back further, to the success of That '70s Show--which is basically Happy Days 20 years later--or to the popularity of Boogie Nights.

Whatever the tipping point was, get ready for the nostalgia floodgates to open. A Battlestar Galactica miniseries premieres on the Sci-Fi channel next week, and going into production early next year is a miniseries (with a series option, also known as a "backdoor pilot") of Little House on the Prairie, currently being cast by Meg Liberman and Sandi Logan. The Breakdown calls it an "edgier" take on the material. (Come on, can you really make Nelly Olesen any edgier?) No word on whether the current SAG president will make a cameo in the winking tradition of Robert Mitchum's walk-on in Scorsese's Cape Fear or Chita Rivera's appearance in Rob Marshall's Chicago.

Also currently casting is the behind-the-scenes movie that was just itching to be made: America, are you ready for The Charlie's Story? Yes, it's the making of the original jiggle-TV juggernaut, Charlie's Angels. I don't know if they've attached leads yet, but I offer my casting suggestions free of charge to CDs Ted Hann and Pamela Basker: Denise Richards as Farrah Fawcett, Linda Cardellini as Kate Jackson, Kate Bosworth (with a dye job, to show she can stretch as an actress) as Jaclyn Smith. All they need for Charlie is a voice, really. (Although, if this is a behind-the-scenes movie, maybe we'll at last find out why Charlie had John Forsythe's voice and, the few times we saw his back, the body of a curly-haired guy in a Hawaiian shirt.)

Speaking of Starsky, by the way, a breakdown went out recently for a few additional roles for the film, with the casting director listed as Lora Kennedy, a senior VP of casting at Warner Bros. A note read that she was "casting the remaining roles" for the film.

This piqued my interest, because I knew that Juel Bestrop and Jeanne McCarthy had been casting the film through the summer and fall. Was this typical, I wondered, for a film to have its final casting duties shifted back in-house to the studio that was producing it, away from the independent CDs who did the lion's share of the casting work?

I called Bestrop and McCarthy's office, and an assistant said the film was done; he'd been to the wrap party. Why, then, had Lora Kennedy released a breakdown just a week or so ago for characters to do a few scenes with Snoop Dogg (who plays Huggy Bear)? He speculated that it was possibly for a promo or for a music video (is there a difference?).

That sounded reasonable, but then I called Lora Kennedy's office, and an assistant explained: The breakdown was for reshoots of certain scenes in a convenience store. It was just easier, the assistant said, to keep this last-minute casting in-house. They don't do a lot of casting there at the lot--most of it is contracted out to independent CDs--but they're set up do it when they need to.

Reshoots, eh? Apparently for some the '70s can't be revisited enough.

SPEARS SKEWERED

There's already a Britney TV movie being cast by Jason LaPadura and Natalie Hart (American Dreams), which I reported on in my Oct. 31 column; it's a fictionalized version of the Britney rise-to-fame story, based on a forthcoming novel by the pop diva and her mother. And LaPadura even told me they might not even cast a blonde in the Britney role!

Now there's a feature in development from comic Julie Brown (who took on Madonna with Medusa: Dare To Be Truthful) that's described as being "in the spirit of Best in Show and A Mighty Wind." The subject is not Britney per se but a fictionalized wannabe from the same small Southern town, an overweight teen named Courtney Ball with an overbearing stage mother, Ruby (to be played by Brown), who believes Courtney can be the next Britney. There's no character breakdown for Britney herself, but there is one for Lynne Spears, her mom, who's described as "pretty, 40s, thinks she's better than everyone else in the town."

Casting director Patrick Baca's breakdown is not for the film, actually, but for a reading of the script tentatively scheduled for next week, apparently to whet the appetite of invited industry guests for the prospect of this pop parody.

I don’t know, though--isn't a parody redundant when you can go out any night of the week and rent Crossroads at your local video store?

BLACK TIE, GREY AREA

I was intrigued by a note on a recent breakdown for Black Tie, a new series for Skinemax--sorry, Cinemax. It's about two female socialites forming a dating service with a former male client, and many of the roles require nudity.

That's not what caught my eye, though. It was instead a note that read "Please do not submit actors unwilling to work non-union."

Umm… that's interesting. Wouldn't the only actors willing to work non-union be, well, non-union actors?

Silly me.

Casting director Lori Cobe-Ross, who's done her share of softcore fare, is listed as the casting director. But when I called the Black Tie Films production office, I spoke to an assistant named Melinda. I asked her: Why didn't the note just say, "Submit non-union only"?

"Well, that's another way of saying it," she said. Melinda said that Cobe-Ross had worded it the way she did because on her last project, apparently, she got submissions from "a ton people who were union and did not want to work non-union."

Imagine that. I had to wonder: Was this note worded this way to openly invite those union actors who were willing to work non-union to apply? And given that this would violate Rule One of any self-respecting union, wouldn't such a note invite the scrutiny of SAG?

"We haven't received any such calls," said Melinda.

Did she know of any union actors who had been willing to work non-union in the past? She couldn't recall, but she did say, "I know we have had quite a few union actors who have auditioned. I'm not sure how they go about it if they are cast."

Financial core is one way to get around this problem, I guess; an alias is another ploy some have used. Another really great option is for actors not to join the union in the first place if they're still at the level that they're actively pursuing non-union jobs. Either that, or get the union to organize projects on the fringes of cable a little more aggressively. I'm seeing a lot of non-union notices out there--not only in Breakdowns but in a lot of other venues, as well--and the pay rates are hard for actors to dismiss, even without residuals and pension contributions.

But the impact of such on-the-down-low side jobs on the long-term health of the union is even harder to dismiss.

REINKING UPS RANKING

Cathy Reinking has long been one of the classier casting folks out there. A theatre lover who's directed plays for Theatre Neo in Hollywood, she's moved around in various casting associate positions. She started out at Jeff Greenberg's office at Paramount, and most recently worked as an associate in Deborah Barylski's office on the show Still Standing, The Bonnie Hunt Show (little work involved there, she told me, because Hunt herself mostly brings in her own favorites), and the acclaimed Arrested Development.

Now she's bypassed the promotion to casting director to become "manager" of casting for NBC, serving under Senior VP Marc Hirschfeld, and alongside VPs Sonja Nikoer and Jeff Meshel. She replaces Grace Wu, who has moved to a head-of-casting position at NBC's production studio. Confused? So is Reinking, a little. See, there are networks, and then there are production studios. When NBC Studios produces a show to air on the NBC network, Reinking and co. will work with Wu on the casting; but for shows that will air on the NBC network but are produced by outside companies, Reinking will help oversee the hiring of casting directors and their choices. Clear?

Will this promotion take her away from the day-to-day meeting of actors? She hopes not.

"I have done in-the-trenches casting for a while," Reinking said. "With this job, maybe I'll have more of a say in who actually gets the job."

She said she'll be overseeing the casting of such currently running shows as Friends (CD: Leslie Litt) and Vegas (CDs: Cami Patton and Nelia Morago), as well as eight pilots in the coming season. Already out of the gate is The Office, a mock-doc comedy being cast by Allison Jones, based on the BBC hit. Reinking said she's confident it won't go the way of Coupling, another Americanized Brit hit that recently tanked with flying colors on NBC.

We wish Cathy a hearty mazel tov at her new post, and we hope to continue to run into her at local theatre productions.

CHTHONIC YOUTH

Every once in a while, I come across a casting director who has no problem talking to me--they don't continually ask, "What is this for?" or "Are you going to quote me?" or "Can I see this before you print it?"

Jean Scoccimarro was one such happy call. I was interested in the breakdown she put out recently for Chthonic, a low-budget indie with a script by L.A. playwriting legend John Steppling (he helped lead the  now-defunct Padua Hills Playwrights Festival and wrote several plays in Los Angeles; his only previous movie credits have been scripts for 52 Pickup and Steve Buscemi's directorial debut, Animal Factory). Scoccimarro was more than glad to tell me about the project and its needs.

First of all, that title: It's a Greek-derived word meaning "of or relating to the underworld," and the best way to get your tongue around is to see it as "Kuh-thonic," or even closer, "K'thonic." Not so hard if you try it a few times.

And the title is not merely a sort of playwright's perverse joke on movie marketers: It aptly describes a script in which an L.A. career woman, bored with her husband and "everyday ennui," meets Sabrina, a "very charismatic, troubled young woman who walks to a different step than the rest of the world, and they get intertwined." Via this unreliable tourguide, whom Scoccimaro described as "someone who could be underage but we're never sure" (the breakdown says the actress must be at least 18, though), the professional woman makes a descent into an L.A. club scene full of people "who are of the age and the psychological makeup that they're not straight shooters--they're not used to being honest. There are a lot of boundaries being crossed."

Oh, really? Is that why she only wants to see actresses who are 18 and older?

"There's a lot of sexual innuendo, but it's not about the sex. As far as I know we're not having any kind of nudity. It's more of a psychological, troubled journey."

She's had "amazingly wonderful submissions" for the film so far, she said, though she probably won't know for a week or so whether any "name" talent will come on board. Is Steppling's name causing a buzz? "You have to be of a certain age to have been around here in the '80s," she said. "A friend of mine called and said, 'This is so cool--whatever happened to him?' " So agents aren't necessarily beating down her door to get their clients in for a new Steppling-penned film? "No, agents don't even look at the who the writer is. It's the actors who, if they're of that age or that era, recognize his name, and if they're not, once they read the script, they'll want to find out about him."

Actually, there are still a number of actors and theatre artists for whom the Steppling name has cachet: Though no longer a full-blown festival, remnants of the Padua days, headed by playwrights Murray Mednick and Guy Zimmerman, have been producing under the name Padua Playwrights Productions for some years, with a coterie of writers who studied with Steppling in the '90s, before he moved to his current home in Poland. Earlier this year, the company staged a well-reviewed production of Steppling's newest play, Dog Mouth, about characters already thoroughly used to the underbelly of life.

It sounds like Scoccimarro is ready to find real talents for the film, which is directed by Rafal Zielinski (the Sundance hit Fun).

"This is the kind of the thing for an artist, not a movie star," she said of the character of Sabrina. Though she's quite used to the indie film dilemma of a budget being determined by whether she can land a well-known actor or two to make a film more attractive to distributors, Scoccimarro doesn't think this film is in that category.

"I'm going to bring in talented actors," she vowed. "It's special dialog, written by a playwright, and you can't get by unless you have that foundation that theatre actors have." So stage actors will be welcome? "A lot of actors don't have a lot of movie and TV credits, but if they've done good work at good theatres, it gets my attention."

She call Zielinski a "Dogma-style director," referring to the European aesthetic pioneered by such auteurs as Lars Von Trier and Daniel Stedman, and employing edgy, on-the-fly production values. Yes, it's a low-budget film under SAG's Limited Exhibition Contract. But, said Scoccimarro philosophically, "It's amazing what you can do without."

A piece of wisdom most actors have learned all too well.