Ah, 2003. The year of the screener ban, Coupling, a war, Angels in America on the airwaves of America, a couple of strikes, wildfires, Audrey Skirball-Kenis' Theatre Projects' demise, and Howard Dean's rise. In all, a pretty average year of highs and lows.

 

In the world of casting, it was business as usual, though the trend toward independence--i.e., casting directors who are not full-time regular employees of any studio or network--continued apace. Now, apart from vps of casting and the folks at Warner Brothers, everyone's an independent. Maybe it is time to listen to CSA head Gary Zuckerbrod's call for a casting director's union.

 

The business will rest briefly before kicking back into high gear after the Jan. 2-3 weekend. So what to report here on the Inside Track? I decided to poll some casting directors on the following two questions: What was their biggest discovery, or favorite casting choice, of the year? And what do they have in store for January?

 

Jill Anthony of Mossberg/Anthony Casting cited Ben Feldman, who was cast in the lead role of the WB pilot The Mayor. It was picked up, then cancelled after two episodes, but Mossberg and Anthony then went on to cast Feldman on Less Than Perfect. How unknown was Feldman? Well, he had representation, but, said Anthony, "We had to Taft-Hartley him. He wasn't in the union." As for January, Anthony said they planned to do a few more pilots; they're currently casting the Fox pilot Related by Family.

 

Deborah Barylski gave props to "the whole cast of Arrested Development," the critically acclaimed Fox sitcom, which recently got the order for its "back nine" (i.e., it will survive the season) and picked up a Golden Globe nomination this week. "Even if you'd known these actors before, they've all gone to another level this year," said Barylski. The Arrested cast ranges from well known to lesser known: Jeffrey Tambor, Portia de Rossi, Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, and Jessica Walter. Barylski, who currently casts Still Standing with associate Leanna Sheldon, said she didn't anticipate doing any pilots in January.

 

For his part, Brett Benner was proud to report the recent hiring of Bellamy Young, a talented Broadway actress with a batch of screen credits (American Dreams, For the People), in a new recurring role as a surgeon on the quirky Scrubs. "The producers wanted us to go after a star," said Benner, who casts that and What I Like About You with partner Debby Romano. "But the star's agent said she just didn't respond to the show. So we brought in Bellamy, and she nailed the audition and got the part. It's really gratifying when we can actually cast the show--when the process actually works. And it's so much better to be creative than just slamming a celebrity into a part, where sometimes it's at the expense of the role, but it gets more people to tune in." Another highlight of the past year for Benner was getting Six Feet Under's Freddy Rodriguez as a guest star during a hiatus on the HBO series. This might be called "insider stunt" casting--it's not going to get extra audience shares in the timeslot, but for those in the know, it's a cool association. As for pilots, Benner said that he and Romano plan to do a few but haven't signed on for any just yet.

Over at JAG and Navy NCIS, casting director Susan Bluestein mentioned a young Arab-American actor named Joseph Bui, who was Taft-Hartleyed for a guest lead in an episode. With military and thriller series increasingly having roles for Arabs and South Asians, I wondered, is Bluestein finding local talent pool particularly deep? "No, you have to really look, and you wind up having to Taft-Hartley a lot of people," said Bluestein. She said the key challenge, at least on her shows, is that the actors often have to be fluent native speakers--their scenes are performed in Arabic, or, as in one recent episode, in Korean, and given subtitles. "You're lucky if you can find them," she said. As for pilot season, Bluestein guessed that with two one-hours, she wouldn't have time to take on a pilot.

Feature casting directors Scot Boland and Victoria Burrows dipped their toes into reality TV casting this past year for NBC's Next Action Star. And though Boland couldn't reveal the names of the 14 contestants, who all lived in a house together for the show, or the names of the male and female "action star" winners, that national search did yield some interesting discoveries. More recently, on the Bruce Willis film The Hostage, Burrows and Boland found a virtual unknown, Marshall Allman, for one of the lead roles. That film will take the CDs through mid-January.

Blythe Cappello now heads up casting for the "men's channel" Spike TV (see my Oct. 17 column), but when asked for her favorite casting of the past year, she looked back to her time working in the feature casting offices of Juel Bestrop and Jeanne McCarthy. "My biggest discoveries of the year were three people I cast in Dodgeball: The Movie, for Ben Stiller's company and Fox." These were Jamal Duff, a 6'8" former basketball player who plays Michel, the personal assistant to Stiller's character; Joel Moore, a "nerdy" type who comes from "the commercial world"; and Chris Williams, best known to Curb Your Enthusiasm fans for his turn as the womanizing rapper Crazy Eyes Killa.

Over at the offices of CFB Casting, casting director Anya Colloff mentioned Tamara Feldman, whom she and partner Amy Britt cast in a guest role on the UPN series Jake 2.0. "She's a little star," raved Colloff--and the producers apparently agree. They're bringing her back. Another casting fit Britt and Colloff are happy about is placing Ginnifer Goodwin in the lead of an independent film, Love Comes to the Executioner. Goodwin isn't a total unknown--she has roles in Mona Lisa Smile and the upcoming Meet Tad Hamilton--but this is her first lead, and "in a much edgier part than she usually plays," said Colloff. CFB must be among the few offices I know that moves between TV and feature casting; Colloff explained that the CDs come from a feature background, but then "fell into the world of television, and it treated us well." Indeed, they cast Buffy for many seasons, but since that ended, Colloff said, they've been looking for more film projects.

 

Michael Donovan has another unique double focus: He casts commercials and local theatre. He's been especially busy this past year with theatre, casting several shows for the International City Theatre in Long Beach as well as the inaugural show for Pasadena's new Boston Court Theatre, Romeo and Juliet. His biggest discovery was Madison Dunaway, whom we met while casting for Vancouver's Center Theatre; he brought her down for the lead in ICT's Agnes of God and she went on get an Ovation Award nomination for the part (and a role in Princess Diaries 2).

Actually, ICT's convent drama turned out to be a much bigger casting challenge than Donovan would have thought: In the role of the Mother Superior, Michael Learned was initially announced but got a part at the Arena Stage in Washington; then her replacement, Mariette Hartley, got cast in Cabaret on Broadway; then Diane Ladd pulled out to be an activist in the SAG election; then Kathleen Nolan was in a car accident. Finally, Mimi Cozzens was cast in the role. Indeed, his ICT gigs seemed to be plagued with problems: Nell Carter was set to star in its run of Raisin and died eight days before opening; Carol Dennis took the role. Other recent gigs for Donovan included casting the hit musical Jesus' Kid Brother at the Hudson Theatre; One Slight Hitch, a show by Lewis Black (The Daily Show) at the Falcon Theatre; a musical workshop for Jeff Calhoun (Big River) at the Colony Theatre called It Came From Beyond; and Garbo for the Court Theatre, directed by Jules Aaron. Next up at ICT is Ray Cooney's British farce Caught in the Net.

Feature casting director Pam Dixon's big gig this year was the film of the comic book The Punisher. Thomas Jane, not an unknown but certainly not a star, nabbed the lead, but Dixon said it was her casting of Ben Foster (Six Feet Under, Get Over It) in a "character role that's totally a departure from what you've seen him do before" that was her favorite fit on that film. She also just finished casting the prequel to The Exorcist, and was happy to place James D'Arcy (Master and Commander) in the second lead role next to Stellan Skarsgaard. Dixon also has an association with auteur Robert Altman, and she's proud of her casting for his new film The Company: "You can't tell which are the actors and which are the real ballet dancers." She's already rolling on Altman's next project, Paint, to star Salma Hayek and James Franco.

Dixon also casts small independents when she can: Campbell Scott's The Secret Lives of Dentists, which nabbed a nod from the New York Film Critics Association for Hope Davis' performance (despite "no publicity," marvelled Dixon). She's also about to start on Alan Rudolph's Winter Angel. But the story that intrigued me was her taking on a $3 million independent from a Chicago filmmaker, Davidson Cole, whose film Design was at Sundance last year. Knowing she did the Altman films, Cole sent Dixon a copy of Design and the script for his new film, Angels. "I'd never seen a film like it before," Dixon said. "It was really well written, and very interestingly shot." And the Angels script, she effused, was "one of the best scripts I've ever read." So she met with Cole and found him "just really smart." She could see he was going places, so she took the job and quickly hooked him up with Evan Rachel Wood. It's a gratifying story, proving that Dixon doesn't just work with established genius independents like Altman and Rudolph, but can actually recognize a fresh talent as he emerges.

 

For the soccer film The Game of Their Lives, Cathy Sandrich-Gelfond had to find performers who could play a convincing game on the field, so she auditioned a lot of guys with more soccer than acting credits on their resumes. She didn't expect, though, that a rock star would nail the audition: Gavin Rossdale, the heartthrob frontman of the band Bush, is an ex-soccer player, and "he was really exciting in the room; everyone thought it was a great audition." It won't hurt with female audiences, either.

Janet Gilmore, who casts The Practice with Megan McConnell, had a brief, funny response to my question about what her biggest discovery of the year was: "How about discovering that 6 of our 10 series regulars were not coming back!" The retooled law drama, now headed by James Spader, has accordingly picked up in interest this year.

Libby Goldstein is best known as the casting director of the HBO hit Six Feet Under, for which she gets to do a lot of interesting casting. But her biggest challenge of the past year, of which she's proud, was "the entire cast of Playmakers," the ESPN series about pro football players. "That was so freakin' hard to cast. It wasn't HBO, they had no money, it was shooting in Toronto during the middle of the SARS scare, and the actors had to look like football players." I asked Goldstein, who sounded frazzled but still spunky after a tough day, if she was going to take on any pilots: "I'm completely swamped; it's ugly. But you know what? The less you work, the less your work, the more you work, the more you work. You know what I mean?"

I have a feeling we do, Libby.