It’s been more than a month since HBO’s popular Sex and the City had its much-ballyhooed finale; as a straight male without cable, I wasn’t among the show’s target audience, and I obliged with almost total indifference for the show’s long, storied run. So, sorrry, I can’t offer my condolences, much less comment, on the show’s demise.

But I have noticed a number of new shows this pilot season that seem to designed to pick up where Sex left off—or at least have taken the series as an inspiration for relatively frank approaches to the lives of single urban women.

Lisa Mionie is casting Bad Girl’s Guide, a half-hour pilot presentation for UPN, which follows a trio—or, as the synopsis raffishly calls them, a “posse”—of San Francisco singles who form a sort of club with the idea that “ ‘bad girls’ have more fun.” Though they’re all urban professionals, it seems that a local truck stop café will figure prominently in their sex lives. Executive producer is Tony Krantz (24, Felicity, Mulholland Dr.), co-executive producer Nina Lederman (Rock Me Baby, Will & Grace).

And then there’s Me Me Me, another UPN half-hour pilot presentation being cast by Suzanne Goddard-Smythe. This has a pair of “young, thin, hot, self-absorbed” in New York City specifically looking to marry millionaires. At the creative helm are Tom Straw (Dave’s World, Grace Under Fire) and Lisa Birnbach (best known as the author of the 1980s bestseller The Official Preppy Handbook).

Finally, on the fast track from pilot to an eight-episode series order for the Oxygen network is the half-hour My Best Friend Is a Big Fat Slut, the brainchild of writer/producer Claudia Lonow (Less Than Perfect). The attention-getting title has reportedly tested well with Oxygen’s young female viewers—presumably, twentysomething women who’ve grown up on Sex and the City. Big Fat Slut, which is being cast by Jason Wood for sitcom experts Carsey-Werner-Mandabach, follows two Midwesterners (Bree Turner and Joy Gohring) who’ve moved to Hollywood. Oxygen execs have described it as a down-market Sex and the City: no Manolo Blahniks, fabulous careers, or million-dollar wardrobes.

Back to School

Casting director Linda Phillips-Palo maintains a balanced casting diet, mixing up studio features, MOWs, and indies to keep it fresh. She’s cast Coppola films—The Rainmaker for Francis, Virgin Suicides for Sofia—as well as such TV biopics as Growing Up Brady and The Audrey Hepburn Story and family fare like Finding Home and the upcoming Fly Boys. Last year she cast an unconventional mockumentary, Death and Texas, as well as Jeepers Creepers II. Most recently she’s worked on a low-budget drama, director Miranada July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, and a low-budget sci-fi film, Bennett J. Davlin’s Mem-Or-E.

And recently she put out a breakdown for a UCLA student film, The Black Plums, described a lesbian-themed (but not explicit) short. It came referred to her by her casting colleague, Robert McGee (with whom she co-cast many of the above titles, and on his own cast Greetings From Tucson and Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss), who couldn’t do it himself.

“I read it, and it’s very interesting, by a very interesting young director,” she said of the script its writer/director, Meredyth Wilson (no relation to The Music Man’s author, we presume). “The project has a Bergman flair to it.”

We imagine that Phillips-Palo, with her contacts and files, would be able to dip into a wider talent pool than might be at a student filmmaker’s fingertips. But, I wondered, did she encounter any resistance among actors or their agents to taking a non- or low-paying gig during pilot season, as has been the case among many theatre casting directors I’ve spoken to?

“No,” said Phillips-Palo. “Theatre is a bigger commitment. But here the director can just schedule the actors in; it’s a short shoot.”

Phillips-Palo said this is the first student film she’s cast on the West Coast; an acting student, then acting teacher at the University of Buffalo, she apparently cast student films on the East Coast prior to moving West.

“I keep it very eclectic,” she said of her casting career. Actors who succeed usually have the same approach, at least at the start of their careers. And certainly getting into the office of a feature casting director, even for a non-paying gig, has its side benefits.

Casting Spanish in America

Casting director Julio Perillian came to the U.S. recently for an unorthodox casting assignment: to find Cuban actors for a Spanish film.

Malas Temporadas is a new film from award-winning Spanish director Manuel Martín Cuenca (La Flaqueza del bolchevique was his most recent European hit), and two characters are Cuban. Apparently it’s not uncommon for there to be a token Cuban character or two in a Spanish film—and one actor seems to get all the best gigs.

“Jorge Perugorría, who lives in Havana, does all the Cuban roles in Spanish movies,” said Perillian. Malas director Cuenca told Perillian, “I don’t want to see the same guy in this movie. Go find some new talent.”

When I last spoke to Perillian, he was in New York looking at talent, and was planning to come to Los Angeles to look further. Even with the large Latino populations in both cities, he was facing some challenges.

“Generally speaking, it’s hard to find Cuban actors,” said Perillian, who said he got perhaps 250 submissions for the two roles from the Breakdown. “Fifteen-20 percent of the actors I see don’t speak Spanish well enough, 30-40 percent are Mexican, about 25 percent are Puerto Rican. There are only about 20 percent that look Cuban and can play Cuban. There’s actually a Jewish man out of L.A. who speaks perfect Spanish and English.”

It hasn’t helped him much that a few “pretty famous individuals came to me” interested in the part. “I had a huge pop star come to me, I can’t say who, but we had to tell him, ‘You don’t fit in the role.’ ”

The film’s premise is based on a Spanish saying: When bad times come, good times follow. Perhaps appropriately, it’s slated to shoot in the fall in Madrid.

Stage Casting

It’s not uncommon to meet actors with musical theatre chops who’ve come to L.A. to do film and TV—and then end up finding out there are quite a few musical theatre opportunities here, as well, even if the pay scales do vary.

No self-respecting L.A. stage actor can go long without knowing Bruce H. Newberg, who in addition to casting feature films also finds talent for musicals presented by Reprise! The Best of Broadway, or Michael Donovan, who casts commercials as well as plays for Equity houses like Long Beach’s International City Theatre, and for first-class Equity 99-Seat theatres like the brand new Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena.

And one thing about local theatre that is almost certain: If a production has bothered to hire an actual casting director, it is probably actually paying the actors, at least a little more than the $7-15 a performance mandated by the L.A. 99-Seat Plan.

I spoke to Donovan recently about Dinah Was, a musical starring ER’s Yvette Freeman as the 1950s singing star Dinah Washington, which played in L.A. at the Tamarind Theatre before having a successful New York run (and being taped by L.A. Theatre Works for posterity). The musical will be revived in late April at International City Theatre, with Freeman in the lead and possibly one other actor from the original cast. Other than that, he’s casting Caucasian non-singers and African-American singers and musicians for this story about Dinah’s stint in Las Vegas at a time when black performers had to use the back entrance.

Dinah Was is Donovan’s 18^th show with ICT, a scrappy company that started out as a 99-seater and moved up to Equity status some years ago, with major support from the city of Long Beach. Is there a deep and wide enough talent pool for musical theatre here?

“It’s a wonderful pool, actually,” he said. A few years back he cast Raisin for ICT, and “had no problems” finding a good cast for that show—even though, as with Dinah Was, he was up against pilot season. “There wasn’t a huge turnout for Raisin [because of pilot season], but we still ended up with terrific people.” On that show he had to do some unfortunate last-minute casting: Star Nell Carter died the week before opening,  and Broadway veteran Carol Dennis was quickly drafted in her place.

Donovan admitted he did have some trouble getting name actors out for Johnny Boy, a new Neil Simon-esque period play slated to open at Burbank’s Falcon Theatre at the end of March.

“Last year we did an open call for Steel Magnolias at the Falcon, and we were bombarded,” he said. “We did an open call for Johnny Boy during pilot season, and the turnout was medium.” He was puzzled by what this said about actors’ ambition, given that the choice was between “doing a show that’s been done before a lot, or having the chance to create a role” in a world premiere play.

He also casts Shakespeare LA’s annual summer offerings, and as part of his assocation with that company, he also casts its annual fundraiser: a star-studded reading of a Shakespeare play.

“Last year, they did Two Gents, and the cast was Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, William Shatner, Brad Garrett, French Stewart,” he reeled off. “They intentionally massacre it, and go a little ‘off book.’ The money raised with that event pays for Shakespeare LA’s whole season.”

This year’s play is The Tempest, and the event is slated either for Apr. 12 or 26 at the Geffen, Donovan said.

For his part, Bruce H. Newberg is in the midst of casting Reprise!’s spring production of Company for director David Lee.