Casting: Names vs. Talent and Going with Your Gut

Here is an article I wrote for KiptonART. You can get those at www.kiptonart.com/magazine.

So I've been doing some casting lately. It's fun. I love talking to actors. For whatever reason, thankfully, I've managed to stick to meeting with only some classy folks. It goes without saying that I'm looking to cast based on two qualities: Who fits the role best and who's the name that will get the most eyes on my film.

This all makes me think back to sophomore year in high school. Have you ever heard somebody say that the biz is like high school? A popularity contest?






















Shane Tela was a girl (yes, a girl named Shane, straight out of a Johnny Cash song, right?) who started at my school freshman year. I went to a really snobby Upper East Side school that was bad, but not like it’s portrayed on Gossip Girl. Shaney was a half-Black, half-White downtown import. I don't remember much about Shaney (I call her Shaney, she calls me Seany, it’s really cute, trust me) from freshman year though. That year, the new girls who got all the attention were two who made close friends with popular girls right out of the gate—one presumably because she came from a pedigree of cool people, the other because her Brother was a cool senior that year (both of these girls later redeemed themselves and turned out fantastic). Shaney was pretty but nobody noticed because we were too busy gossiping over who was going to date the other two hot freshman noobs (discussions were moot, as they ended up dating older guys, a guy in a band and a jock, right away), and Shaney never made herself look nice for school. It wasn't until sophomore year that I really made friends with Shane.



I believe the first cool kid to "discover" Shaney was another friend of mine, a year younger than us, named Ally (“discovered” meant when we became friends with them, but “born” referred to when they started at our school). She was one of the uptown-downtown girls who went to concerts and clubs on school nights. Ally, Shaney and I started to hang out. We were all quickly bffaeaeae. From there, things hit a very Gladwell-esque "tipping point.” See, Shaney was absolutely gorgeous. She didn't wear make up to school though, just put her curly hair up in a bun and wore loose t-shirts. When she went out it was different. Punk rock bands at Irving Plaza and John Mayer alike, along with then club promoters and future owners of some club called Marquee all lusted after the 15-year old Shaney.

Word of Shaney’s newly discovered downtown coolness wafted back to the high school lounge (center of universe). Now that there were other cool kids vouching for her coolness, everyone needed to jump on the bandwagon, playing it off as if they had been there all this time. A race began toward who would be the first to make out with her (come on, remember how lame we were in high school?).

It started with feigning of interest. Oh, yeah…she’s cool I guess…kinda hot. I don’t really know her though. Then it got to the casual anecdotes telling people how tight you are with her. Shane Tela…oh yeah, of course, we had World Civ I together, she’s like one of my favs. Soon, we got to, so who’s hotter, Jenna, Annie or Shane (Jenna and Annie were previous consensus hottest girls in grade)?

By the time Brittany and Allie’s (both very popular) co-sweet 16 party came around, Shaney fever had hit critical mass. The debate over whom she would grant her first kiss to was almost as hot a topic as the Yankees’ simultaneous playoff run. An ESPN mini-series documenting the events would have been called The Upper East Side is Burning.

Ok, enough dramatizing. So Shaney totally skipped over the semi-popular dudes and went right to the top, making out with both Ben and Charlie (two very popular guys, made out with every girl in the grade at some point). As far as order, it depends who you ask, I just listed them alphabetically. I can assure you, Ben and Charlie will both fight for their claim as first.

That was Shaney’s coming out party to our neck of the woods. Thankfully though, Shaney was the cool downtown chick that I got to know at first, and never turned over to the dark side. She never dated popular guys after that, actually going for totally obscure options like Greg, the smart, geeky, all around nice guy that we all thought she was kidding about at first.

The popular kids’ fixation on Shaney never ended. One year younger than us, there was a very pretty Persian girl named Nushien. Nushien and Shaney had two things in common. They weren’t White Jews, like the rest of us, and their names. So Nushien was dubbed “New Shane” forever. Two years younger was Lily, a girl who vaguely looked like a mix between the two, and was thus called “New New Shane.”

The “breakout success” of Shane Tela was mimicked by that of Nushien and Lily. Once the mold was created by Shane, we naturally attempted to fit others into the same archetype she had built.

Exotic. Downtown. Hot but in her own way. Weird. Quirky. Unknown. Different.

Greta Gerwig?

Could I go so far as to call Ally Shaney’s Joe Swanberg and Ben and Charlie her Ben Stiller and Noah Baumbach? The friends she had before people recognized her, all the shows she’d go to, that’s her Mumblecore. Brittany and Allie’s party was Greenberg (Gerwig’s Scott Rudin produced, Ben Stiller co-starring movie).

In case you don’t know who Greta Gerwig is, a summary of this story: Joe Swanberg is the big director of the Mumblecore genre/movement that if you know it you love it but you’re in the minority. He hates the word, but it’s the only way to easily describe his films, which are all about interpersonal relationships, told in a very improvisational, almost documentary-like style, with lo-fi handheld cameras, available light, and little staging. Greta was his girlfriend and muse for a while, starring in his pseudo-breakout film Hannah Takes the Stairs (see it!), amongst others. She’s in all the Mumblecore movies, the total darling of the sub-genre. Noah Baumbach, faux-indie guy, just cast her in his new movie where she co-stars with Ben Stiller. So she’s crossing into the mainstream now, and lots of people are all the sudden all about her, when just two years ago at SXSW nobody with any money cared. I love Greta Gerwig and am very excited that she’s having such success. I hope she sticks with what got her there.

So Shaney’s story bears many similarities to this one. Gerwig is not some classically trained actress. All of her talent was there at the beginning, when she was doing zero budget films in Joe’s apartment. Now, she’s repped by UTA, has as many films in the pipeline for the next two years as she has done the rest of her career, and is on her way to being a recognized name somewhere besides Brooklyn, like Los Angeles.

What strikes me is the fact that she proved her talent time and time again in little indie films. That wasn’t the issue. She had the track record. It just wasn’t until somebody like Baumbach vouched for her that anyone else would. There are so few people out there who take risks! Nobody goes after the girl who they think is pretty before their friends think she’s pretty too. It’s absurd and sad. In the end, I’m happy her immense talent is being recognized and put to use.

The “New Shane” phenomenon reminds me of Hollywood’s need to repeat success stories, or archetypes, if you will, and formulas, dare I add. For every Devil Wears Prada there’s a Confessions of a Shopaholic.






















Danny McBride follows in the footsteps of Will Ferrell.

















Colin Farrell was supposed to be the next Tom Cruise.









We always need people to be the next something or somebody. The next My Big Fat Greek Wedding (vomit).






All of this reflects what I said earlier. No decisions made on your gut. In order to sell anyone on your decision you need to be able to show evidence of similarities it has to other successful decisions. I don’t know any of the behinds the scenes of how Gerwig got cast, but I’m assuming there was some dissension from Scott Rudin’s camp. The film’s being repped by UTA, so maybe it wasn’t even Baumbach who “discovered” her, and it was more of the agency pushing her. Like I said, I have no idea, I can only speculate that it was a tough decision because he had Nicole Kidman play the lead in his last movie, and now he goes with a relative unknown. It upsets me that I’ve been hearing Baumbach get credit for Gerwig when, if anyone should, it’s Swanberg, but in reality, she’s just great on her own and it never mattered who “discovered” her. Either way, at least there are exceptions to the rule, like this, unlike in the music industry where gut decisions are completely a thing of the past.

Just like actors don’t all of the sudden gain exponentially more talent when they do a studio project, they also don’t lose it when they’re a part of a bad movie, or because they start to go crazy in their private life necessarily. I relate this to fantasy baseball. Players’ stocks drop a whole lot sometimes when they have a bad year, or get hurt. I don’t play anymore because I get totally addicted, but I always used to get so confused as to why people forget the five good years the guy had before the one bad one.

Same with actors. Mickey Rourke is an extreme example, but just because he went crazy didn’t mean he was a bad actor. He definitely had a bad agent for everything between Angelheart (1987) and Sin City (2005), but he’s not bad in a lot of those otherwise shitty movies. So it wasn’t that his talent was gone, he just went nuts. Granted, in this case, people didn’t cast him in good roles because he was hard to deal with, but that’s besides the point. His star fell, therefore everyone started saying he was a bad actor. Let’s be real here. I know everyone now says oh yeah, I always loved Mickey Rourke, happy to see him back. Who actually feels that way? How many people kept him on their radar? Nobody except for Darren Aronofsky. Everyone said that not only is he crazy but he sucks. He never sucked. He was just crazy, still is I guess. If people really held love for Mickey Rourke, it wouldn’t have taken so long for him to get a good role again.

I have a list of actors who have fallen off the radar for one reason or another who I want to cast at some point in my career. I’m a firm believer that talent doesn’t go away. Sometimes it’s a case of an actor who’s a one trick pony—they have one character they play, and they nail it, but eventually we get sick of it. These are even great actors to bring back years later because their one character might be able to be framed completely differently with the passage of time.

I completely understand the value and necessity of names, especially at this time. I’ll write an article at some point about how just because the top two films at the box office are huge, it doesn’t mean that the entire industry is thriving. Times are still tough in film. Names are always important. It is a business, not just an art. In case my overall point didn’t come through, let me make myself clear.

The above examples all lead to one thing. Take the risk. Go with your gut. When you think somebody’s going to be amazing for the part, but they’re not the best name necessarily—as long as you have enough financing to physically make your film—go for it. Be the one who breaks that actor’s or actress’ career. Allow them to make your movie the best movie it can be. Don’t retire being Tony Scott—a very talented filmmaker who has never made a good movie because he just chooses bankable action projects (i.e. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 remake) and casts bankable stars (i.e. Travolta’s hair situation in that film) who aren’t necessarily going to perform well.

There are a lot of name actors out there who are there because they’re the most talented. There are a lot out there for other reasons though. This article isn’t going to tell you how to distinguish between the two, that’s where your gut comes in. To the kids in high school reading this—go date the unpopular girl who you really got along with in Bio. To the casting directors and filmmakers out there—be the one who makes name actors out of talented ones rather than the one who takes names over talent.