Casting Call From Hell

For me, the most difficult, mind-numbing, and time-consuming aspect of any video/film project has always been casting. There's something inherently inhumane about cattle call casting; it involves posting ads on a variety of internet casting sites, responding to dozens (if not hundreds) of responses, arranging individual auditions, and renting a space in which to hold the auditions. It's a miracle if any of the people who say they're going to show up actually do, and the ones who do come usually come late. And that's all before you've actually auditioned anybody.

Once the auditions begin, the whole process becomes a kind of mental balancing act. You have to weigh how good the person is in the audition against how good you think they'll be on an actual set. Plus, you have to consider a myriad of other factors, including their potential chemistry with your other stars, their punctuality and professionalism, and their personality. Ultimately, a lot of casting boils down to how willing you think you as the director/producer might be to spend a significant amount of time with any of your actors.

After holding a few audition sessions, I wasn't feeling too comfortable with any of my potential cast members. Plus, due to the fact that I was attempting to shoot while simultaneously taking a full load of classes, my shooting schedule was necessarily fluid. Dates would frequently change and my actors would have to scramble to keep up. But mostly, I just wasn't sure if I wanted to spend a significant amount of time with any of the people that I was considering casting (some of them were very annoying, if not outright egotistical jerks).

I decided the simplest solution would be to cast people I knew. So I turned to my friends. My roommate Mike was the first one cast. He was in the film school with me, and had done a lot of theater in high school and college. He was also probably the funniest person I've ever met. One story which will tell you all you need to know about Mike occurred just after we had started living together. Mike was sitting on the couch in our apartment wearing nothing but basketball shorts and typing on my laptop, which he was holding on his lap. I teased him by ordering him not to type on my laptop if he wasn't wearing a shirt. He quickly put on a shirt, dropped his pants, plopped my computer down on his lap and said, "Is that better?" I knew Mike would be perfect as the boorish, idiotic brother to the main character.

I also decided to cast my friend Dave as Mike's "girlfriend" Francie. Dave was also one of the funniest people I knew, and was terrific at improvising. Plus, he was probably the only person I could convince to wear a dress for an extended period of time without being paid to do so.

For the character of the sister, Julie, I decided to cast my friend Silvija. Silvija was a graduate of the theater program at USC and had been involved in several of my past film projects (most notably as a flesh-eating zombie in one of my low-budget horror movies). She's funny, biting, and a little bit crazy. Plus we each understood how the other one worked, and as fellow crew members we were more than compatible.

I decided to cast myself in the fourth and final role, though, hopefully, not out of any sense of egotism. I already had the material memorized, and I realized that it would be simpler to play the character myself rather than having to finagle a fourth person's schedule. Plus, Ben is the straight guy in the script, which means that he doesn't even have to be funny, which was perfect, considering the fact that I am by far the least funny in our cast of four.

With my cast set, all that was left to do was put the finishing touches on the script, arrange the schedule, and shoot the damn thing.