Playing the Casting Game

The reason I love this work...is because it never really feels like "work". Every phase is fun, and when you work with people like my casting director, Debra McCarthy, you really form a bond. We've become more like sisters.

Creating character breakdowns, pouring through hundreds and hundreds of submissions looking for just the right talented actor for the role, and being challenged to look at something other than my first thought, are just a few reasons Debra and I work together so often. Most of our work is done late night because we're total night owls. This particular project has been fun because we're not trying to work with "name" actors. We're just looking for the best of the character/improv actors that are out there.

The cast is coming together very nicely! We start pre-reads end of next week, and will probably have call backs by June 10th. If all goes as planned, our movie will be CAST by June 15th! We are seeing at least 20-25 people average for the 10 leads for our ensemble comedy, and will likely cast the remaining supporting roles from among the rest of the talented bunch.

You'll see some familiar faces from previous projects of mine because we've been graced to work with some great talent on the verge of mega-stardom :) It's only a matter of time in this business, and most of us have flipped the sand hourglass a few times!

Looking forward to meeting our full cast soon!

Refining the Script with a Reading

My good friend and our Art Director for the film, Mark McQuown, came up with the idea of doing a table read for the screenplay. Between he, Debra McCarthy, our casting director and myself and producer, Mark Cardone, we arranged it at the Complex in Hollywood.

Mark cast several of his students from the American Music and Dramatic Academy, Debra brought in several professional actors she thought would be great in the roles, and I brought a few of my actor friends from previous projects. About 25 actors read over 50 roles and Ashley McCarthy narrated.

For Laree' and I, it was a great experience to hear our words come to life and see what scenes really worked and which could use some refining. I created a critique form that really helped us narrow down and focus on the best characters, weak characters, emotional moments, confusing area etc.

We found some of our sub characters were hilarious and will probably beef them up a bit more and some characters could be combined or taken out. Our lead characters were the strongest and most developed and really had heart for this audience. One thing that stood out the most was the amount of laughter throughout, which is great for a comedy!

At the end of the day, wrapping everything up at The Ruby theater, we found our film is reminiscent of AFTER HOURS, AMERICAN PIE and HANGOVER. Now we are off to a quick week of rewriting and tightening so we can move into casting!

Thank you to all of you that made this possible and for those of our friends who came to the reading for the first time to give us a fresh perspective. All of your input has been very helpful and is much appreciated!