confessions of an associate producer

the intricicies of a cattle call

auditions are a funny thing. being 'good' or 'great' is really only part of it [albeit, a major part]. do you have the look that is wanted for your character? how well do you look next to your co-star? is the experience you bring to the production too little or too much?

last week we sat through probably 200 auditions. we saw all sorts of people; a lady who was fired from being a train engineer for going 10 miles over the speed limit, a guy who was legally blind but ranked 5th in the world in darts [and was the ambassador to japan], a lady who marched into auditions singing 'called to serve' in german, a man who was in 'saturday's warrior', and countless throngs of others.

i've auditioned for plays before and know how hard it can be, but when you're on the other side of the room [sitting on the couch or behind the camera], you begin to understand why things are run the way they are. after two agencies on tuesday and two more on thursday, our open call on saturday began to drag a little long, depending on what role we were seeing. if we were seeing girls reading for our leads, sister gardner or sister gold, kirk took some time with them and got to know them and help them feel comfortable, then gave some direction for the scene and had them read it once or twice. and we saw a fair amount of 'good' to 'wow' performances.
on the other hand, i was surprised at how many people came in to read for the handful of small roles that we had, essentially any part but a young female. and while there were some people who impressed us even with their readings of three or four lines, kirk was right when he said we could throw a dart at any of a dozen people and be fine. so when we're in hour five of our third day and we have six people in a row come in and audition for 'mr. schmidt', yes, it's easy to feel like we're rushing them in and out, because we probably are.
conversely, the guy who came up to us as we were leaving the actor's lounge on saturday and asked to audition is one of two people being called back for schmidt.
so there you go.

i spent a few hours with kirk today working out the pacing and feel of the rain scene, which we've seen read so many ways over the past week. lots of walking around the apartment, throwing out good ideas and bad ideas, often because the qualitity of an idea isn't apparent immediately. we discussed theories of style, what works and what doesn't, ways to prepare both creatively and logistically, so that when we get to austria, we will know what's going on and how we can be at our creative best.

i used to wonder if natalie [kirk's wife], didn't like me much at first. now she compliments me on my hot pink shirt and we can toss around ideas and talk about the inner workings of a talent agency while kirk is nuking some corndogs and as i play with badgley, the world's only lovable rat dog.

we're working on securing the music we want [exciting but daunting], working through scenes to evoke maximum emotional impact while discussing the mutually admired greatness of wes anderson, plotting camera angles and movements, learning the difference between billy wilder and william wyler [and now i've already forgot who did what], excruciating over the strengths and weaknesses of those narrowed down for callbacks, placing their video clips next to each other and thinking aloud all of the pros and cons of not only each actress but also the combinations of the girls. and kirk taught me the bass line to 'ironman'.

tomorrow we have our last day of auditions, it's 1:44 a.m., and i'm up, addicted to scrubs.

posted by --jeff * @ 12:25 AM