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Wall Street Journal - 'In Praise of Matchmakers'
September 20, 2011
By JOANNE KAUFMAN
New York
A large stack of handwritten notes sits on Mark Saks's desk, cris de coeur from actors asking Mr. Saks, a New York casting director, to please consider them for a role on this or that series, in this or that movie. Next to the billets-doux is a hillock of Starbucks gift cards from performers who are apparently under the impression that Mr. Saks can be bought for beans.
Really, he has little use for pleading letters or plastic payola. (Note to would-be stars: Mr. Saks doesn't drink coffee.) And he takes no particular delight in the cache of gift certificates—more largesse—from grateful performers who, thanks to him, are employed. All he wants is a bit of acknowledgment from showbiz biggies (directors, producers, series creators) for the role he plays in filling roles on dramas like "Ringer," "Medium" and "The Good Wife," work that got him nominated for a 2011 Artios Award.
Established by the Casting Society of America (CSA) in 1985 to honor its own, the awards are given annually for outstanding achievement in casting for theater, film and television. Get the office pool going: The festivities, which are held simultaneously in New York and Los Angeles, will take place on Monday.
The hefty crystal trophy, which looks vaguely like the Washington Monument, can be viewed as a sop of sorts; casting directors aren't eligible for Tonys or Oscars (a very sore point with the CSA), though they have, at long last, planted their flag at the Emmys. For the record, Artios derives from the ancient Greek meaning "perfect" and "fitted."
"When people do good work they want to get recognized," said Pam Dixon, president of the 500-member CSA. But here's the problem: Many inside the industry minimize that good work. And many outside the industry don't know what that good work is. For years, Ms. Dixon's very own mother was clueless: "When I first went into casting," she said, "I called to tell her and she wanted to know what I had to do with fishing."
In fact, casting directors function as the human-resources department of the entertainment business. In much the way costume designers offer up sketches and swatches for a director's approval, casting directors—who work as independent operators or are affiliated with studios, directors or production companies—present a sedulously curated lineup of actors for parts large and very small. "Someone saying one line badly could take the audience right out of the movie," said Ms. Dixon. "You have to believe the pizza delivery guy is really a pizza delivery guy."
"Our job is to narrow down the choices for a project's creative team and bring in the quality, the type and the talent that might be the perfect fit. We're like great matchmakers," said Bernard Telsey, the New York vice president of the CSA and an Artios nominee for his work on the Broadway musical "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and the acclaimed revival of "The Normal Heart."
"We are very much part of the collaborative team. Ultimately, though, we're there to serve the vision of the
director and writer. I like to say we don't make the final choice but we make the final choices," continued Mr. Telsey, who insists that the casting-couch thing is malarkey. "There's a couch in my office conference room. But it's for my staff during late-night meetings. I'm sticking to that story."
To do the job well requires the stamina of a socialite. Mr. Saks goes to the theater three or four nights a week. When he's not in attendance on or off Broadway, he's at the movies, he's at end-of-semester talent shows presented by the drama departments at Juilliard, Yale, Rutgers and SUNY-Purchase, he's at film festivals, he's watching pilots with a late-night chaser of shows he's recorded on DVR. And, of course, he's holding auditions.
Casting directors have their own notions about what it takes to succeed in the profession. A willingness to spend endless hours in the dark is but one of them. They talk about having good taste and sharp instincts, about having a memory that compares favorably to an elephant's, encyclopedic knowledge and the ability to build consensus when faced with a screenwriter who wants Ryan Reynolds, a producer who envisions Ryan Gosling and a director who's pushing for Ryan Phillippe.
"We're the person on the creative team who has to get everyone to agree," Mr. Telsey said. "It's like trying to get the whole family to agree about what to order on the pizza."
For Tara Rubin, nominated for her work on the Broadway revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without
Really Trying," a vivid imagination is key. "Good casting directors can take a leap of faith," she said, "They can look at the performance of an actor in a comedy and think, 'Wow, there's a depth of character here that I'd like to see in a classical piece or a contemporary drama.'"
A refusal to take "no" for an answer should be considered a prerequisite. When a director told Ms. Dixon that her preferred candidate for the starring role in a movie wasn't "classy" enough, she made sure the actor showed up for inspection in a suit. Yes, he got the part. But Ms. Dixon hasn't always prevailed. "I wanted to cast Russell Crowe in a film when no one knew who he was," she recalled. "The producer would not go with him. In the end, the person financing the film has the ultimate say."
Sometimes it's the actor who needs convincing. It took Mr. Telsey three trips to Jesse L. Martin's home in
Connecticut to convince the future "Law & Order" star to audition for this little project called "Rent." "To him, it was an Off-Broadway musical and 'I don't do musicals,'" Mr. Telsey said. "I had to convince him it wasn't a traditional musical, that it was something new and amazing." When the show opened to raves, "Jesse said I'd changed his life."
"We all have this myth that actors are always looking for jobs," Mr. Telsey added. "Well, that's not true. They pass on things, agents pass on things, and it's our job as casting directors to be a salesman for the project."
Mr. Telsey, a former actor—his most formidable credit: Matthew Broderick's understudy in the 1983 Broadway hit "Brighton Beach Memoirs"—thinks that his brief stint as a performer has served him well as a casting director. "I understand an actor's process and what an actor goes through," he said. "There's a language you have to know to talk to an actor. You can't just say 'do it better.'"
The continuing snub from the American Theater Wing and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a source of frustration for Mr. Saks; his consolation is job satisfaction. "When you give actors a chance to play something they've not done before, when they're taking a step out of their comfort zone or doing something larger, I feel a real sense of accomplishment," he said.
"Whether we get Artios awards or Oscars or Emmys or Tonys, that's beside the point," agreed Mr. Telsey. "It's just making sure people know there's this profession of casting directors doing a job. These actors you see on stage or on TV didn't just appear there out of nowhere," he added.
But perhaps casting directors are more appreciated than they realize. "Great casting directors offer terrific
value," said Jed Bernstein, producer of the recent Broadway revival of "Driving Miss Daisy." "Often so much
value as to make everyone on the creative team seem like complete geniuses."
Ms. Kaufman writes about culture and the arts for the Journal.