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Zusatztext "Janet and Jane are responsible for discovering many of today's greatest screen actors. Their cinematic vision and uncommonly good taste have made them an invaluable part of the motion picture casting process. Their brilliant new book provides us with a true insider's view of the casting of a film. A Star Is Found should be required reading for every student of cinema."--Chris Columbus, director of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone "Casting directors are some of the unsung heroes in Hollywood, and these are two of the best." -- Movieline Informationen zum Autor JANET HIRSHENSON and JANE JENKINS have been partners in the Casting Company since 1981 and have worked with directors from Ron Howard and Wolfgang Petersen to Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Rob Reiner, Tim Burton, and John Hughes. In 1999 they were named the first-ever “Casting Directors of the Year” by the Hollywood Film Festival. They both live in Los Angeles. Leseprobe 1 * The Call JANE It began, as it usually does, with a phone call—this time, from Louisa Velis, Ron Howard’s longtime associate producer at Imagine Entertainment. “Russell Crowe’s deal for A Beautiful Mind is done, so we’re ready to go ahead. The budget is going to be tight, but of course there are great parts, and I’m sure you’ll come up with great actors, as always. Can you start putting a list together and meet with Ron on Friday? The wife and the roommate are especially important to him.” JANET Whether it’s a big film, a small one, or something in between, our job always begins with the Call. Sometimes the Call comes from a director we know well— Chris Columbus, Ron Howard, Wolfgang Petersen, Rob Reiner. With such long-standing relationships, the Call is almost a formality, a confirmation that it’s once again time for us to get to work. When the Call comes from a director we’ve never worked with, his first step is usually to schedule a meeting. (The director is so rarely a “she” that in this book, we’re just going to say “he,” with apologies to Hollywood’s female filmmakers. Although there are now lots of powerful women in Hollywood—producers, top agents, even the heads of several major studios—it’s still unusual for women to direct films. We’ve never been able to figure out why—surely if a woman has life-or-death power over someone else’s movie, she ought to be able to make her own—but with a handful of exceptions such as Nancy Meyers, most directors are men.) At this point in our career, we don’t exactly go on job interviews. But this initial meeting with the director—and, perhaps, his producer—pretty much serves that function, as we all figure out whether or not we want to work together. The director already knows that Jane and I have a long string of successful movies to our credit—but so do lots of our colleagues. So should he choose us, or one of Hollywood’s many other casting directors? Sometimes this decision is based on the type of film that is being planned. Perhaps the director is looking for someone to solve a particular problem— finding 300-pound jugglers for his circus movie, or getting access to the Latvian community for all those folk-dance scenes he’s planning. Most likely, though, he’s looking for the “vibe,” trying to feel out what our relationship will be like for the long, arduous months that casting a movie usually takes. I once heard of a producer who described filmmaking as a long road trip—he didn’t want to work with anyone with whom he wouldn’t enjoy traveling for eight, ten, twelve hours a day, week after week after week. This initial meeting is the director’s chance to find out what sharing that journey might be like. Such meetings usually start with the director describing his vision, with maybe a few additional words about the movie’s overall budget. Then Jane and I toss out ...
