Friday, January 26, 2007

Casting Journal 2 of 3

PRODUCTION > CASTING

Casting Eddie’s spent but none-the-less loving mother, Merideth proved to be the real challenge. And coming up with the right solution proved to be a point of contention between me and my producers.

My feeling was, is that the film hinges around whoever plays Eddie. If you don’t believe the boy – you don’t believe the film. So whoever we cast as Merideth is the woman who most believably fits with who we want with Eddie.

My feeling was also that I hate spending more money then is necessary, so I felt that we should bring in women to immediately read against the 5 boys we had narrowed down to for Eddie. In one day. I mean, why would I want to even waste my time seeing auditions, if they could never work with the kids we had cast?

Jack and Claudia disagreed. They thought we should have an audition for the mother, narrow that down – and then do a third call back where we paired the boys to the mothers later. And thank God they thought so. More on that tomorrow…

Having had to reschedule for after the break (no one likes to audition for shorts two weeks before Christmas apparently) – we were out of the swing of things. I’ll admit the last thing I was mentally prepared for was seeing auditions, after the whirlwind that was my New Years trip to New York.
But somehow, as the women trickled in (emphasis on trickle, as just about a dozen of the 50 we called showed up) we quickly found a great range of mothers for our Eddies. Usually at these auditions, the pickings are a bit slim. But we were floored by the talent that came in. Just like with the boys, we were able to find 5 great choices for Merideth. One for each our Eddie’s. And suddenly I was overcome by the exciting notion, that in a week I’d have my cast.

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