Dear Bonnie,
Thank you for your awesome weekly column and your amazing book which I read like the Bible!
Vulture just published a thorough article on casting directors, and I would love to get your thoughts on it.
Thanks so much, and keep up the great writing,
Jeff
Thanks for sending me that link, Jeff! You rock. I’m deep in book mode for the 4th edition, so I’m not doing as many rounds at various places on the Internet these days, and I definitely would’ve missed this one! Good piece!
This is certainly a nice look at some great casting directors, and everything they’re saying about chemistry, about the task of creating a cast *around* an attached star, and about rooting for someone you just KNOW is gonna “make it” someday, all of it’s right on. I say this not only as someone who casts a few awesome projects every year, but as someone who interviewed hundreds of casting directors before starting in on my own casting journey in 2003.
I especially like the conversation about the shift in the (former) stigma of being “a TV actor.” Of course, let’s ask Kevin Spacey about taking that one step further, where doing something that’s considered “new media” gets you at the leading edge of the next wave of micro-distribution in our beloved industry! (If you’ve not seen this amazing vid — first of all, you should’ve been on my mailing list, when I shared ’em both, a month and a half ago, for cryin’ out loud — check out this bit of badassery [5 min. version, 47 min. version] from Kevin Spacey himself, about what I’ve been saying forever is the shift of “Beams and Screens” for this stuff.)
I love seeing the evolution of our work, in this article you’ve shared with me, Jeff. More people need to talk about the changes our industry faces, and be excited about where we’re headed! It’s a great time to be a part of the creative process, wouldn’t you say? Whether it’s our job to bring choices of fabrics to a director so he can select what’s best for wardrobe, to bring choices of lighting set-ups so he can select what illuminates everything correctly for the story he’s trying to tell, or to bring choices of actors together so the exact right folks inhabit the characters for whom the screenwriter has strung together words, we’re all a part of the storytelling process, and that’s really freakin’ awesome!
Stay inspired!
Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!
Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/001726.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.