A key player in pre-production, the casting director is the person responsible for coming up with the actors who will provide something of value - foreign sales potential, box office bang, or simply a winning personality- to a director's film. To learn more about the services offered by casting directors, we spoke with two who specialize in markedly different types of independent films.
Don Pemrick is currently the Vice President of Casting at IRS Media. In addition to casting and consulting on all of the IRS films, he casts projects outside of IRS through his company, Don Pemrick Casting. Among the films he has cast this year are Tom and Viv, Circuitry Man II, Bank Robber, Playmaker, Spirit, Natural Causes, and Flexing with Monty. Other films include One False Move, Shakes the Clown, and My New Gun.

Filmmaker: You often need a bankable cast before any type of financing can be arranged. How can someone get a cast in place without already having a distribution deal?

Pemrick: It doesn't matter if you are talking about a $200,000 independently financed film or a $3 million picture here at IRS Media. Nobody, not even the studios, will just suddenly greenlight the entire budget of a film without certain casting locked down. The type of consulting services that I provide here at IRS are exactly what the smaller independents, the young writers especially, should be getting. They need to be working with a casting director very early on in the process.

Filmmaker: What's the process for you consulting services on the IRS Media films?

Pemrick:One of the things I do is try to determine who needs a movie. I keep in touch with the agents on a daily basis, everyone from the major agencies to the smaller ones. I feel that I have a good handle on which actor or actress needs what kind of job. It's not just in terms on money. A case in point is Patrick Dempsey whom we cast in Bank Robber. The role is a male lead whose age in the script is incredibly difficult to cast. He's like 20 to 26. There are name actors in this age range but are they going to jump into a $1 million movie with a first-time director? Probably not for the money we have.So now I have to ask myself, who need this movie for their career? Well Patrick Dempsey, after talking to his agency, needed this film. Here's a guy who has made a career playing skirt chasing teenage romantic kinds of characters. He never had the opportunity to play an adult with adult problems.

Filmmaker: I felt that One False Move was one of the most beautifully cast films I've seen in years. How did that cast come together?

Pemrick: We played the name game in One False Move. That was a big movie for us at the time. It cost something million. Well, we talked about Kurt Russell, Dennis Quaid, Jeff Bridges-all those kinds of names. And in reading the script, my whole problem with this was that the Hurricane character was not the lead role. One False Move is truly an ensemble film. A big star playing Hurricane would have slanted the film and the audience would have been pissed off. First of all, you don't even see that character for almost 17 minutes into the film. And then you keep jumping back to Cynda Williams and Billy Bob Thornton and Michael Beach. So Carl Franklin and I talked often and Bill Paxton was the way we wanted to go. Bill had never played a vulnerable and sympathetic character before. In Aliensand all of his other previous work, he was such a dark character. So, once again we were able to go after someone with a lot of credibility and with a name. Maybe not a name that opens a picture, but his was a good name and, more importantly, he was incredibly right for the part. We were really playing someone against type. And that's a big thing. You are not going to get Christopher Walken to play a villain in a $2 million movie. Christopher Walken is a brilliant actor but give Christopher Walken a role like Hurricane and I think you would have a better chance of getting him for your film.

Filmmaker: When a film's budget is low enough and you don't need to have an actor or actress who can necessarily "open" a picture, what type of names do you look for?

Pemrick: There are certain actors that while not maybe bankable as leads, certainly are terrific for ensembles. IRS has never paid a huge amount of money for one actor. I think that is the kiss of death in a $1 million to $3 million movie. Overpaying one actor means you have to take it away from the other actors and then you end with a movie that has one name above the title carrying it. So you spread your money. Say you have $300,000 above the line for a film. You have to find creative ways of making it work so that you can still have name actors in most of the leading roles. On a film like Bank Robber, the Forest Whitaker and the Judge Reinhold roles were originally boarded for only seven days but those seven days were spread over three weeks. So in this instance there was no way we were going to get a well-known name for the role. We couldn't afford to pay someone properly based on this kind of schedule. The only way to do it would be to board them consecutively. I knew I could make a much better deal for a week than I could for three. So we did just that. We ended up shooting both Forest and Judge in six consecutive days.

Filmmaker: Couldn't you just have fought for more money?

Pemrick: I don't believe that you can buy a good actor. There's a philosophy of some people working in this business that if you can throw a lot money in the air it will stick to somebody. I don't believe this at all. I have worked on a film where the producer attempted to do just this thing. Just throw $750,000 at an actor for two weeks worth of work. "He's got Malibu payments. He's got housepayments like the rest of us." On films with bigger budgets it may work but not on low budget films.There is no reason for someone at a place in their career to suddenly work with a first-time director only for the money. People think, "Oh well, so and so will work for me as a favor." That is so rare. First, the material has to be there. There has to be a role that actors want to play.

Filmmaker: I noticed that while the films you have cast at IRS are filled with wonderful, recognizable actors, you don't use cameos very often.

Pemrick:For us, cameos don't mean much. It may be fun to have cameos in a comedy but in a drama it can really hurt you. You defeat the purpose of drawing an audience into the characters by suddenly throwing in a cameo. Are Forest Whitaker and Judge Reinhold cameos working six days on Bank Robber? Some people might say that they are, but if you watch the film, Forest and Judge are seen throughout the entire story. The audience never feels cheated. Nothing infuriates an audience more than seeing a name in the billing block and also in the main titles and then finding out that this actor is in one tiny scene. In doing this you are completely misleading the audience. And more importantly, as a producer, your buyers will kill you. You may stick someone like Eric Roberts, a person who has a huge international value, in a little part to be able to tell your buyers in Japan that you have Eric Roberts. But once these buyers actually view the movie, you'll never sell them another film.

Filmmaker: What are some of the market concerns that come into play when casting an independent film?

Filmmaker:Often it's about foreign sales. And you have to consider that the foreign market is about two years behind us. This is to say that those who are popular in Europe today are not necessarily the same people who are hot over here. For example, David Hassellhof has something like five gold albums in England and Germany. Alyssa Milano is known as this huge singer in Japan. For example, take Tom and Viv, a film I just did starring Miranda Richardson and Willem Dafoe. It just wrapped in London at $5 million. It's a period film from a T.S. Eliot play. We have four investors-IRS, Lumiere, some others-involved in this movie. It was our biggest film to date. I sat down with the director and we came up with a list of who we felt creatively was T.S. Eliot in the parameters of our script. There were maybe 17 names on the list. And all had name value. That list then went to the four investors for their approval. There were only three names that made it on all lists! But luckily one of the names was Willem Dafoe so we were okay.

Filmmaker: Do solicitations that come with a letter saying that so-and-so is attached get more weight than those without "attachments"?

Pemrick: We get maybe 100 scripts a week and they should run a survey on how many of the same actors are attached to each script. That same actor in cover letters will be attached to something like 14 to 18 scripts. And it's total crap. All the producer thinks he has to say is, "Oh, well the agent of the actor is reading it." Producers will say they have Matt Dillion because they sent the script to Matt Dillon's agent. Meaning that the agent hasn't sent it back yet so that must mean he want to do it.

Filmmaker:One of the things that come up all the time in low-budget filmmaking is asking the cast and crew to take deferments. How do you negotiate these types of deals?

Pemrick:Personally I would prefer to just pay everyone across the board a rate of scale plus ten percent. For everyone. I hate to get into nightmare situations when you're trying to give the same level actors different prices on the same film. Often agents will agree only if I guarantee that no other actor is getting more money. So I would prefer in a perfect world to pay everyone scale plus ten. Filmmaker: What is it that usually convinces actors to work for less than they usually get? Is it because the director is a friend or…

Filmmaker:No, it has got to be the film itself. First of all, it has to pitched as an art film. Preferably a dark little art film. If there is any hint of it being a commercial movie, the agents justifiably won't take it. To get the actors to work for scale plus ten you have to pitch it as an art film.

Filmmaker:How do you structure the back end of the deals?

Pemrick:It gets a little weird with the back ends. If you are going to pay someone, let's say $100,000 for six weeks, and their quote is $750,000, now you have to start doing the back end. Do they get a percentage? Do they get a video deal? Do they tie in to a Variety box office gross?

Filmmaker:"Variety" box office gross?

Pemrick:You literally pick up Variety onTuesday and what ever it says for your film you go with. There's no creative accounting. What I like to do is to say that when a film reaches a certain number, let's say for sake of argument, $5 million, the actor can literally drive over we write him check.

Filmmaker If you get a name actor to work for scale plus ten, how do you handle all the perks he or she usually gets?

Pemrick:The thing you have to tell them is that everyone is going to be treated the same way. I usually say, "I don't know what it's going to be like. You may be sharing a room with four people." I won't mislead them in any way. I say the truth straight to the agent. If the actor is meeting with the director or producers and myself, I'll then tell the actor directly. You know everything is SAG so they are going to get their overtime and meal penalties and their six-day premiums. This is an area that the producers sometime think that they can get away with and they are wrong. A producer will tell me that "we can cut deals with the actors. We'll schmooze them." Big mistake. When an actor is working for $1,440 a week they deserve that overtime. You're paying the rest of your crew. Don't cheat your actors.

Filmmaker: What are the other perks that you should never cut from an actor's contract?

Pemrick:I always tell my productions to pay the rehearsal time. Buy the actor for a week of rehearsal at scale. You may not believe this now but you are going to save the money later because you are going to get the shot you need on take number two and not take number 50. Is there a certain plateau in a film's budget that if you hit you then need an actor with certain amount of recognition? For example, if my budget is $1.5 million, do I need a name in my cast?

Pemrick: Absolutely. I think that for a $1.5 million to $2 million film, you can feel confident about maintaining the quality of the picture with $250,000 above the line for cast. That is provided that you don't have a big special effects film. You need to have a tight little character driven piece.

Filmmaker: Do you ever, as a casting director, consult with the screenwriter about how to take a script and make it more castable?

Pemrick: Yes. I try to tell them to limit the main characters to no more than five or six. The film I'm doing right now has 38-day players. I told them that this was absurd. I went through the script and told them what scenes should be cut from the movie.

Filmmaker: You can suggest for example, that the doctor can also be the coroner.

Pemrick: Right. And give the cops names! On Playmaker, the script kept referring to Cop #1 and Cop #2. And these roles were really good with four terrific scenes. The agent said, "Don, my client will accept it at scale plus ten percent provided you give the character a name." Before I had even come on board they had already xeroxed 30 copies of the script with Cop #1 and Cop #2. So to save a tree, I said, "alright I'll deal with it, send it out." I made a mistake. But yes, if this is your first film, simple is better.

*This article appeared in Filmmaker Magazine in the winter issue of 93/94.