Wicked Little Town

Casting Out Loud

That which doesn't kill you gives you a great anecdote. In her early days as an actor, Barbara Bragg starved in the New York trenches with a young director named Richard LaGravanese, who went on to conspicuous success in the movies. Bragg didn't try to cash in her friends' success -- and the one time he apparently tried to help her, things went sour.

It was an audition for the film "Living Out Loud." The casting director was Margery Simkin. Recalled Bragg: "So her assistant calls me in the afternoon and tells me that the director wants me to come in, and how excited they all are to meet his friend, blah blah blah."

The part was a nightclub singer, so Bragg dressed "to the nines: fishnets, heels, lots of red lipstick. And I walked in and the casting director screamed, 'We're not looking for that!' " Worse, Simkin's assistant didn't remember placing the call to Bragg. Mortified, Bragg said she "ended up weeping in a broom closet." But she mustered the courage to walk back in tell Simkin she was an old friend of the director. "She looked like she had eaten several lemons," said Bragg of Simkin's reaction. Still, she did let Bragg put the audition on tape and leave with a shred of her dignity intact.

"It was the worst day of my life," Bragg said, with typical drama-queen hyperbole. "I did not get the part, but I did succeed at getting out of the broom closet and marching back into the room and finishing off the audition. After all, it took me four years to get into Yale -- and what could be harder than that?"

Maybe Yale should teach a course on auditioning. Bragg could do a master class.

Another Nick in the Wall

John Papsidera and Wendy O'Brien's casting office is singularly inviting -- original art on the walls, unassuming Ikea lighting fixtures. Is it maybe too inviting? Exhibit A: The wall of the room where they do readings, which has chunks and nicks taken out of it.

They were casting for a role in the HBO pilot "5.15," about stressed-out minimum-wage workers, when one "experienced, established actor" who shall remain nameless made what O'Brien diplomatically calls "an interesting choice." To be precise, for a scene in which one character's new truck has been dinged by an inopportunely placed dumpster, this actor came into his reading and got physical with the wall. He didn't just limit the damage to his own body blows -- he picked up a chair and started banging it on the wall.

O'Brien said he was immediately ashamed when the reading was over, but that he'd been "in the moment and just kept it going." She was all right with his outburst -- she understood it as nothing more than an acting choice that went too far, and though he didn't get the part, she said she would call him in again. She even joked with him about signing his "work" on the wall.

'Rashomonk'

Most auditions are emotional pressure cookers that allow only a few minutes to make an impression -- and the impressions go both ways between auditioner and auditionee. There can be as many opinions about what occurred in any given casting session as there were people in the room. "Rashomon" has nothing on the perceptual fractures that result.

So last week when actor Matt North told "Wicked Little Town" that his recent audition for the role of a garbageman on USA Networks' "Monk" was, in his view, cut short and then soured by an apparently sarcastic quip from star/producer Tony Shalhoub, it didn't take long for the show's producers to call and refute his verson of events. They had the audition on videotape, and I went to watch it to try to cut through the contentions and judge the documentary evidence.

The tape shows two actors -- North and the scene partner he'd met minutes before, as is standard practice -- reading a brief scene as two garbagemen with the offscreen voice of Shalhoub, in the role of obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk. The other actor has the majority of the lines, and North has just a few; the scene closes with Shalhoub saying, "God bless you and God bless your work," and the tape ends.

North says he was miffed because he'd been asked to prepare both garbagemen roles, but was only allowed to read for the smaller part; hence his sense that the audition was cut short; however, the two actors did perform an entire reading. North then interpreted Shalhoub's "God bless" as a patronizing post-audition kiss-off to the actors.

However, the "God bless" comment is actually a line from the script, not an ad-lib jab. And on the videotape I viewed, it does sound like it's delivered as part of the scene, not as a post-scene comment.

Now, could North perhaps have received some vibe from the producers that the audition was essentially already over by that point? And did it thus seem that Shalhoub was dismissing the actors with the line, scripted or not? It's possible, but since the producers are unseen on the tape and it all goes by so quickly, it's hard to say what non-verbal messages, if any, were being conveyed in that room. Indeed, the very quickness of the exchange may be part of what rubbed North the wrong way and made the experience feel sour. But many seasoned actors feel similarly rushed through the unforgiving grind of the audition process, and in most cases it's no one's fault but the clock's.

Everyone involved with the show affirmed that Shalhoub is among the "most giving and generous" actors (sub. req.) they've worked with, citing his reading with guest star auditioners as a case in point. (And I should say that I interviewed Shalhoub and his wife, Brooke Adams (sub. req.), in their home some years ago, and they were nothing less than gracious.) Amy Britt, the casting director who brought North in, said she was puzzled by his version of events but unswayed about North's talent. "I love Matt, Matt's great, and I've called him in on many things," she said. But if she doesn't call him in again for "Monk," safe to say he probably won't mind.

Artios Awards

Last week's Artios Awards offered the usual festival of self-congratulation for casting directors, who are bent out of shape that Emmy recognizes their art but not Oscar. (Little-known fact: Casting Society of America members must nominate themselves for the honor, which means that some of Hollywood's more modest talent-seeking pros will never get a statuette.) Presenter Christine Lahti had the quotable quip of the evening, thanking casting directors for "convincing the director that it's not because I'm not talented that I didn't get the part, it's because I'm too tall. After all, the camera adds 10 inches."

Lahti may also be thought too old for Hollywood: She was reportedly attached to a pilot about a governor's widow, similar to the real-life story of Jean Carnahan, but studio suits wanted Minnie Driver instead, effectively killing the deal. Jeff Bridges was on hand to give tribute to casting pioneer Lynn Stalmaster, and Larry Miller imagined the hell that casting folks' Thanksgiving dinners must be, since every family gathering he attends features some would-be stage mom pushing their dubiously talented spawn in his general direction. It seems a casting director's work is never done.