Part of our mission at The Lint Screen is to illuminate the mysterious corners of life and make the truth cover its privates. With that in mind, below are some casting specifications intercepted for an upcoming film production.
The Professor:
His name is Charles Humbecker, his close friends call him “Charles” or “Ester.”
He’s the sort of guy you might meet standing in a long line, or at a pot luck your sister-in-law’s throwing after a nude croquet game.
He is an intellectual of sorts. Bookwormy. Nebbish. Comfortably tweedy.
As a youngster, he logged some serious time with his head inverted inside a toilet bowl. He is dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and higher education. He pursued his dream and became a tenured professor at a prestigious university overcharging its students for fairly worthless degrees that look impressive when expensively framed.
Humbecker has the ability to make every minute in his classroom feel like a half hour. Some of his students are left-handed and harbor wild conspiracy theories about Snickers candy bars (it’s important the actor projects this fact as it is a key plot point in Act Two’s llama-in-the-Target-store scene).
His age is fifty-plus but his eyes should read sweet-16. He can be tall, or short (it’s critical he have some degree of vertical height since we will be building sets and it’s good to have contrast on walls).
He likes antiques, making papier-mâché elephant heads, and hoarding cotton candy. You know the type, right?
The Smart Shopper:
She is every woman, except prettier. And her name is Amy Gattersnort.
She’s thirty-something and conveys bewilderment and cunning when she hears the professor blather on. When she leaves the store environment, she has a relieved and comfortable smile. Life is now easy thanks to her purchases of coffee filters, Twizzlers, tweezers and Bounce sheets. Perhaps now her cheating husband will avert his wandering eyes and stop his daylong drinking binges. The actress should project confidence that her character is optimistic that soon her estranged sister will call and apologize for the ugly “Cheez Nip Incident.”
Our Smart Shopper is a woman who can convey the range of emotion from confusion to total satisfaction to ecstatic befuddlement. Ain’t she something?
The Llama
Since apparently these animals are difficult to work with (with their obnoxious spitting and what-have-you), it’d be nice to find a dog, cat or smallish actor who can be made up and act like a llama would act (if it were able to take direction and not be a total ass).