The Lint Screen

Tag: casting specs

  • An Insider Peek @ Casting Specs

    Llama needed, preferably not played by a llama.
    Llama needed, preferably not played by a llama.

    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).

  • Casting Specs

     

    Actors Need Some Backstory To Grab Onto
    Actors Need Some Backstory To Grab Onto

        Being an Adman, I’ve been involved with something we in the trade call commercials or spots (let me know if this is getting too ‘insider’).

        One of the keys to creating a successful spot is casting, the hiring of actors to pretend they are speaking the words you’ve put in their mouths. To help actors, I write extensive casting specs so the person knows the backstory of the character and can deliver a believable performance that won’t suck.        

        Here are the casting specs for a spot we did recently. Feel the characters leap to glorious life!     

        OVERVIEW:  This spot is about people and their seemingly never-ending need to eat food (preferably good food that has not been poisoned and will pass through the bowels gently). As such, we should cast real people, with a strong bias toward people with mouths so they can appear to eat food. The ability to act like you’re eating food is a must!     

        OUR CAST:     

        Marcie––African American girl, age 8 or so. She has an innate sense of style and a passion for dusting furniture. Many of her friends feel she may be a little too attached to Swiffer cloths, but Beth Ann assures them she only “likes them” for light dusting duty.     

        Beth Ann–– Caucasian girl, age 8 or so. She is precocious, has an exceptional vocabulary and loves her family even though certain members are plotting against her. She’s something else!     

        Gammy–– African American woman, age 65-70. She is a passionate cook and a compassionate soul who sees the good in all people (except Ben Stiller, who she thinks is “pretty stuck on himself”). Gammy is all about the love of food, her family and the semi-annual sales at Linen & Things (where she has acquired a very impressive collection of “things” and some cheap towels and threadbare dishrags).     

        Susan–– An African American woman, age 35 or so. She is Marcie’s mother and Gammy’s daughter. She is a kind woman, warm, caring and not as tall as she looks. She is proud of her daughter and somewhat fearful of her mother ever since ‘the potato salad incident.’ She wishes she were better with numbers, but what can you do– you’ve either got the ‘number gene’ or you don’t. What are the odds she’d be born with it? Susan will never know, she’s horrible with numbers.     

        Robert–– African American man, age 35 or so. He is Marcie’s father. He loves action films, is a huge fan of James Patterson’s fiction and is quite adept at managing his minor bladder infection he’d rather not talk about.     

        Tracy–– Beth Ann’s mother, age 35 or so, who harbors some resentment that Beth Ann’s name is “Beth Ann” (she was named after her husband’s departed mother). Tracy wanted to call her daughter “Cinderella Sue Bethany” because she had never met anyone with that name. But, as Tracy is often fond of saying when she nips a cool cocktail, “Life is one miserable compromise and disappointment followed by another… and bitterness, rejection, agonizing pain and sorrow is your just  reward.”  She’s a ‘glass half full’ kind of gal!

        Ken–– Beth Ann’s father, age 40. He’s a gregarious sort, fond of quietly counting to 10,000 by prime numbers. He had a dog named Barney when he was a child. The dog was hit and killed by a garbage truck. Ken has hated garbage ever since and so refuses to throw anything out, including table scraps he’s saved for Barney.    

        Michael–– Caucasian boy, age 9. He is the brother of Beth Ann and coincidently, the son of Tracy and Ken. Michael is a quiet child making him the perfect companion on a trip to the library. He loves his parents but harbors some resentment toward his sister, ‘Miss Perfect Pants’, who he feels his parents show favoritism toward. Like on her birthday when she got a pony, a ride on a hot air balloon and a crisp $10,000 bill. On his birthday, he got the lid to a Heinz Ketchup bottle, a small length of mangled yarn and a pinky poke to the left eyeball.  

        That should about do it, actors. Enjoy your roles, become the character, live in the moment from moment to moment!   

       Finis.