Film Making / Production / Casting a Film >

First- and second-time filmmakers who have successfully begged, clawed and scratched their way to raising $300,000 to $3 million in production funds often find themselves facing yet another seemingly impossible hurdle: getting recognizable "name" stars to appear in their movies.

Low-budget film economics, increased competition in the marketplace, and a looming Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike have merged to create a perfect storm into which would-be auteurs must now set sail. And while some neophyte directors won't have a problem visualizing a split-diopter framing during a Steadycam shot, nearly all of them will find the casting process an exasperating challenge of neurosurgical proportions.

"You put the wrong actor in your movie and that's it, it's over," says Dan Ireland, director of the $1.3 million The Whole Wide World and the $2.5 million The Velocity of Gary. "Casting represents about 70 percent of trying to get your film to be real and true and getting your audience to believe it."

Of course, many filmmakers don't have the luxury of waiting around for the "perfect" actor for each part. Casting can be a rushed process - many roles must be filled in a compressed period of time - and one often influenced by investors expecting Blair Witch-level net points. Finding a cast that satisfies the financiers and makes a lead role come alive is no easy task. Still, there are ways for even first-time filmmakers to hook up with name talent.

"You can't palm your script on an actor in a restaurant or on the street - that doesn't work," says Hakim Bangash, whose Orchid Ventures co-financed You Can Count On Me and several other high-profile independent films. "As impossible as this may sound, you really have to go through a personal connection. If you can somehow get your script to an actor through a personal connection, you actually have a reasonable chance that the star will actually assess your project, 100 percent more than if you go through an agent or a manager. There's no comparison."

While most struggling screenwriters and directors cannot afford to join top-secret, ultra-expensive health clubs where recognizable actors do their crunches and lat-pulls, the dedicated, stop-at-nothing filmmaker should be able to cover drinks on the town, even for months at a time. "Every star from Julia Roberts on down can be gotten to," says Bangash, who also invested early in productions like Sling Blade and New Jersey Drive, among others. "It's as simple as going to parties every night of the week until you finally meet that someone-who-knows-someone-who-knows-someone."

Recognizable actors will read unsolicited material from unrepresented writers or directors but only if it is delivered by a trusted source, notes Bangash: "It's a lot like the venture-capital business. Venture capitalists don't look at business plans unless they come from someone they know through work or from a friend."

And while top A-list actors probably only accept offers from well-heeled agents, studio presidents or world-famous directors, many in the B+ category are amenable to joining projects that come in over the transom. "One of the dirty little secrets of Hollywood is that everybody below the A-list has a lot of trouble finding work," says Ira Deutchman, former president of Fine Line Features and current CEO of Studio Next, a New York based DV production company. "Actors on the second or third tier can make a decent payday by playing the second lead or maybe the sidekick to the villain [in a Hollywood film], but the fact is these roles are not all that rewarding artistically. Agents and managers are savvy about that and they would much rather have their non-A-list clients working than not working."

Producer Adam Fields, whose credits include Ravenous, Brokedown Palace and the upcoming Sundance Competition entry Donnie Darko, which features Drew Barrymore and Patrick Swayze, says that low-budget producers will have a better chance of landing top talent if they keep their demands reasonable and schedule their shooting days carefully. "What was great about Donnie Darko" says Fields, "was that we were able to limit several parts to a week and shoot in a way that was as actor-friendly as possible. 'Come on do this, we'll shoot you out in four or five days. It will be fun.' And once you get one actor, there's a snowball effect that happens: 'Look, so and so is doing it. And they're working for scale. Oh, okay. If they're in it, now it's validated.'"

Filmmakers who don't have the patience to schmooze and hustle until they meet a major actor's fifth cousin can instead use $20,000 to $75,000 of their production budget to hire a casting director with solid credits. While many top casting directors are hired to work on Hollywood films after the A-list talent has been secured by the studio or by producers, they often play a vital role in securing talent for indie films in exchange for a producer credit or a fee proportionate with the film's total budget.

"Casting directors try to get an actor to read a script either with or without an offer on the table," says Ferne Cassel, the casting director on Demolition Man, Boxing Helena and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, among others. "Ideally [a good casting director can get an actor to read the script] without an offer because sometimes the script is going out before the production has any money. That's where casting directors are very helpful to filmmakers - they have relationships with agents who can get scripts to actors."

Still even though an agent may know and trust a casting director, it doesn't mean he or she trusts a first-time filmmaker or producer with a valuable actor client. "A lot of agents today will ask to see production funds in escrow, especially on a small movie where they don't know the people involved," says Cassel. "They are just trying to protect themselves: if you're going to take an actor off the market by having him or her commit to your film or if you're going to go out with his or her name attached to raise funding, the project has to be real." Furthermore, Cassel adds: "Casting directors can't keep going to the well with an agent, saying 'Please read this script, I love it.' These days, a project has to be further along."

Increasingly, agents at William Morris, CAA, ICM and other powerful agencies want to know that an independent film is indeed prepped and ready to go should their client decide to pull the trigger. However, when talent is being used to secure production financing, this penchant by agents to close actor deals at the last minute creates the classic "chicken-or-the-egg" scenario that first-time filmmakers find so frustrating. Substantial cash-money is needed to go into pre-production and producers must generally spend equity investments or borrowed capital before a deal with name talent can be agreed upon and signed.

The unscrupulous Bobby Bowfinger tactic of asserting that certain name actors are interested when in fact they are not, is a risky proposition. "You can't do that any more," Cassel says. "You'll get a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer. In some cases, we will talk to an agent and that agent will express some early interest [on behalf of their actor client] but then if you go around trying to generate 'buzz' or money with that, you'll also get a lawyer's letter."

The best that filmmakers can hope for after an actor actually reads the material and analyzes an offer, is to receive a letter of intent. "All it says is that he or she has read the script and 'schedule permitting' will agree to be in it and play such-and-such a role," says Cassel. "But you have to ask if you can use the letter to get more financing in place. And because of the 'schedule permitting' clause, the actor can always back out. Who knows what their schedule will be like once the filmmaker has finally cast all the other parts?"

Still, a letter of intent does show other actors and potential big fish investors that a filmmaker is one step closer to realizing his or her dream. And in today's competitive climate, many investors, filmmakers and film executives see recognizable cast members as insurance few independent productions can do without.

"If you ultimately want to sell the movie, you're much better off with any sort of name talent than without it," says Rick Sands, Chairman of Worldwide Distribution at Miramax. "This is a risky business. Every year a lot of films never get sold and a lot of people lose a lot of money. Having a name makes it an easier sell for a company like Miramax because there is value we can achieve around the world that we can't necessarily in the same movie without a known actor or star."

Indeed, international revenue is where both low-budget and splashy Hollywood producers are generating much of their production funds. "Independent film has now penetrated the world market - a big ancillary market with international video deals and international TV deals," says Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics. "I don't always agree with how it impacts the storytelling but with the 'right' cast, a film can get an international TV deal and make some money in the ancillary market."

The mechanism for using foreign presales as production funds is a complicated one that involves a foreign-sales agent, a bond company, inter-party agreements between financiers, producers and unions like SAG, and a film lending institution such as Union Bank of California or Chase. "Basically you borrow money from a bank using foreign presale contracts as the collateral for your loan," says Pascal Borno, who recently produced the $8 million film The Pointmen starring Christopher Lambert for Screen Gems. "The actual dollars from those presales are payable upon delivery of the picture but with those contracts in hand and a completion bond that guarantees the picture will be made and delivered, a bank will allow you to borrow money."

Borno, who has produced 12 pictures himself and assembled financing for literally hundreds of films for Dino De Laurentiis and now his own company, Conquistador Entertainment, says casting should not be seen as the huge concession many filmmakers often make it out to be. "Casting decisions are not made carelessly [by financiers] as all the anecdotes would have you believe," he says. "They're not going to make you put Steven Seagal into a Shakespearean role just because he's big overseas. International distributors do read the scripts these days and advise filmmakers based on the cast they believe can help protect their investment. Given those suggestions, you agree on price, you agree on back end, you enter into a distribution agreement and the movie gets financed."

It's not just Jean-Claude Van Damme and Arnold Schwarzenegger who can get production funding from international presales. Even indie-cool American actors have a cash value for international distributors. "Steve Zahn was one of the selling points for Happy, Texas overseas," says Miramax's Rick Sands. "A lot of the international value is based on TV rights so if an actor has been in other independent movies that appeared on pay or free television in these countries then [he or she is] a known entity. You won't get studio-level pricing but you will be able to sell to television rights at a certain price."

Bernard however, believes that casting big names in small independent films can be a disservice to the project if it's not a clear fit. Still he acknowledges that casting can help a film recoup its negative cost given the newfound aggressiveness of many home-video and pay-cable outlets. "Most low-budget movies don't perform in the theatrical marketplace but there can be a lot of ancillary value for video. That's why you're seeing a lot of Sundance titles show up on the mid-level rung of the video store ladder. What was amazing to me last year was that Blockbuster came to Sundance to buy videos exclusively for Blockbuster stores."

Offered the chance to do it all over, Will Geiger, director of the $380,000 film Ocean Tribe, says he would hire name actors to get a wider release for his film theatrically and on home video. "Unless it's something like Blair Witch where the film itself is the star, then definitely [hire name actors]," he says. "Ocean Tribe opened at the L.A. Independent Film Festival and got great reviews from the L.A. Times, the L.A. Weekly, Variety and the other trade papers. But we still couldn't get a U.S. theatrical distribution deal. We changed our music. We re-shot the opening sequence. We did all sorts of things. But when we screened it again for acquisitions executives, they kept saying: 'Sorry, there's nobody in it.'"

Casting name actors also ensures that acquisitions executives will take the time to screen the picture. "We see everything - stars or not - but a lot of the other companies don't," says Rick Sands of Miramax. "Having a name attached gives a project much more heat."

Faced with the need for name actors, some producers - encouraged by their financiers - are slashing production budgets, sometimes shooting on 16mm or digital video, and offering the difference lump-sum, to a well-known actor.

However, these sorts of "unbalanced" productions present their own special challenges. "The expense of landing a known actor often goes beyond that person's salary or fee," says Ira Deutchman of Studio Next. "DV filmmakers have to take a certain level of care with these actors to give them an experience that they're used to on better funded productions. As much as many actors say they're interested in appearing in independent films, they often have no idea what that really means: having to share a dressing room, actually being in the same car with another actor on the way to the set, minimal craft service" and, potentially, other indignities like providing their own characters' wardrobe.

When a name actor's fee matches or even quintuples the production budget, the filmmaker can suddenly inherit a whole raft of problems. "That kind of pay disparity makes for a very unhappy crew," Deutchman continues. "What you try to do is convince these actors that your film is going to be an artistic experience worth participating in [for less money].

Speaking specifically of DV movies, Deutchman notes that an actor could be enticed by the economics of DV production, which are such that the chances of actually making a profit are better than more expensive independent films: "When you're talking about net profits on a DV feature," he says, "the term actually means something."

If an actor won't work for scale as a labor of love, how much should filmmakers offer? Actors' salaries are usually based on their "quote" - the amount they got paid on their last movie - but as more independent film production budgets edge past the $3-million mark, even "scale" actors are demanding and getting substantial paydays. Sometimes agents will distinguish between studio and independent film quotes. Other times, an independent producer will find him or herself battling an agent who cites the studio quote as an immutable figure.

Comments Fields: "The additional money you pay the star should allow you to generate more than you're paying them. If you have to struggle to raise an extra $700,000 to pay the star, it's still better to have a star to help market the picture. But the idea is that you should pay the star less than you're getting as a premium [for their involvement]. If you can put a star in the picture for four days and you have to pay them $500,000 but that gets you another $1 million in budget and two extra weeks to shoot, that's a deal worth doing. Drew Barrymore's only in Donnie Darko for a very small part but it helped get us additional funding."

When making deals with top talent, especially when they are offering top dollar, producers must delineate in their deal exactly what they will receive in return for coming up with an actor's salary. Is it just his or her acting services, or does the producer have the right to include the actor's
name in paid advertising? Can the actor's likeness be used in posters or in TV ads? Some actors may reserve the right to allow their likeness to be used for publicity until after they see the finished film - a stipulation that financiers may not agree to.

Still another problem filmmakers face once a name actor enters the equation is maintaining control of the film. "Most big actors are more powerful than the filmmaker, on set and in a lot of other places," says Mark Stolaroff, director of post-production and finance at Next Wave Films. "A lot of times they have control over your film, too. If you really know what you're doing you'll be fine but if you're dealing with a decent-sized crew and a big-name actor on your first or second time directing, it can be a little overwhelming." Filmmakers only have to study Tom Di Cillo's truthful satire Living In Oblivion to see how landing a big name can totally upset the apple cart on lower-budgeted features.

"If an actor has a breakdown or can't act or gets stage fright, you're totally boned," says Tony Barbieri, director of the $180,000 Sundance film One and the $4.5 million Magic of Marciano, which, despite the presence of Nastassia Kinski and Robert Forster, has not yet been distributed in the States. "It doesn't matter how well-prepared you are," he says. "The actor may decide to hide in their trailer or not show up to the set in the first place. Maybe they are totally breaking down or you can't get something out of them because they're totally out of their lid. Maybe they'll just decide to walk off in the middle of a take. You don't really have any control because working with actors is not like visualizing the script or blocking out camera moves."

To combat these fits of pique, Barbieri suggests courting actors who might be trying to change their image, like Pulp Fiction-era John Travolta. "Actors are always very excited any time a project can help change their persona," says Barbieri, who is in the process of casting his third feature. "You can also look for someone who has appeared as a goodie-goodie on a TV show like a Tori Spelling. If you look at the films she has chosen, The House of Yes and Trick - edgy, dark, interesting films - it's because she wanted to undo that good-girl image. Alyssa Milano did the same thing when she appeared in Hugo Pool."

Certain themes or issues in a script can also attract name talent to a project. "For Ocean Tribe we tried to get Gene Wilder since the story dealt with cancer," comments director Geiger. "We were going to give a large amount of our proceeds to Gilda's Club [the charity named after Wilder's late wife Gilda Radner] and cancer research. We made that offer and Gene liked the script but ultimately he didn't want to go all the way to Baja [California] to shoot it. But if you can find an angle to bring an actor on board, something that will attract them, it's one approach."

Like the sharks in David Mamet's House of Games, some card players think they can buy the pot. But offering actors a so-called "pay-or-play" agreement (in which the actor gets paid a substantial fee whether or not shooting starts on a specific day) to secure participation before the production is fully financed, is a huge risk. "You can always push the start date back by a week unless you're dealing with a huge actor with a short window," says director Ireland. "Then everybody has to struggle to make it happen. But before you get to that point, you should do the math and see if you can really make the date. You always have to remember: the project could go to hell and then you're stuck for the $500,000 you offered."

The last route filmmakers can go when seeking big stars is to align themselves with a well-known and well-respected film producer with a ton of credits. "Certainly when it comes to trying to attract star talent to a film, an experienced producer, who has a long-history of relationships with talent and agents and managers, is going to give you instantaneous access as compared to someone who doesn't have any of those things," says Fields. "A producer like myself can call any agent in town and at least have a dialogue about the availability of their talent."

When it comes to getting these scripts submitted to producers who do not accept unsolicited material, Fields suggests going under the radar." You've got a town full of assistants, assistants to producers, assistants to agents, who all want to move up the food chain," he says, "and the way they're going to do that is to discover new talent or new projects. I have interns in my office who are reading voraciously to find something special so they can say, 'Look what I found for you.' I just don't believe that people can't get their material read. It's getting people to read it who know what to do with it."

And then there's what some would call the purist approach - casting unknowns, up-and-coming actors, or working non-SAG actors. "Look at the history of successful low-budget film: Clerks, Brothers McMullen, Laws of Gravity, El Mariachi, Slacker," concludes Stolaroff. "Look at Blair Witch. None of these films had name actors. In some cases, they didn't even have good actors. But they were all unique in their own way. Even if they failed in some areas, they were still a success."

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