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12/21/2005: "Casting Stories Part 1 by Christopher Folino"

When we hired Michelle Metzner, “the goddess of casting agents,” the day she ran the film add for “Gamers” that would reach all the agents, we got two hits! And both of these hits were famous stars.
The very first star that sent back a response to audition for our movie was Sandra Bernhard and it was for the role of “Angela’s mom.”

I remember when Michelle called me, it was a super cool thing. Nothing beat telling friends and family, “Yeah, I’m going to make a little movie, and Sandra Bernhard has expressed interest to be in it!”
Oh, I milked that shit for like months! It wasn’t until we got our asses rejected by Sundance that I’ve kept my mouth shut.

Sandra was a huge name and we were listed as an ultra low indie budget film and her agent still responded. We were blown away, because, at that point we hadn’t the budget or ambition to go after Beverly, Kelly, John, or William.
I talked it over with Jennifer, Kevin, Fernando and Michelle and we were like we should just offer her the part of Gordon’s mom, it’s a bigger part and I even started writing another scene or two to make the part bigger.

I think it was from there that we kind of got the confidence to start going after the big names. It took forever, and seventeen years for Sandra’s agent to finally say “No”, I think Sandra ended up on some Broadway Show during the time our filming.

Which was cool with me, I’m a huge fan of Beverly D’Angelo and when we heard she’s a good friend of John Heard’s and would do the film, it changed everything.

The other actress who responded back was Joanne Severance, who I loved in “Wiseguy” the TV series where she was the sister of Kevin Spacey.
She was also in “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” with the late great Richard Pryor.
We kicked around the idea of her playing “Angela’s mom” for a moment, however, when we got news we could go after Kelly LeBrock, it was pretty much a no-brainer.

At one point I really wanted to team William Katt and Connie Sellecca back together. We sent Connie the script, however, she found God and she turned down our script unless we re-wrote almost everything.

I still think casting the gang of “The Greatest American” Hero is a solid idea and would love to attempt that. However, I wouldn’t be able to have the word “Fuck” or “Fuck stick” in it. I’m not sure I’m capable of writing a script without using those words.

Perhaps, it was all the cursing that the film festival directors in Berlin found alarming and the reason why we got rejected? No, it couldn’t be! It’s more the fact that these “fuck-sticks” took my $125 entry fee money and still decided to allow two main stream Hollywood studio films that are already in theaters now, to be in their “indie” film festival. Yes “The Syrian” and “The New World” really need help with distribution and we really needed to discover those films. It’s fucking bullshit, that’s what it is. I’m fine with our movie not being selected, however, that’s two indie films that got “fucked” out of the Berlin Film Festival so they could get more stars to come to Germany.

I guess every town and every city wants to be Hollywood.