Casting About, billed as both an
exploration of the casting process and a celebration of the demanding craft of acting
— hopes that unfortunately remained unmet, or even really approached. In late
2000, Hershey set out to cast actresses for a dramatic film that he had
co-written and intended to direct. The plan was to incorporate some of the
casting footage into the fiction film, an idea having arisen from Hershey’s
first experience with casting at film school more than 20 years earlier. After
reviewing the more than 70 hours of tapes, a decision was then made to shape
this rich material into a film of its own. Casting
About was thus born.
for three roles in a dramatic film, the movie includes tape from sessions held
in Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London and Los Angeles, weaving together actor
interviews, monologues and a bit of scene work to create an impressionistic collage
of the casting experience — a bit too impressionistic, really. To the layperson, acting is a beautiful mystery, and the serial
rejection of the audition cattle call process even more baffling. That, if
anything, is what would draw a non-actor to this movie. Yet the latter isn’t at
all addressed, and the moments of hard-cut, snapped-to invention and creativity
— think of what made Naomi Watts’ audition scene in Mulholland Drive so memorable — are few and far between.
About is boring and pedantic. There are a few moments of heartbreak and
intrigue — moments that make you realize, in case one had doubts — just how
much talent there is out there. And a few recognizable faces pop up, including
Mädchen Amick and Alexandra Holden, in a superb scene. But there’s also a lot of awful performance
butchering from heavily accented Eastern European gals (another montage of purposeful
accents is downright painful), and the movie opens with a wordless,
two-minute-and-40-second introduction, tipping its hand at just how portentous a
work it is, even at 85 minutes. The title of Casting About, then, is dispiritingly on point; more pruning and a
sharper focus is needed. No matter how familiar one is with the texts herein — including
monologues from warhorses like Anton Chekhov, and the work of renowned
contemporary playwrights such as Eric Bogosian, David Hare, Richard LaGravenese,
Susan Miller, Keith Reddin and Alfred Uhry — the crux of the movie should be in
the actresses themselves, and what drives and informs them. Hershey (The Empty Mirror) doesn’t bring that
into focus with any sort of greater authorial touch, preferring instead to
remain an uncommitted voyeur in the name of “art.” (Kino International, unrated,
85 minutes)
