I’ve written before about how, at the end of the day, we’re all fans of our favorite performers. Some have speculated that it’s because I’m a newer casting director that I still have that wide-eyed fan approach to doing my job. I’ve always figured that it’s more of a personality type than a “number of years logged” sort of thing. Sure enough, when I asked fellow CD, fellow southerner, fellow UGA Grady School of Journalism graduate Lisa Mae Wells Fincannon to contribute a POV about her take on casting in her market, I had my suspicions confirmed. People who love their casting job flat-out love actors. Read on!
Actors Are an Amazing Lot
Actors are an amazing lot, really. A total package of talent, insecurity, sensitivity, hope, despair, vanity, and selflessness with a whoop-ass helping of resilience on the side. Those actors that find themselves outside the confines of a major film/television market, or those that dabble both east and west coast, are a special lot. Each and every one of them braving a career in a market that bears much less than LA/NY/Chicago (unless you live in Louisiana).
As a location casting director — working most of the Eastern seaboard and into Louisiana and Texas — I carry many of the working actors with me as I go. Being an actor and working in these markets means many hours of driving long distances to auditions for a shot at what sometimes results in only one day’s work. The tradeoff, for most of these artists, is being able to live on “their dirt” or having their kids raised alongside cousins and grandparents.
I also believe, for these actors, that the work can be more representative of who they are: No comments from people like me asking if they can get rid of their Southern accents or, God forbid, fake one. I try to never give that note. After all, isn’t that the whole reason for “location casting” — to infuse the genuine location of the script? In the day and age of incentive-driven location and ZIP code conscious casting choices, I find it amazing that actors are still willing and able to drive from Atlanta to NOLA, or from NOLA to Dallas to meet with the likes of me.
Seriously, if I put myself on the other side of the table from myself or many of my dear friends who do what I do, I am frightened. Run away, run away fast. So, when Bonnie contacted me about writing a little about the POV of location casting, and I set to thinking on it, the most important aspect of all of it was the actor. I know, you are thinking right now, “She’s blowing smoke,” “How pandering,” etc., but it is true. For us, in location casting, our job is solely dependant on that wonderful nomadic lot we refer to as actors from the Southeast, or deep South, or Texas, etc.
With each session, and because our “market” is spread over such a large area, we may ask an actor to travel to five different locations for callbacks on four different projects, with the hopes of booking maybe one. My job is solely dependant on that actor’s willingness to do so. I am as good as the actors that I bring in, and my sessions are as strong as those willing to come to attend my throw-down over and over again. I may be in Atlanta one day, Wilmington the next.
A producer pays for me to fly to these places and stay in really nice hotels and receive per diem. The actors are on their own. I try very hard to remember this, even when I’ve phoned an agent and asked, for the third time, why a certain actor that “I HAVE to see” is not coming in. I tend to be dogmatic about who I want to be seen for a role, and can be quite the bully when I need to be… and yet the agents still take my calls, and the actors still drive — no matter how far or hard — to see me.
Being a casting director is the best job in the world and I can’t think of anything I would rather do (except maybe being the test subject for all really expensive, FDA-approved plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures that I wouldn’t have to pay for… but I digress). It is like being a documentary filmmaker, getting paid well for it, and talking with folks on-camera that are brilliant at what they do. It’s acting every day of my life and never having the pressure to perform. It’s 60 Minutes 100% of the time, with 50% of the controversy.
All this and more is made possible by that wonderful group of folks that roams my half of the country in cars wearing 100K+ miles, carrying cargo of crumpled headshots and lots of empty Starbucks cups (yes, we do have Starbucks in the hinterlands). I am blessed to call these folks my friends and colleagues and when asked to write this ditty, hoped it to be a small valentine to each and every one. With that, my POV, I still maintain that actors are an amazing lot.
A valentine indeed! Thank you, Lisa Mae, for a lovely glimpse into casting in your market. I recall being an actor in Atlanta and traveling all over to audition and work. It’s a testament to the commitment level and talent of the local actors that they’ll haul it all over — sometimes hundreds of miles each way — to get the job done. Here’s to you, for applauding them for that!
About Lisa Mae Wells Fincannon
Lisa Mae Wells Fincannon is an Emmy Award-winning casting director and native of the Carolinas. Her credits include feature film and television work such as The Secret Life of Bees, Cold Mountain, A Love Song for Bobby Long, Love Liza, Runaway Jury, Bastard Out of Carolina, Nell, From the Earth to the Moon, and the Academy Award-winning short Two Soldiers. Her early work in documentary filmmaking showed an ability to discover and bring performances out of non-actors that has been the trademark of her career.
“Southern by the grace of God,” her passion is to cast what she knows. She continues to support her alma mater, the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia, through guest lectures and internship opportunities to current students with her partners at Fincannon & Associates Casting in Wilmington and New Orleans. She is blessed to be in business with her husband, Craig Fincannon, whom she credits with mentoring her love of the art of casting.
Lisa Mae is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Casting Society of America, and Daughters of the Confederacy.
This contribution originally ran at Bonnie Gillespie’s online column on August 1, 2008.