First Time Director. Gil Bettman

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СКАЧАТЬ played by Jean Seberg. By the end of the second act, his infatuation has grown into love and he ends up sacrificing his life in the pursuit of that love. If you were to chart on a graph the escalation of stakes and obstacles in each Frank Capra film, from It Happened One Night through It's a Wonderful Life, they would all follow an almost identical, ever mounting, hyperbolic curve. The same could be said of every hit children's' film, from The Wizard of Oz through Finding Nemo. The examples are endless. The simple fact remains: A director cannot make a commercially successful movie in which the stakes and obstacles do not continually increase. The first time director must do everything in his power to make sure that the script of his breakthrough movie comes up to this standard.

Attaining Perfection in Casting

      You have got to come close to perfection in casting if you are going to make a great film. How do you achieve perfection? Never settle. You must keep on casting with the same single-minded maniacal determination with which Captain Ahab sought Moby Dick, right up until you kill the casting director or the casting director kills you. Whether you are doing it yourself, or you have a top-tier casting director aided by a battalion of associates, assistants, and secretaries, you have to keep working the phones and keep the door open until the actor who is perfect for the part walks in. You may never find the perfect actor. But if you adopt this attitude, if you remain convinced that as good as the best choice you have already discovered may be, you can always do better, you will be rewarded.

      Adopting such an uncompromising attitude is difficult. You are certain to take a lot of flack for being unreasonable and impossible. Obviously, if by holding to such astronomical standards you start to seriously jeopardize your relationship with your producer or the money people, then you are going to have to back down. But only back down far enough or long enough to re-ingratiate yourself with the key players. If they have a clue about filmmaking, they will be on your side all the way. Before they come down on you for holding the casting director to an impossibly high standard, they should be ready to fire the casting director or to let the casting director quit. They should understand that all you are trying to do is everything in your power to enable them to achieve their own ends.

      The guiding principle of being tireless and uncompromising in casting is valid in all films, from the most humble student productions to the most exalted, mega-budget studio films. How much money you can pay your actors determines what pond you can fish in, but no matter the pond, you still must cast your net again and again, as widely as possible, in order to land the biggest fish. In the case of Back to the Future, Zemeckis made the mistake of casting Eric Stoltz because the studio insisted that he meet a certain deadline for the start of production. They made him pack up his net and go home before he was ready. Sure, they had met their deadline for the start of principal photography, but they had not found one of the essential components for their film: the perfect Marty McFly. The studio would have saved a lot of money if they had not rushed Zemeckis into production.

      I have seen this same scenario repeated hundreds of times while I have overseen the production of student films as a professor. Most of my student directors must go into hock just to scrape together the cash to pay for film, processing, and telecine. Paid actors are beyond their grasp. So they are fishing in a different, but not necessarily smaller, pond than Zemeckis or Spielberg. In almost any American city there are thousands of amateur thespians who will work for nothing more than a copy of the finished product with which to build their portfolios. No matter the situation, from out of those thousands, you can find the handful you need to make up your perfect cast, provided that you throw your net wide enough and often enough.

      I tell my student directors to tape their casting auditions and, when they are done casting, to make me a tape of their picks. Then, no matter what, I tell them they can do better. Those that have the determination and the vision to do as I advise are always rewarded. They look longer and harder, and they always find a better cast. The longer they look, the harder they look, the better the cast gets. The very best films are always those that, besides having a great script, go through a long, exhaustive casting process.

      As a first time director casting his breakthrough film, you are going to be casting in a more exalted pond than the pond of my student directors, and a less sacred pond than the one in which Zemeckis was casting for Back to the Future. Which pond that is will be determined by your casting budget. But the key to success in all ponds is the same: You must never compromise. The laws of statistics dictate that the more people you read for a part, the more likely you are to cast an actor who will win an Oscar for his performance. Hopefully your producer has the good sense to see the logic in that maxim. If he doesn't, you've got bigger problems than casting.

How Do You Define Perfection? Casting Your Leads

      It is not easy to define perfection. But I think it would be unconscionable for me to tell you to find it without giving you some idea of how to identify it. There are as many different kinds of perfection as there are roles. For the sake of simplification, I advise homing in on two qualities that an actor can exhibit: like- ability and richness. Generally speaking, your protagonist and leading roles are likeable in the extreme and not so rich, whereas your supporting parts are very rich, but frequently not so thoroughly likeable. The reason is obvious. The more likeable the protagonist, the more completely and intensely the audience will be able to identify with him. The more intensely the audience identifies with the main character, the more fully they can enter the action of the film (provided that the script is also great).

      So what exactly is likeability? How do you identify it? The easiest way to clarify this complex question is to simply look at our greatest actors in some of their greatest roles. Likeability is what makes the audience identify with and care about Dustin Hoffman as Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, even though Ratso is angry, ugly, filthy, ignorant, and manipulative. Likeability is what makes the audience identify with and care about Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, even though LaMotta borders on paranoid schizophrenia. Likeability is what makes Marlon Brando lovable, heroic, and so beneficent as to be almost godlike as Don Corleone in The Godfather, even though Don Corleone is the kind of guy who, if you cross him, is going to cut your favorite horse's head off and put it in your bed. Likeability is what makes the audience watching American Beauty root for Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham, even though he is driven to destroy his connection to the American dream and commit an act of pedophilia in the process.

      Because they are complex characters and embody both positive and negative characteristics, Ratso Rizzo, Jake LaMotta, Don Corleone, and Lester Burnham are not only likeable, but rich. They are almost all, at different times, mean and kind, weak and strong, ugly and beautiful, righteous and debased. Since they embody both positive and negative attributes, they are not going to please all of the people all of the time. Some segments of some audiences will not be able to identify with them, in spite of their likeability. But each of these leading actors is blessed with a powerful inherent humanity that will touch almost all members of all audiences and lead them to forgive these characters for their failings.

      When the main character of a film is as rich as those mentioned above, it puts an extra burden on the likeability of the actor who must portray that character. If the likeability quotient is not high enough, the film will not draw wide audiences. If it is a big budget film, it will fail. This is why the studios prefer to make movies that feature main characters that are not so complex. It is easier for all members of all audiences to identify with such characters. The films they are featured in are more palatable, and so, more likely profitable. In Titanic, the main character, Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) proves himself to be in all ways wonderful. His only shortcoming is that he is poor. In Batman, Bruce Wayne (as portrayed by Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, or George Clooney) is incredibly brave, smart, and idealistic; his only shortcoming is that he feels a little burdened having to save the world on a regular basis. In The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock, the role played by Dustin Hoffman, is a sweet, idealistic young man who is trying very hard to be true to himself. His only problem is that he is naïve and too easily led astray.

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