casting, or true love on a deadline

I hate casting.

Casting may be the single most important decision you make. I do believe that the best thing a director can do when it comes to actors is cast the right ones and then get out of the way. Follow this by taking credit for how well you directed the actors. I'm sort of not joking. I believe you're there to guide the actors, direct them to places, tell them when it's not working... But for the most part, get the right people and you're there.

But casting, the actual process... It's quite similar to telling yourself "right, today, starting now, I'm going to find my true love. And I have to do it within one week. And they have to live in this specific area. And they have to possess these attributes... Also, they have to be cheap" I know enough from my nonexistent love life to determine that a person can't do this. And the same way we can daydream about impossible couplings and variations (eva green, you'll fall for me someday... eva green, you're so right for this part). When it comes to casting, I have to delude myself I can find true love under the gun.

I feel guilty every time I dismiss someone for how they look, but it's automatic. I think of the people I know I want, but can't get. I feel guilty that I cannot personally write everyone to tell them, nope, sorry, in a nanosecond I saw your picture and decided then and there that the genetic configuration which led to your face, it doesn't work for me. Or a kinder version of the same sentiment. In other words, I have to lie.

Then there's the desperation factor. And there's this whole thing where... The other day I read something about "the myspace generation". That phrase makes sense to me. One of the strange things about my preference for actors is I don't want actors who visibly want to make it so badly. It's not because I dislike ambition; it's more about how I want people who want to do it out of sheer love or enjoyment of acting, of becoming someone else in a moment truthfully. It's a profession that just happens to attract a lot of people who are interested in it for other reasons. Or people who assume they should do it because of how they look.

(If you want to see an extraordinary movie that has a little subtext about the relationship between prostitutes and actors, try Fellini's Nights of Cabiria. Oh and because I like the lowbrow, too, the recent Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and of course Stephen Chow's King of Comedy. Check that out, I went from true love to prostitution in a few paragraphs.)

My favorite actor is a guy named Carl Ng. This is due to the fact we were friends in film school and Carl displayed this quality I'm talking of, where it seemed that he really did it for the right reasons and never made assumptions about what it would bring him or aim for that, his ideas were always good and valuable, and he seemed to have never lost that openness that isn't childish but children have... An ability to be themselves in the glare of others or even a camera. Look into a baby's eyes - they look directly back at you without worry or a need to glance away out of being uncomfortable because they haven't developed neuroses about themselves. Like Rimbaud wrote, "je est un autre". An actor has to be able to be looked at unsparingly, especially perhaps in moments that are painful to see. That is the value of actors, why they are so important. Like the rest of us they have self doubts and flaws, but they're required to be open about them fearlessly. Carl is also, like me, half caucasian and half asian. Getting roles in England, not so easy. At some point here I will probably write a rant about the nonexistent leads for asian people in English speaking films. But since moving to Hong Kong he's had some great success. I asked Carl if he'd do this and I'd even pay to bring him out here, but he just got a part in a well respected arthouse director's next film and I'm overjoyed for him. I used to think I was crazy in that I knew he had something very unique.

I'll write next about what this video is about, but it's not a conventional music video in the sense of what people immediately assume when they think of videos. It's about a couple separated by circumstance, and they are in every shot and I need them to be real and the emotional anchor for the piece.

I remember the first thing I ever shot on film, in film school (it was called 7 Day Crush, which is a title I still love even though the film sucked)... And I've always written, and been satisfied that it exists on a page... Seeing people enact out what was locked in your head is the most uncanny, thrilling part of filmmaking. When I started filmmaking I assumed that my strength would be how to visually realize a story or technical disciplines; but I'm finding the best part is working with actors. But just like my personal life, the search for an ideal person is waylaid with traps.

We haven't cast anyone yet. I can't sleep because of it. Somewhere, out there in San Diego are the boy and girl I have in my mind. Do you ever dream about people you don't know yet seem fully real to you, actual people with personalities, flaws, quirks, habits? I'm in the process of trying to get one of them to bust out of my head. The score stands: video 0, skull 2.