Casting Quirks
War stories from the casting trenches of Hollywood.
      by Julie Ng

Think all those acting classes helped you get an edge on those talent agents, producers and executives? Sometimes there are different forces of nature at work. Take for example, these non-thespians who won their roles in rather untypical ways...

THE TV SHOW: Twin Peaks
THE PLAYER: Frank Silva as Killer BOB
CASTING QUIRK: Cast By Accident and Strange Coincidence

Frank Silva

Anyone who watched this series knows that BOB was one of the most horrifying-looking characters to ever stand before a camera. He was crucial to both the plot and darkly supernatural tone of Twin Peaks, and stays with me to this day, albeit as a form of childhood trauma. In fact, if someone were to put me in my own personal version of Hell, it would consist of me and Killer BOB trapped inside a room with no doors. But Killer BOB, played by Frank Silva, was never an element in David Lynch's pitch to ABC. He wasn't even an actor. He was the show's set dresser.

WOW, BOB, WOW!: It was just another day of shooting. The crew was getting a shot of Laura Palmer's bedroom for the pilot episode. "Frank's in there, doing his thing," recounts director Lynch. "He's moving the furniture around, and he moves this chest of drawers [that] ends up in the doorway. So now Frank is in the room and everybody else is outside, and someone said 'Frank, don't lock yourself in the room,' you know." A light suddenly sparked in Lynch's head. "We needed this shot which was just a slow pan around Laura's room. It was going to be used as Laura's mother thinking back, later that night. So we shot two regular pans and then I said, 'Frank, get down behind the bed on your knees, put your hands on the little bed bars and freeze." At the time, nobody had any idea what it was leading to. All he knew was that "something was happening."

That same night, the crew was finishing up the scenes in the Palmer house. The scene called for actress Grace Zabriskie, who played Laura's mother, to sit on a living room couch, look sad, then come to some psychic revelation. "We'd shot the heart necklace under the rock, and someone finding it. And that was probably what she was gonna see." Lynch explains. When she sits bolt upright, the camera operator needed to whip up with Zabriskie to get her scream in horror.

"Beautiful!" exclaimed Lynch.

"Not beautiful." responded the camera operator. "Someone was reflected in the mirror."

"Everybody hold still! Where?"

Lynch looked through the eyepiece, and there at the bottom of the mirror was Frank Silva. "I just said, 'This is perfect!' but I still didn't know what the hell it meant!" He decided to name this newest cast addition BOB, in tribute to Bob's Big Boy -- the place where he ate the same lunch every day since moving to Los Angeles. The happy accidents were later integrated with the murder-in-a-small-town plot in ways too strange and wonderful ways to be able to describe in this short space.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
The disembodied evil spirit of Killer BOB lives on with Agent Cooper's body as his host, but unfortunately, no such luck for Frank Silva. He died of a heart attack in 1998.

THE MOVIE Trick or Treat
THE PLAYER: Glen Morgan as Roger Mockus
CASTING QUIRK: Cast On a Dare

There are probably many who are unfamiliar with this 80's Dead-Teenager-Movie, but it takes a spot on my shelf as a guilty pleasure. A headbanging loner (Skippy from Family Ties) is constantly tormented by a jock from school (Matt from Melrose Place). His only solace is in heavy metal music, but his favourite singer, Sammi Curr, has just died in a fire. A local DJ (Gene Simmons of KISS) gives him the musician's last record, which when played backwards, plays Satanic messages that allow Sammi to come back from the dead to wreak havoc. Skippy enlists the help of his geeky best friend (a young Glen Morgan, one half of the writing/producing/directing team, Morgan and Wong) and together, they try to stop Sammi from killing more of their classmates.

Wait a minute. The same Glen Morgan (see Issue 10), whose work philosophy is that "writers belong in some dark corner, watching"? What the heck is he doing on screen looking up cheerleaders' skirts? "The casting director, drunk at a party, dared me to audition," recalls Morgan, who was friends with Trick or Treat writer/producers Joel Soisson and Michael Murphey. The film's director, Charles Martin Smith, ended up giving him the part. "That's why he [directed] Space: Above and Beyond episodes," he notes, "Charlie's a great guy."

Morgan shouldn't be too embarrassed over his first (and only) appearance in front of the camera. Underneath the silly premise and bizarro cast is a good 'Bad Movie'. Morgan's character, Roger, not only gets all the funny lines, he also actually gets to redeem himself after he accidentally raises Sammi Curr from the dead, followed by saving the day towards the film's end! "Jim and I actually did an uncredited polish on the script," admits Morgan. Well, that explains that.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Morgan is likely sitting on a plane to Canada with a large baseball bat in his lap -- on his way to kick my ass for publicizing his involvement with this little screen gem...

THE MOVIE Final Destination
THE PLAYER: Randy Stone as Flight Attendant
CASTING QUIRK: Casting a Casting Director

Randy Stone being prepared for his role in Final Destination.

It should probably be noted that the majority of the time, casting a part is a slow and unglamorous process of auditions, sifting through crappy actors until someone stands out. The casting director is the individual who chooses and negotiates contracts for potential performers. I had the opportunity to observe one of these sessions last year for the recent film, Final Destination. One of the smaller roles that needed to be filled was that of a male flight attendant who forcefully removes Devon Sawa's character, Alex, from the plane.

After a number of well-built machismo actors mimed the action of putting Alex in a headlock, a variety of "Sir, if you don't settle down, we will remove you from this aircraft!" line deliveries and even a few who dressed up in flight attendant garb, none seemed right to me, or to the people that mattered -- producer Glen Morgan (who did not dare any of his friends to audition), Vancouver casting director Coreen Mayrs, or director Jim Wong, who was exhausted from long days of pre-production planning and on the verge of falling asleep. Silence fell upon the room. Finally:

"I think we need someone more... I don't know..." began Morgan.

"We need someone who's kinda... fey." continued Mayrs, unconsciously making limp wristed hand gestures. "Someone like... RANDY!"

Randy Stone, that is. Vice president of talent casting for 20th Century Fox! Tall! Lean! Gay! And apparently, perfect to play an airline flight attendant. Mayrs was convinced that he she would have no problems getting him to agree to it. No arguments came from Morgan and Wong, who are close friends of Stone -- he discovered the entire cast of their series, Space: Above and Beyond, including Kristen Cloke (who is now Morgan's wife), and has made brief appearances in their work before. When I told them that I found it amusing that the casting director was going to cast another casting director, Glen pointed to casting associate Heike Brandstatter, who was sitting next to me. She played Jackie Kennedy in their X-Files episode, "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man".

As Mayrs predicted, Stone not only accepted the bit part, he did it for free.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Actors look out! Multi-talented Randy Stone may just leave his day job to act full time for Morgan and Wong. He recently appeared on The Others as Darin Morgan's, uh, brother and is actively involved with two more of their future projects (as a producer).

Actors who lost roles, non-actors who got roles... what's next? Movie Stars as extras? Well, now that you mention it...

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