On Saturday we held our first auditions for "Better Living Through Chemistry" and it went both better and worse than I was hoping. On the one hand we only had about 10 people come, but out of those were some really talented actors. We have a couple very strong candidates for Bob as well as several of the female roles. I'd love to post pictures and some video clips but it wouldn't be appropriate. We will be making decisions very quickly after next weekend’s auditions and at that point I can give more specific details.
This was my first time actually holding any auditions ever, and it showed. Joe and I were pretty bad at communicating what we were looking for – apparently some of the actors didn’t even get the message to have a monologue prepared. Some people brought headshots and some didn’t and because we were overly optimistic regarding turnout, we ended up sitting around all day after spreading people out in scheduling. All stuff to go on the ever-growing “what not to do” list.
Because the script is so weird and doesn’t really have any good dialogue bits to use we didn’t do the traditional “sides” method of having them read a scene from the actual film. Instead I decided a couple weeks ago to have them do some improv. Seemed like a great idea at the time. Then a day or two before I decided that it would be pretty tough to have them completely improve, especially considering at the time I wasn’t sure we would have Deborah to help with the readings. So Joe and I spent until 3 AM or so the night before the auditions trying to find some short, simple neutral type scenes that we could then have them take direction on. We ended up with a half dozen decent little bits but still hadn’t figured out what kind of prompts we would provide. So I spent the drive down, and time sitting at the table waiting to come up with things like “You’re running late for a job interview” and “You’re in love but the other person doesn’t know it.” Some went better than others, and some worked better with certain scenes than others, and by the end of the day we had some good stuff worked out. Unfortunately there were some serious clunkers along the way. I was extremely impressed at the way some of the actors could read depth into such non-sensical scenes and then totally change up the interpretation after some feedback. It almost felt like directing!
It's weird; one of the things I didn't expect was to feel so badly that some really talented people simply don't fit the role. Just seeing how eager people are to come in and audition for a nobody like me, on the chance they'll get to work for free, demonstrates how hard it is to get into the industry. Two guys in particular were both great looking and very talented, and the best we can offer them is a bit part just because some roles need such a specific type look.
We also had some people come in that just didn't even fit the basic requirements we had listed in the casting call, i.e. an 18 year old for our middle aged main character. I think they were both new and just want to get as much audition practice as possible, which I totally understand, but if we had been busier it would have been a bit of an annoying time sink. Again I wish I could get into specifics but it would be rude, and I’m trying to figure out if it’s my place to suggest that perhaps one of the guy’s monologue was not only a terrible terrible choice, but not even actually a monologue when I let him know he didn’t get the part.
All the women that we saw were good also, but we just didn't have enough respondents yet to fill all the roles. Two that were scheduled didn't make it for various reasons so hopefully we can reschedule for next week. We also still need to make a final determination on how old Mother needs to be - which partially depends on who we pick for Bob. So many decisions :)
On a last note I wanted to mention that we had fantastic assistance from Deborah Childs who is not only a very experienced actress but does her own casting for commercials and local theater. Her professionalism combined with my complete lack of experience to raise the entire endeavor to something actually productive.
