A MATTER OF CASTING AND CASH

For actors everywhere, the name of the game is To Be Seen. In Hollywood, the game is particularly intense, especially when it comes to being seen by casting directors.

As one casting director put it: “If actors have to stand on their heads, deliver singing telegrams, deliver flowers, send you pictures with cookies or ask to park your car--they’ll do anything to be seen by you.”

And with 63,000 Los Angeles actors vying for the attention of about 150 casting directors in film and television here, the numbers alone give casting directors an inordinate amount of power. Sometimes that power is abused. The legendary actor/casting director tussle involved sex and the “casting couch.” The ‘80s version concerns cash--actors paying to be seen by casting directors.

Nowadays, job-seeking actors can meet many Los Angeles-based casting directors at operations known as showcases--as long as they’re willing to pay for it. At these sessions, actors pay the showcase operator (usually another actor) so that they may perform a short scene from a TV series, a play or a movie before a casting director, who is paid to attend.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and many actors deplore such a practice as being exploitative of actors; the Casting Society of America (CSA), a national professional group of 185 casting directors, calls the practice educational.

But other actors say they pay for these showcases so that casting directors may see their work and, hopefully, call them in the future to audition for a role. Last year, approximately 10,000 job-seeking actors in Los Angeles paid more than $1 million at about 3,000 individual showcase sessions, according to estimations made by Calendar based upon weekly showcase schedules and interviews with showcase operators. An estimated $500,000 ended up in casting directors’ hands.

One anonymous letter writer to a Hollywood trade newspaper suggested that showcases were not unlike “a job applicant putting $200 in an envelope, attaching it to his job application and passing it to the personnel director.”

Many casting directors agree and shun fee-paying showcases. They said in interviews that they think it’s unethical to take money from actors (although the money actually comes from a third party, the showcase operator). It’s a job that casting directors are already paid by producers to do, they said.

However, the Casting Society of America has taken a more curious stand. Although the CSA has publicly postured itself as a leading force in responding to SAG’s complaints about showcases, its officials have fought most attempts by the actors union to ban showcase payments to casting directors.

Calendar explored the issue of showcasing in interviews with more than 100 actors, agents, casting directors and guild officials.

Few individuals wanted their names used: actors, because they feared that being quoted--even innocuously--in this article would mean they would “never work again”; casting directors generally stayed anonymous because they feared alienating the powerful Casting Society of America. Talent agents demurred because their clients might lose work.

Calendar found:

SAG wanted to regulate, if not ban, fee-paying to casting directors at showcases and proposed as much during its contract negotiations last year with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Instead, SAG accepted a less stringent producers’ counterproposal for regulating showcases--a proposal that had been drafted by CSA.

The Casting Society guidelines forbid casting directors to take money at showcases, but the CSA also changed the definition of the word showcase. CSA officials claim the word was a misnomer when used to describe the kind of event that paid casting directors $150 to $200 to attend--the primary target of SAG’s efforts. CSA officials insisted that those showcases were, in fact, “classes” and casting directors were “teachers.” Hence, their right to collect fees.

A second type of showcase, which paid casting directors only $50, was the only one affected by the ban on fees in the final contract. However, CSA members had already been boycotting the $50 showcases for a year prior to the contract negotiations.

Many actors, agents and even some CSA members regard the teaching designation as a sham, claiming the CSA invented it to prevent negative perceptions of casting directors within the industry and to protect their showcase earnings.

Some dissenting Casting Society members report they were told that any divisiveness on the issue would hamper the CSA’s primary goal--to establish an Academy Award for casting.

Calendar estimates that certain casting directors have earned large sums since the SAG-AMPTP contract was signed last August. The figures are based on an approximation of earnings (using the standard fee of $200 per session) of casting directors’ scheduled appearances on various cold-reading showcase calendars. Casting directors at Cannon Films, for example, have earned approximately $11,000 as a group in showcase fees--in addition to salaries already paid to them at the film company. Similarly, a casting assistant who worked on Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” last fall made $6,000 from showcases in only 10 weeks.

A highly placed executive said of the contract negotiations and the outcome: “It was a great whitewash. Casting directors knew they looked sleazy and they gave themselves this great whitewash. Now they can hide behind this new contract, which will be in effect until 1989.”

Sally Powers, CSA executive director, disagreed vehemently: “We gave the AMPTP our guidelines and other information to help them understand what the issue was, we weren’t even at the negotiations. What they (SAG) got came from the producers, not from us.”

Casting directors constitute the funnels through which all actors must pass en route to the screen--big or little. Most casting directors don’t have actual hiring power, but they are responsible for bringing in actors to be seen by the people who do hire--directors or, in some cases, producers. So, for an actor, meeting casting officials is a must.

No college or university offers degrees in casting; it more resembles a trade passed from journeyman to apprentice.

Casting directors’ salaries vary, depending on the type of project. But the pay can be lucrative. Feature-film casting, which can take months, ranges from $20,000 for low-budget films to $250,000 for a feature film at a major studio. Casting a TV movie of the week pays from $10,000 to $30,000.

A good casting director carries in his/her mind a bulging Rolodex of actors’ names and faces, to be instantly summoned at the mention of a “type” needed in a script. If an actor isn’t fixed in a casting director’s mind, it’s doubtful that he or she will be among those summoned for a particular role.

Thus, showcases.

Showcasing was the brainchild of several actors who, during the 1970s, were finding it difficult to become fixed in casting directors’ minds because it was harder and harder to meet them. The days when casting directors basically interviewed anyone who walked through their doors were all but obsolete, abandoned for lack of time in the avalanche of increased TV and film production.

Actors said that time constraints also caused casting directors to stop attending Equity Waiver theater productions--another place where new film and TV talents were often spotted.

In their place, actors claimed, most casting directors relied on talent agents to supply them with new faces. (But even talent agents complained in interviews that only top agents have the pull to get casting directors to meet new actors.)

The first showcases were large productions, featuring 35 to 50 actors, who performed short scenes for large groups of industry folk. Actors paid from $50 to $75 to perform; the audience received wine and cheese or, sometimes, a catered lunch.

That idea gave way to the so-called “scene” showcases which were usually held in small theaters or dance studios. A group of 20-24 actors paid about $10 to a showcase operator to attend. The operator invited a casting director who watched the actors, in pairs, perform three-to-five minute scenes from plays or movies (or sometimes original material). Many casting directors preferred this procedure to viewing talent at Equity Waiver theaters because they could see as many as 24 actors in the same time.

Scene showcases originated the practice of paying $50 honorariums to casting directors, who--with few exceptions--readily accepted the money. Most showcase operators interviewed could only recall two or three casting directors who ever refused payment. They said usually if a casting director didn’t like the idea of a payment, he or she declined to attend at all.

“In retrospect, it was a horrible, horrible mistake,” reflected a former showcase operator, who requested anonymity. “At the time it seemed a perfectly valid idea. The $50 wasn’t really paying a fee; it was merely a way of saying to someone who came to a showcase for four hours after what had already been a very long day, ‘Thanks for coming, here’s gas money and take your wife to dinner.’ ”

The operator maintained: “There were always intrinsic payments to casting directors. When they went to Equity Waiver plays, they were given free tickets; at the original big showcases, they got a free catered lunch or an open bar.”

As for the showcase operators, profit was not the motivation for running one, they said repeatedly in interviews. After paying the casting director, rent and telephone bills, they maintained, their showcases ran in the red.

“We didn’t care,” an operator explained. “The point was to meet casting directors who might be impressed with our work and call us in for jobs.”

This nonprofit attitude died with the introduction of the “cold-reading” showcase in 1982 by actor/entrepreneur Michael McCabe, who founded Michael McCabe Productions. Casting directors quickly responded to McCabe’s offer of $200 honorariums per appearance--a previously unheard-of amount of money. Actors who wanted to meet casting directors had to ante up $20, double what they paid for scene showcases.

At the cold-reading showcases, the invited casting director brought “sides” (pages of script) from movies, plays or television shows for a pair of actors to study briefly, then “cold read,” i.e., perform in a believable fashion. Afterward, the performance would be critiqued by the casting director.

McCabe said in an interview that he started cold readings because they were akin to “real life” auditions. His idea caught on and cold-reading showcases offering honorariums ranging from $150 to $300 (for a “name” casting director) quickly proliferated.

Two or three scene showcases per week burgeoned into 50 to 60 showcases--scene and cold-reading--held weekly by veteran scene showcase operators, McCabe and a flock of new showcase operators. A longtime scene showcase operator claimed, “Instead of actors running showcases for other actors, we had actors and other people who saw showcasing as a place to make a profit.”

(McCabe recently evolved his showcase operation into a potentially even more profitable idea, the Actors Center of Los Angeles; see accompanying story.)

While several cold-reading showcases maintained traditional showcase standards for participants (such as auditions or requiring participants to be members of an acting union), newer showcases ran ads proclaiming “no auditions required.” They also waived union membership requirements.

Showcase operators also began inviting producers and directors to attend and paid them similar fees. But casting directors continued to be the most frequent paid guests.

With so many showcases clamoring for their attendance, casting directors eventually became more selective about which ones to attend. The reason, many showcase operators said, had to do with money.

Their experiences with casting directors mirrored that of one scene showcase operator who recalled: “Suddenly, we’d be calling up our guests who had happily taken $50 in the past. They would say, ‘Well, I really feel that my fee now has to be $200. What had been an honorarium, they now considered a fee.’ ”

As cold-reading showcases mushroomed, so did complaints about them to officials at the Screen Actors Guild. And as showcase competition increased, according to veteran showcase operators, the newer operators took to inviting anyone from a casting office to attend, in an effort to fill their schedules.

“As a result you had people like receptionists collecting $200 honorariums from some of the showcases,” a showcase operator claimed. At least one top casting director--who forbids her employees to receive payment at showcases--recalled firing her secretary after discovering that the secretary was not only collecting showcase fees, but also passing herself off as a casting assistant.

“The operators wouldn’t care--they just wanted to fill showcases by claiming that someone from so-and-so’s casting office would be there. The actors would end up paying for nothing,” a showcase operator said.

Casting directors could make money at showcases morning, noon and night, in a variety of locations. One showcase, In the Act, made it possible for them to do so without leaving their office.

In the Act traveled directly to casting directors’ offices for its cold-reading sessions. An ad for the showcase proclaimed: “Casting directors love it for its convenience.” (It now operates in a fixed location, a rented office.)

Another operation, the Cold-Reading

Workshop, was run by an actress out of her home for two years. However, Toni Atell said in an interview that she now conducts the cold-reading sessions in studios around town because her landlord ordered her to stop. Among the casting directors who attended Atell’s home showcases: Universal head of talent Mark Malis, Bob Harbin (“L.A. Law”), Victoria Burrows (“Stingray”) and Beth Hymson (“Hunter”).

Many casting directors, however, flatly refused to attend showcases. In an interview, Warners’ Marion Dougherty said that people in her department may attend showcases, but accepting an honorarium from one is grounds for immediate dismissal.

Calendar examined numerous showcase schedules (which listed upcoming appearances by casting directors) from June, 1985, through June, 1986. Based on casting directors’ listed appearances, their earnings were estimated and regular attendees were noted. Among the top moneymakers were many Casting Society of America members. In fact, of the 115 current members in Los Angeles, more than 75 appeared on calendars as showcase guests.

With few exceptions, most casting directors mainly attended cold-reading showcases, where they received $200 honorariums. Calendar studied a year’s worth of showcase schedules to approximate casting directors’ earnings based on a standard fee of $200.

In a one-year period, Casting Society treasurer Al Onorato (“Capitol,” “Superior Court”) earned, by Calendar’s estimation, about $10,000 from showcase appearances (58 cold reading, 15 scene) in addition to his casting salary.

Combined with showcase earnings from Onorato’s assistant and his partner, the three-person independent casting agency earned an estimated $16,000 in payments from showcases for the year. Onorato called the $16,000 figure “way too high” when Calendar called to verify it, but declined to offer an alternative sum.

At Universal Television over the period of a year, 10 casting directors’ estimated showcase earnings totaled close to $30,000. In a six-month period, Cannon Films casting directors’ showcase earnings totaled approximately $11,000.

“That’s pretty accurate,” said Bob McDonald, head of Cannon’s casting dept., “After all, we cast 46 films last year.”

Almost all the casting directors interviewed said that they attended showcases to find actors for roles in movies or TV series. “It’s very beneficial to me and to the actors,” said McDonald. “How else are they going to meet casting directors?”

As showcases flourished, anonymous letters began appearing in industry trade papers. One letter in Daily Variety read, “As long as casting directors are taking money from actors, we all have a problem.”

The letters did not go unnoticed by officials at SAG, who issued their own complaints.

Leonard Chassman, executive secretary for SAG’s Hollywood branch, told of the union’s distaste for the situation in an interview. “The casting process has become tainted, either by favoritism of somebody who attends a showcase or the fact that it’s about the only way these days that you get access,” he said. “And we feel that access should not carry a price tag.”

One anonymous letter-writer in Daily Variety specifically targeted the Casting Society: “Dear Mike (Casting Society President Mike Fenton),” the letter read, “. . . you permit behavior that is just this side of fleecing. Why on Earth do you think you deserve the respect of the industry? Think about it.”

Fenton (“E.T.,” “Chinatown,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Back to the Future” with partner Jane Feinberg) is one of the most powerful independent casting directors in the business.

It took him about 10 years of active lobbying among his peers to make the Casting Society of America a reality, which he did in 1981. He remains outspoken about improving the occupation’s image and lobbied hard to achieve one of the CSA’s stated goals, membership in both the motion picture and television academys. Members say that Fenton’s dream is to see casting directors receive their own Oscar and Emmy categories.

Many casting directors acknowledged that their profession has long suffered from an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the rest of the entertainment industry. They mention that casting directors didn’t receive screen credit until 1960; that they have no formal union and, of course, that the infernal casting couch story has dogged them for decades.

For two years, debate on showcases and the money being paid from actors to casting directors bounced between the Casting Society and the Screen Actors Guild. Each step taken by the CSA to “correct showcase abuses” was pronounced ineffective several months later by SAG’s Chassman, who usually made his remarks to the entertainment trade newspapers.

In an article published in SAG’s in-house magazine entitled, “Can Casting Directors Clean Up Their Act?,” Chassman stated that SAG would only be happy when actors were able to see casting directors for free.

CSA tried issuing guidelines, disclaimers and other rules regarding showcase attendance, but none banned taking fees at showcases, so none appeased Chassman or the guild.

Finally CSA simply changed the terminology. Early in 1986 the CSA board announced its newest new policy: that members would no longer accept payments at showcases. However, showcases were defined as “the viewing of prepared scenes whether or not a discussion with the actor takes place.” In other words, casting directors could no longer accept $50 for attending scene showcases.

Cold-reading showcases ceased to be referred as such in CSA publications, and instead were called “classes.” Casting directors’ activities at them became known as “teaching.”

In a letter written by Fenton to CSA members at the same time, he noted that a survey of members indicated they would not be willing to give up fees paid for attending cold-reading showcases.

“Even among our board, there are differing opinions on teaching,” Fenton wrote, “but there is a unanimous opinion that there is a necessity for CSA presenting a united front to combat the bad publicity that Leonard Chassman (has) generated in the trades and by word of mouth.”

A group of veteran showcase operators (who mainly ran scene showcases) were among the first to take issue with CSA’s policy, they recalled in separate interviews. Their position paper read: “Very few casting directors are qualified to teach anything other than their own personal preferences for interview and auditions.”

However, CSA board member and former Universal casting director Joe Reich maintained in an interview: “Even if a casting director is not a teacher per se--the casting director has experiences to share and knowledge to give. Even if the guy’s been (casting) for only a year.”

But actors--the students in these classes--weren’t interested in hearing about those experiences or being taught--at least not those surveyed by the angry showcase operators. The results of the operators’ survey indicated that 87% of actors who went to showcases went only to meet casting directors.

When asked about that survey’s results, Reich responded, “Then they’re going for the wrong reasons.”

CSA’s adoption of a teaching designation provoked additional criticism and confusion among members. A transcript obtained from a membership meeting held in February, 1986, reflected some casting directors’ uneasiness with their society’s actions.

Feature-film casting director Elizabeth Leustig (“Dune,” “The Sure Thing”) began by asking Reich, architect of the new rule, for a definition of “teaching.”

“For example,” she queried, “where we bring in scenes and cold-read the actors and then correct them?”

Reich responded: “That’s teaching.”

But casting director Jane Jenkins (“Stand By Me,” with partner Janet Hirshenson) disagreed. “I think by talking to actors and saying ‘I think you did that scene particularly well’ or ‘I think you should come in a little earlier to get the punch line’ does not, necessarily, make one a teacher.”

Other casting directors felt they did indeed teach and deserved to be paid; they blamed the Screen Actors Guild and scene showcase operators for stirring up needless trouble.

Barbara Claman, who casts the soap opera “Santa Barbara,” insisted: “I’m somebody who teaches. I’m qualified to teach because I graduated and was a nursery school teacher. I think we should be paid for our expertise.”

Another faction disagreed with the idea of payments to casting directors altogether.

Geri Windsor, head of casting for MTM Enterprises, offered a 17-year veteran’s insight on the matter.

“As an old-timer in the casting profession, you didn’t get paid for going to showcases,” she said. “All of a sudden, somebody out there saw a good thing happening and they are now paying to get us there. And the more they paid, the more people they got because actors, let’s face it, actors are going there to be seen by us.

“We are now charging for something that we used to do to give something back to this community.”

Another member added: “It’s like we are all ready to make a buck as quick as we can. . . . The impression is you’re fleecing the public.”

Dissenting CSA members told Calendar that significant disagreement among the membership was quelled by CSA officials who suggested that internal squabbling would splinter the organization and terminate its quest for creation of an Oscar category.

Board member Sally Powers (“Hill Street Blues”) denied that Academy Award considerations had anything to do with quelling dissent. However, a letter written by Fenton to the membership last July 6 suggested that the CSA’s proposal to the Television academy that casting directors be allowed to nominate, vote and judge was defeated because of the showcase controversy.

“The bottom line is that collectively and individually, we are perceived as performing in a manner that many consider unprofessional at best and immoral at worst,” Fenton wrote. Months later, CSA’s same provisions were introduced by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers during contract negotiations with SAG and AFTRA (the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists).

AMPTP executive Nicholas Counter told Calendar that non-CSA casting directors were consulted as well as CSA members about SAG’s proposed ban on casting directors’ fees. He said the producers’ counterproposal consisted of CSA’s guidelines and were presented on the casting society’s stationery.

What eventually was adopted by SAG and the AMPTP was almost identical to the CSA provisions:

Casting directors could not attend any workshop or class that implied a guarantee of employment in return for attending.

Casting directors would not attend any workshop or class which advertised which roles or show he/she was currently casting.

Casting directors were prohibited from accepting fees from performers in exchange for a role or viewing an actor’s “showcase performance.”

The new provisions, which are not part of the actual contract, seemingly banned fee-taking at any showcase performances, until it became clear that SAG and the AMPTP had accepted the CSA’s definition of a scene showcase, not the cold-reading format designated as educational.

The reaction among those who were aware of what SAG had wanted in the contract and what it actually negotiated, was astonishment. “What (SAG) got in that contract for casting was horrifying,” said an agent who sits on board of directors of the Assn. of Talent Agents.

”. . . they (SAG officials) had to take what the producers gave them and that was dictated by the CSA.”

Chassman was diplomatic in a recent interview, but he seemed uncomfortable with the subject. “You have to bear in mind that we do not, unilaterally, write a contract and, certainly, what we originally proposed was not achieved.”

CSA president Fenton’s summation: “The only thing I’ve heard is that the actors are all very pleased with it.”

Almost a half year after the provision took effect, casting directors continue to make money above and beyond their salaries, from showcasing.

Calendar contacted several producers who employ showcasing casting directors for their opinions on the situation:

“L.A. Law” producer Steven Bochco claimed that his casting director, Bob Harbin, must attend showcases. “He can’t do the job he does for us on company time. There’s no way he could access the talent pool in this city by simply going to Equity Waiver theater.”

Bochco wasn’t as clear on whether Harbin should be accepting money for his showcase appearances. “I’m not sure I have a philosophical or moral justification for it.” But as far as actors paying to meet Harbin, all Bocho asked was, “Well, can’t they deduct it as a legitimate expense?”

“Amazing Stories” casting assistant Craig Campobasso received almost $6,000 over a 10-week period from showcases and brought in many actors who were hired on the Steven Spielberg series, according to showcase operators who paid him and knew of actors who subsequently worked on the series. (Campobasso declined to comment when contacted by Calendar.) However, producer David Vogel seemed to ignore that point when asked for his opinion. Through a spokeswoman, he said only, “Maybe (taking money at showcases) is the case with other productions, but not on ‘Amazing Stories.’ ”

Kerry McCluggage, president of Universal Television, explained that Universal’s casting directors are pledged to follow the casting rules, which are contained in a company-issued ethics and compliance statement. “It requires them to divulge potential conflicts of interest,” McCluggage said. “But I’m not aware that any have been reported.” The executive added: “I think we’re probably going to review the situation. This (showcasing) is a sticky matter and we have to be sensitive to the issue.”

Also, as part of the contract agreement, the Screen Actors Guild and Casting Society of America initiated a program offering two free scene showcases per month only for SAG members in order to give actors more free access to casting directors.

Only 60 actors per month are able to attend the free scene showcases and perform for a panel of CSA-provided casting directors. The showcase’s waiting list is already four months long.

In the meantime, among ways for actors to get the attention of casting directors is to pay for a cold-reading showcase, stand on their heads, deliver singing telegrams, deliver flowers. . . .

FO