Boys at Cast Call in Sunny View of ‘Lord of the Flies’

Twelve-year-old Neil Frankland of Laguna Hills and Sir William Golding, the Nobel Prize-winning author of “Lord of the Flies,” had decidedly different ideas of what would happen if a bunch of boys were stranded on a desert island free from adult rule.

“We’d probably throw a party or something,” figured Frankland, who, along with about 150 other county boys, came to an open casting call over the weekend in Costa Mesa for a new film version of “Lord of the Flies.”

In the 1954 novel, a symbolic work that Golding said was intended “to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature,” a group of boys being airlifted from a nuclear war zone crash on an island and are forced to survive by their wits.

Instead of building a pre-adolescent utopia, the boys quickly divide into weak and strong, with most descending into savagery. Before they are rescued by a warship--itself a symbol of barbarism--the group’s bullies have killed two wise but unpopular boys.

The first film version of the novel was made in 1963. Now, Castle Rock Entertainment, a new company financed in part by film maker Rob Reiner and some of the executives who worked on Reiner’s “Stand by Me,” is updating the story, replacing the British subjects of the novel with U.S. boys.

Martin Shafer, one of the film makers, said: “They have a lot of the same characteristics, but they are just American. (The character) Simon doesn’t watch the BBC, he watches ‘Alf.’ ”

He said the new version will contain “95%” of what’s in the book, with the slight exception of the principal character, Ralph, who represents reason and democracy.

“We’ve made the protagonist a somewhat stronger character than he was in the book,” Shafer said. “Our hero is a never-wavering, fairly strong hero type.

“The book says that if you put Hitler and Gandhi on an island, there’s a good chance that Hitler will come out on top. We’re sort of saying that we don’t know exactly who will come out on top.”

Shafer insisted, however, that few liberties were being taken with Golding’s unsentimental allegory:

“It’s not going to be an uplifting, upbeat movie. Exactly the same stuff happens as in the book--the rescue is by military guys, and (the character) Piggy gets killed.”

To find the 1980s versions of Ralph, Simon, Piggy and the other unhappy children, the film makers held open auditions around the country. On Saturday afternoon, director Harry Hook, a 29-year-old Englishman, brought his crew to a rehearsal room at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, where he quizzed scores of boys about their favorite sports, the qualities of leadership and whether they had ever eaten bugs.

Out of 150 contenders, Hook found three worth considering. They got to read lines from the script before a video camera, while their mothers, who had brought them to the audition after seeing newspaper ads for it, fretted in the hallway.

Some parts have already been cast, but casting will continue into August.

Few of the parents and none of the boys had read “Lord of the Flies,” but when presented with the story line, all had more optimistic ideas about the outcome than Golding did.

Being marooned “would be kind of a good experience,” said Sebastian Lopez, 10, of Santa Ana. “They might get to know some animals and get to pet them.”

One of the mothers, Peggy Sherman of El Toro, said she “hated the book. I thought it was violent and gruesome.” Nonetheless, she brought her two sons to try out for the picture because open castings are rare. Also, she reasoned, “Lord of the Flies” “has a message to it.”

Shane German, 13, of Los Alamitos, ventured that the stranded boys would all share and be friends but said there might be some truth in Golding’s vision.

“I know kids who would want to boss everybody around,” he said. “I’m one of them.”

And despite the scariness of Golding’s dark novel, at least one auditioner could imagine an even more frightening scenario:

“It would be worse if girls were on the island,” said Daniel Milchiker, 10, of Laguna Hills. “They’d scratch and fight and pull your hair.”