Casting By, a
documentary about casting directors, sheds light on the dawn of the casting
director as an independent creative player in the world of film and
television. It’s interesting stuff if
you’re a movie buff, but I suspect it would put a general audience to sleep.
The story takes focuses on Marion Dougherty, a brilliant
New York casting director who defined the job.
Just as Dougherty was coming into her own as a casting director in New York –
based network television, the studio system was coming apart in Los
Angeles. When the studios stopped
keeping a roster of reliably stereotypical role players on contract and
transitioned to hiring afresh for each new film, they needed someone who knew
the talent pool. They needed someone who
knew how to read a script and see a certain performer or type of
performer. They needed a casting
director.
Dougherty filled that role, and in so doing she garnered the
respect of many of the great filmmakers of her day. While she was at it, she trained the next generation
of casting directors and shaped her profession for years to come. Casting
By tells her story with verve, and sprinkles it with interviews with such luminaries as
Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese. However, the film assumes a familiarity with
the motion pictures of the late sixties and early seventies (Dougherty’s heyday) that many
viewers may not share. If you haven’t
seen Midnight Cowboy, you can’t know
how perfectly cast John Voight and Dustin Hoffman were in that film. The same goes for Robert Redford and Paul
Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid, or Dustin Hoffman in The
Graduate, or a number of the other actors in a number of the other films Casting By expects you to have seen.
That said, Casting By
taught this film buff a few things about the history of auteur-era American
filmmaking, and it did so in an
entertaining fashion. If you’ve done
your homework, you’ll probably enjoy Casting
By. I know I did.
