Casting About
Auditions for Weasel Erotica were held in the middle of May 2006 after having received over one thousand submissions. Amazing! To this day I am surprised at the number of people who submitted for our silly little project. I am even more surprised to find that just over 100 of those submissions came from males. I genuinely feel sympathy for the young-ish actresses in NYC because the competition is incredible.Mel and I spent an untold number of hours sifting through the submissions and weeding out the folks we knew we wouldn’t be interested in seeing. To be honest, Mel did most of the work. All I really did was weed out the obvious wackos. During Abnormal Stew, JB and I had purposely called in those wackos, but we didn’t have the time or the interest in going through that ordeal again.
Before we had even begun to cast the show I noted the difference and improvement this project would have over Stew was Mel’s participation. In the months that had followed Stew I found that I had leaned on Melissa both personally and emotionally … now in May of 2006 I realized that I would be leaning on her professionally as well. Auditions would be held on one day in two three-hour sessions. Mel and I would obviously be there for both, Matt and Tony would assist for one session each.
I wrote the following in this blog a few days after the audition session:
"Auditions are nerve-wracking for actors. I hate 'em. We saw a handful of folks who were nervous auditioning for us. In the back of my head I'm thinking, "Calm down. It's not like we're anything special." Then again, to them, we might be.Mel's in the process of getting the show cast and, judging by the talent we saw the other day, I think we're gonna be in pretty good shape. I'm very excited to get back to work with Mo, Mel and "the real king" Tony King. There's a touch of the jitters knowing that we're venturing into the great unknown again, but I'm feeling confident that we're gonna be in great shape and that we'll have a ton of fun.
A big word of thanks to everybody that came out. It was the first audition session I had been to in ages where we didn't have one single wacko. That's probably because Mel was doing the casting and not me. I always wind up calling in at least one severely disturbed person ... Mel just brought in talent."
Obvious Choices
There were three obvious choices during the audition process. They were Anne McDaniels, Jennifer Sandella and Rebecca Sponseller.
We needed a supermodel of a sexy seductress to play Flo (months before, I had actually envisioned Mel playing the role herself) and Anne McDaniels fit the bill perfectly. Mel and I were also gratified, and even taken a little aback, by how much we genuinely enjoyed her. An ex-NFL cheerleader with a resume chock full of film, television and modeling credits initially seemed like a bad call to me. Before meeting her I admit to a prejudice … I assumed she would either be a diva to work with or simply wouldn’t bother to accept a role in our non-paying, not-gonna-do-much-for-your-career, low-budget production. I could not have been more wrong … there could not be a nicer, more professional, more thoroughly enjoyable, intelligent actress to join our little group. The fact that she’s drop-dead gorgeous doesn’t hurt either. Regardless, I respected and admired her for her talents and tenacity.
Jennifer Sandella was pretty much instantly cast too … but for very different reasons. Don’t get me wrong, Jennifer is also an extremely attractive actress, but she had a special skill that won us over. She can speak gibberish. Apparently she is fluent. She performed her monologue, spoke a little gibberish and we knew we had to have her in our show. We hadn’t a clue where to put her yet, but we knew we had to have her.
After Rebecca Sponseller’s audition we were completely convinced that she was bat-sh*t crazy. A trained and gifted opera singer, she sang her audition. Let me just point out that, at least up until this point, our show was not a musical by any means. She was rattled, out of breath and told us that she had just come from a musical theatre audition and asked, whether out of lack-of-preparation or nerves, if she could just sing her audition. It was hysterical and as she left Mel and I agreed that perhaps a musical number in Weasel Erotica wouldn’t be a bad idea. Mel would slightly second guess herself later in the week and meet with Rebecca during lunch one day to make sure she could even read. She could and she was cast.
Two other lovely young ladies were cast, but after a bit more deliberation. Kimi Winkler was (and is) a beautiful bundle of energy that we were both drawn to, but couldn’t figure out exactly what to do with. I briefly considered what it would be like to have her as Tony’s love interest if for no other reason than my certainty that she would drive Tony crazy. Once we decided to pair her up with Jennifer as the two zoo girls we knew we had something a little magical … the toned bundle of electricity and the girl that spoke gibberish … it just had to work.
Mel wanted Amy Kersten to play Alison, who is more or less the lead role in the show. I was less certain … I actually thought Amy was too intelligent (like that should be a knock on an actress) and wouldn’t convey a sense of damsel in distress. Mel thought otherwise … and I had learned to trust Mel’s instincts. Turns out that by August Mel would be proven to be absolutely right.But What About Another Guy?
We still had to cast our villain, Gregory Grimm, and although we auditioned a number of male actors we weren’t really impressed with any of them. Mel and I would discuss possible solutions over the course of the next several days … we could hold another audition, we could ask around, we could discuss actors we had worked with. By the end of the week, I was at a loss. That’s when Mel recommended a fellow she had been working with named Jeremy Sykes.
She reminded me that I had once met Jeremy at the bar Tony had been working at but I hadn’t realized that he was an actor. To be honest, all I really remembered about him was that he had this hot girlfriend who was some kind of scientist or something and was from Canada. Once again I put my faith in Melissa. This show might be mine, but the production would be hers.We briefly even had an actor to play Larry, the Monster-From-Under-Your-Bed but after he was unable to make the first rehearsal and once we realized that he would have some scheduling conflicts, Mel decided that we would just have Jeremy double up and play both Larry and Grimm.
New Beginnings Always Bring New Excitement
Rehearsals began and I was positively brimming with excitement. We had a great cast, I had a new partner in Melissa who was taking charge and taking responsibility, my health was good (that wouldn’t last for long, but we’ll get to that soon) and the day job wasn’t proving to be as bad nor as time consuming as it had been earlier in the year. After our second rehearsal, I wrote the following:"Well, rehearsals have just begun on Weasel Erotica and I already have two observations. One, Mel did one heck of a job casting this show. I mean she was on the money. She found a nice group that blends well with Tony, Mo and I and brings some unique energy to the show. Yeah, big talk two rehearsals in, but it bodes well for the future. Two, this script of mine might actually work. Everybody had doubts here and there, but it's starting to become obvious that we have a nice little shell to hang Talent Bros insanity on."
My confidence was at a high point as I begun to be a promotional machine. Unlike Stew, I wouldn’t neglect to promote The Talented Talent Brothers this time around. Just six months after almost hanging it up and tossing in the towel on this idea, things had turned around. A trip to Vegas and popping my cherry as a stand-up comedian had all contributed to my new-found energy and excitement.However, maintaining that energy would be another challenge …
1 comment:
Awww...thanks for the props.
I read your blog dude. A lot of people do. I am particularly fascinated by the retrospective on TTB.
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