By Antony Teofilo
It's a dream many have, but few realize:
Once.
Just once, you'd like to see your own glorious countenance splash across the silver screen in a bona fide Hollywood feature film. Most people consider it a near-impossible feat, and in most cases, they're right.
For a long time, Kevin Smith was one of the millions who dreamed of a career in the movies. Then came a fateful gamble of a movie called CLERKS, with which Smith captured the brass ring: he's a Hollywood Director. While he may enjoy the ability to get his projects greenlit at a rate that most other Hollywood personalities envy, Smith has never forgotten what it feels like to be on the outside. When he gets the chance, he shoves a crowbar in the golden gates of Tinseltown, and pries open the window of opportunity, and ushers through a few of his devoted fans to give them a peek at the greasy guts and gears of the dream factory, if only for an afternoon.
Every couple of years, a notice appears on a ViewAskew website announcing a call for extras to appear in Smith's next feature project. Photos and resumes pour in from across the globe for a chance at a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in one of Smith's films.
But simply applying isn't enough. The true gatekeepers are the casting companies who pour over the colorful hordes of fanboys and girls to select the lucky few that will get the call to report to the set.
Who are the people that choose extras? What criterion do they use? Does it pay to be wild when you send in a photo? Or nude?
Sit a spell with JERSEY GIRL's casting director and find out how to be...
Extra Special
An Interview With Diane Heery
Antony Teofilo: You're a Casting Director with Mike Lemon Casting in Philadelphia. How long have you been in that field?
Diane Heery: Eight to ten years now.
AT: I overheard you say that you used to be a teacher. Tell me about the road from schoolteacher to casting director.
DH:: [Laughs] Being a schoolteacher was a whole other lifetime for me. That was almost twenty years ago. I started out as an actor, actually. Mike Lemon and I knew each other as actors. We started out in theater together. He stopped acting and was just doing casting, but he was a one-man band in his office. As it got busier and busier, he'd ask, "Can you come out and help today?" I just gradually got sucked into this world.
AT: How does one get a casting agency off the ground?
DH:: The real turning point in the city of Philadelphia was the movie PHILADELPHIA. Jonathan Demme came into town to shoot the film. They were just curious about what kind of talent existed in Philadelphia. No major feature had really looked for principle players for speaking parts in town before. Jonathan thought they'd maybe book two or three actors. I think there were over twenty speaking roles booked out of Philadelphia's casting pool for that film. Since then, every feature film that comes into town takes a serious look at the local talent pool.
Members Only Inside the Paulsboro High School Gymnasium, Diane Heery (indicated with arrow) wades into a sea of humanity as she checks-in three hundred plus extras who have traveled from far and wide to appear as little blurs and shadows in JERSEY GIRL .
AT: Kevin Smith has an unusual policy as a filmmaker in that he likes to give his fans a chance to appear in his movies by announcing a call for extras on his website. Does that make your job harder in casting a movie?
DH:: No. It's part of the fun, especially on Kevin's films. It was very interesting when he put the notice out on the website. We received more than thirty-five giant post office mail tubs, and another ten FedEx tubs full of envelopes that said, "I want to be a Jersey Girl". The response was pretty overwhelming.
AT: Do you have any idea how many people responded?
DH:: Just for the fun of it, I had an intern figure out that one mail tub of small envelopes probably held a few thousand [submissions] and the tubs that held all the bigger envelopes held about three hundred...so, I don't know, ten thousand?
AT: How many people did you cast out of that ten thousand?
DH:: When all is said and done, we'll have cast about three thousand extras.
AT: Fans who submitted their entries have asked me about how you actually select people to be extras. For example, does geography play a big part in who gets picked?
DH:: Yes and no. Kevin has said, "These people will come from all over, so ask them [to participate]." If they were willing to come, we were more than happy to have them. Yesterday, we had a guy come all the way from England. It depends.
Geography does play a part when we're shooting tomorrow. When I know I can give people time to make travel plans, we'll spread it out and talk to everybody. But if I don't have time to get them here, it's simply not realistic.
AT: Are there any disqualifiers? Is there anything that helps someone get chosen? How do you pick people when they're just sending in a photo with their name on the back of it?
DH:: It depends on the needs of the scene. Basically, when you're working as an extra, you're there as part of the scenery, to lend ambiance to the set. How you present yourself in your picture tells us, "Look at me, I'm a suburban housewife." When we're doing things with a small town feel, that person might fit. But if it's supposed to be hip and cool Manhattan where everyone's sleek and sheik, we'll need a different look.
The Unusual Suspects From left to right: Bob Schreck (Editor, DC Comics), Bob Chapman (Graphitti Designs), Randy PlusOne, The Venerable Mr. Affleck,
"Big Kev" Schwoebel (The Opie and Andy Show), and The Renaissance Man take a moment to relax from their extra acting duties at the Hard Rock Cafe, Philadelphia.
AT: So when they take their pictures, they should try to have some personality in the photograph?
DH:: Absolutely. It helps tell us a bit about who you are. I have to say there has been a large number of people who have sent in their picture in unusual poses, and situations. [Laughs] A couple of people sent in pictures of them while they were asleep. We've had numerous men send in their naked selves...
AT: Were they the kind of men you'd want to see naked in a photo?
No. Not at all.[Laughs] God bless'em.
AT: What other sorts of unusual submissions did you see?
DH:: There were lots of people who want to show of their tattoos and that's cool. A couple guys sent in pictures of themselves on the toilet. And there's an interesting trend that's not just for Kevin's films but for other films we've done, too. I don't know why this is, but many women tend to send in their pictures where they're holding a bottle of beer in their hand. And we received lots of pictures of guys holding cats. Go figure.
AT: Paging Doctor Freud.
DH:: Yeah, I'm not going there. [Laughs] But it's definitely been interesting.
AT: So, when someone sends in a toilet shot or a beer picture or a guy with a cat pic, or God forbid, the fat naked guy photo, does that figure against those folks, or do you still seriously consider casting them?
DH:: Sure. We have a good laugh, but we'll still be able to say, "Hey, we can use that guy." We're working on a couple of other projects right now, so we can also use those people for those projects, not just JERSEY GIRL.
So don't be shy, folks. Keep it within reason, of course, but let your soul shine in your snapshots, and who knows? Next time Kevin Smith posts an open call for his next movie; you, too, could end up as a participant in celluloid history.
