DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:
Straight out of central casting - that’s a phrase you may have heard. It means someone who fits an archetype or stereotype. But did you know Central Casting is an actual company? NPR’s Mandalit del Barco reports it’s 100 years old this month.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Over the years, so many movies, including “Singin’ In The Rain” and “The Buster Keaton Story,” have namedropped the premier agency providing Hollywood with background actors.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) If you need a bit player, go call Central Casting.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Central Casting.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Central Casting.
DEL BARCO: In the silent movie days, hordes of Hollywood hopefuls would crowd the entrances of movie studios, jostling to be chosen as extras for the latest productions. A scene in the Netflix series “Hollywood” reimagines that daily ritual.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) Today, we’re lensing a scene from a war pic where the plane goes down and a bunch of passengers flail around in the water and then die. OK?
JENNIFER BENDER: The director or assistant director or producer would come out and handpick people.
DEL BARCO: Jennifer Bender is the executive vice president at Central Casting.
BENDER: And if they weren’t chosen at that studio, then they would drive over to the next studio. In that way, it was very chaotic, so they needed a whole different system.
DEL BARCO: She says in 1925, a studio trade group created Central Casting to connect them with extras and to make sure they got paid. The agency filled the crowd scenes for some epic movies like the 1928 film “Noah’s Ark.”
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DEL BARCO: For the biblical flood scenes, Warner Brothers hired 7,500 extras. They inundated them with 600,000 gallons of water and debris, Longhorn steer and dummies. According to the film’s star, Dolores Costello, in a documentary about the making of “Noah’s Ark,” she said some of the unsuspecting extras were injured.
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DOLORES COSTELLO: It was brutal. I called it mud, blood and flood.
DEL BARCO: Among the extras in that film who escaped danger was John Wayne, then known as Marion Robert Morrison. Other movie stars got their start through Central Casting - Jean Harlow, Gary Cooper, Hattie McDaniel and, later, Harrison Ford, Kristen Wiig and Brad Pitt. In a video for outstandingscreenplays.com, Pitt recounts the time he appeared on the 1987 film “No Man’s Land.” He was supposed to be a silent waiter, but he tried to hustle a speaking part by ad-libbing.
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BRAD PITT: I said, would you like anything else? And the first AD goes, cut, cut, cut, cut. And he came over to me. He said, you do that again, you’re off the set. And I was like, oh, man.
DEL BARCO: Senior casting director Claire Benjamin says that’s a no-no for background actors.
CLAIRE BENJAMIN: Don’t look at the camera when you are on set. And it is hard for some people to act naturally.
DEL BARCO: Background actress Taylor Miller says there are some tricks, like quietly muttering phrases.
TAYLOR MILLER: We’re doing something called walla walla. You’re not speaking out loud. You’re just mimicking. And sometimes, if you want to make it look natural, just keep saying, watermelon, watermelon.
DEL BARCO: Background actor Eddie Williams says he gets a pay bump if he’s asked to deliver a line or be a body double or a stand-in.
EDDIE WILLIAMS: I’ve been on set, let’s say, a thousand times. I’ve had a good time.
DEL BARCO: The agency has 200,000 background actors registered for work, everyone from newborns to retirees. They still get cast on their looks, but Benjamin says the roles are less stereotypical than before.
BENJAMIN: Hollywood in general is really pushing for diversity and inclusion, and I do think there’s a drive towards authenticity.
DEL BARCO: There are more safety regulations in the industry than a century ago, but some background actors say they fear getting replaced by AI-generated characters. Mark Goldstein heads Entertainment Partners, which operates Central Casting. He points out that productions already use computer-generated images for big crowd scenes.
Wait. So you’re not scared that AI’s going to take away jobs?
MARK GOLDSTEIN: No. No. We think it survives together. Such a big piece of the art is the human interaction.
DEL BARCO: He says Central Casting will carry on as long as there are dreamers trying to break into Hollywood. Mandalit del Barco, NPR News, Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF GENE KELLY SONG, “SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
