week 4: the tipping point.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Been busy with script revisions and casting. Auditions this weekend.

At this rate, I should be heading back to the States in about a month and that scares me!

Found this bit from an interview between Gus Van Sant and Kelly Reichardt.

KR: ...I’ve become completely sold on the art of acting over the years. It’s great to be able to do nuanced things with an actor like Michelle who is really a master of her craft.I always thought it would be easier shooting with non-actors. If you love what they’re doing when they’re doing it, then it’s the greatest, but if you want to change anything—

GVS: —There’s no control.

KR: In your films, you get people at an age before they necessarily come to the idea that they want to act, and you get something special out of that.

GVS: You mean like with John Robinson in Elephant?

KR: And Gabe Nevins from Paranoid Park.

GVS: That’s just casting. I think you can do it when they’re under 20. Not when they’re 30. I was under the impression doing Elephant that you should cast the real people in the roles. So if you’re casting a plumber, you should cast a real plumber. If you’re casting a racecar driver, it should be a real racecar driver. It was a theory. I tried to do it on Last Days with rock and rollers. It was just way, way different for me. There’s something about being under a certain age, like 20; they have a lot of free time. They aren’t citizens yet... What I needed for Last Days was the 25-to-30 year-old rocker, a real rocker. Which certainly exists, but you find a real person and they’re just not interested in doing a movie at all. We tended to use our friends because they were like the characters in the story.

KR: It’s kind of impossible to have a blanket theory about casting...

BOMB Magazine Interview.