You feel bad about thinking about it… but you DO think about it. When you see a movie or a TV show with someone really over weight, or ugly, or something else along those lines… you think to yourself: “How did they go about getting this person for this role when they were just going to be humiliated”?
I remember thinking that exact thought when watching Dodgeball… you know that scene where the kid trying out for the cheerleading team gets stuck with that really fat girl? They basically mock and humiliate her in the movie… so how on earth did they find this girl and get her to agree to do something like that? I tell ya… these casting directors have to be 1 part diplomat and another part salesmen. It can’t be easy.
So what happens when one crosses the line and flat out insults people? The folks over at Cinematical give us this:
Well, a couple days ago a casting notice went out for Shelter — a Julianne Moore/Jonathan Rhys Meyers thriller about to start filming in Pittsburgh — that began to answer those questions. It included a call for people to play West Virginia hillbillies. Specifically, they wanted “unusual body shapes, even physical abnormalities as long as there is normal mobility. Unusual facial features…. We are also looking for a … girl with an other-worldly look to her. Could be an albino or something along those lines…. ‘Regular-looking’ children should not attend this open call.”
The Pittsburgh-based casting director responsible for this, Donna Belajac, has now been fired — not because of the casting notice, but because of the uproar that followed her comments quoted in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story on Tuesday: “Some of these ‘holler’ people — because they are insular and clannish, and they don’t leave their area — there is literally inbreeding, and the people there often have a different kind of look. That’s what we’re trying to get.”
They got fired. YA THINK!?!?!
