BACK STAGE WEST
March 13, 2003
BEST CASTING
OSCAR: NOMINEES WHO SHOULD BE
In a
post-screening Q&A last month with filmmaker Todd Haynes, one Back Stage
West reader said she felt
that every face in his gorgeous film Far From Heaven, right down to the extras passing on the
street, seemed to have a character and a story behind them. Haynes replied that
his main casting criterion was old movie references rather than "real
life": If someone looked like they stepped off the set of an old movie--particularly
a 1950s melodrama directed by Douglas Sirk--they had a shot.
Helping Haynes assemble this troubled but picture-perfect
world was New York-based casting director Laura Rosenthal (Celebrity, Jesus' Son, Judy Berlin, Chicago).
There were
specific references for the leads, Rosenthal explained recently, particularly
for the role of a handsome, mellow black gardener, for which the models were a
young Sidney Poitier and the Rock Hudson role in All That Heaven Allows. Tall, deep-voiced, sweet-faced Dennis
Haysbert (24) was
their inspired choice. Julianne Moore was attached before Rosenthal was hired,
but Dennis Quaid, who plays Moore's torturously closeted husband, was on a list
the casting director came up with for Haynes, who then went about studying
Quaid's work and was particularly struck by his performance as a washed-up
former football star in Everybody's All-American.
Haysbert's and
Quaid's work in Far From Heaven is arguably the best of their respective careers--all the more
remarkable given that the film is squarely centered on Moore's repressed
housewife. "It's always hard to find men who are brave enough to support
women, and this is a movie about that," raved Rosenthal about her male
leads.
For the rest of
the cast, she looked for actors with a certain kind of "theatrical"
flair who could nail the script's unironically heightened rhythms--what she
called its "melodic" quality.
"It was
about the way they could deliver lines," she explained. "A kind of texture
in one's delivery that either worked or didn't work. I can't say that all the
actors we saw understood that. This was definitely one case where theatre
actors could work more appropriately on film."
There's seasoned
theatre actor Michael Gaston, who plays Quaid's glad-handing workmate with a
forced joviality, shaded with sincere puzzlement, that feels dead-on; Patricia
Clarkson as Moore's disapproving friend; Viola Davis as her tamped-down maid;
Celia Weston as a snooty socialite, and James Rebhorn as a stern therapist. In
smaller roles, including a busybody social columnist (Bette Henritze), a fey
big-city art critic (Reginald Carter), or a sassy juke-joint barmaid (Mylika
Davis), Rosenthal's choices reveal an eye for the broad but not harsh stroke. "The
irony wasn't at all mean; Todd loved his people," she said.
She even found a
glaring man at the smoky gay bar, the man Quaid's character leaves to make out
with, and the blond hunk he falls for--none had lines, all were essential to
get right. Even a prim pair of NAACP volunteers who meet Moore at her door with
a petition, who have only a few lines, Haynes was "really picky
about," Rosenthal recalled. "He didn't want them to be too trendy or
too modern."
Rosenthal's
expert, expressive work is as crucial to the film's success as its justly
lauded visual design and score.
--Rob Kendt