Allison Jones, the casting director of a ton of hit comedies and shows reveals how she discovered the cast of ‘Superbad’ and Jonah Hill.
In an excellent profile piece on casting director Allison Jones, Jones reveals her experiences in the film industry, what she looks for in actors, and how she discovered Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill and the entire cast of ‘The Office’.
From The New Yorker:
In 1999, she cast Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Jason Segel in the critically acclaimed, poorly watched teen series “Freaks and Geeks.” The show, created and written by Feig and produced by Apatow, was a coming-of-age story set in the suburban Michigan of Feig’s youth. Jones won the show’s only Emmy, for her casting. Several years later, she met with a young, sweaty Jonah Hill, who was desperate for an introduction to Apatow. She told Apatow that Hill was weird and hilarious. That sufficed; Apatow expanded a cameo part for Hill in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” as an odd but lovable eBay customer. Two years later, Hill was cast with Michael Cera in “Superbad,” a raunchy teen comedy that Apatow produced. It was left to Jones to find their nerdier-than-thou friend McLovin. Jones posted notices seeking high-school students in L.A. After seeing thousands of candidates, she caught a glimpse of a camera-phone head shot sent in by a sixteen-year-old named Christopher Mintz-Plasse. She called the director, Greg Mottola, and excitedly said, “I think I found McLovin; he’s like Dill from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ ” Jones told me, “You could tell he was a kid who probably had seen the inside of a locker.” Since then, Mintz-Plasse has starred in six movies.
You would expect the casting director behind so many hit movies and TV shows would be rolling in dough. But, unfortunately that is not the truth. Instead of getting paid a percentage of every episode movie, or rerun, the casting director received a flat fee which still bothers her.
Jones doesn’t share in a film’s profits; instead, she receives a flat fee of up to ninety thousand dollars. She cast “The Office” pilot for forty thousand dollars, and received a fraction of that for each episode, but receives nothing from reruns or digital sales of any of her shows. In the past, she has offered to take no money up front and just a tiny percentage of profit if a show does well, but producers have never taken her up on the deal. She noted that there’s still no Academy Award for casting. “Believe me, it’s sad for me that I have to still get a J. Crew shirt instead of a shirt from Barneys when I know that Jonah Hill is worth millions of dollars,” she said. “It’s not a bitter thing, but it’s just, like, ‘Ah shit, I’m doing something wrong.’ ”
Check out the amazing piece on Allison Jones here on The New Yorker.
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