>> CineFix Host: What makes casting good?
Is it attracting a big star, or launching someone completely new?
Is it seeing hidden potential or finding an actor who's just like their role?
Let's take a tour of the best headliners in history.
These are our picks for the top ten casting decisions of all time.
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>> CineFix Host: [SOUND] One of the best ways to screw up a film is to cast
an ill-fitting actor as a character everyone knows, but
there's more durable than looks.
There's mannerism and idiosyncrasies and speech, and personality, and presence,
all of which contribute to a successful likeness.
This has led to great casting decisions like Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln or
Jamie Foxx in Ray, Val Kilmer turned himself in Jim Morrison in the Doors,
De Niro into LaMotta, in Raging Bull, and
Philip Seymour Hoffman was a perfect Oscar winning choice for Truman Capote.
However, for our first pick, we think that casting Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos
was a decision that paid off in a really big way in Monster.
>> Aileen Wuornos: Truth is, I'm a hooker, and I'm trying to clean my life up here.
Go straight and Christian, and also,
if there's anything that you can help me with.
>> Speaker 3: So you've been convicted of a felony?
>> CineFix Host: And it's unmistakable that Charlize did a world-class job in her
portrayal of an antisocial, borderline prostitute serial killer,
in a way that eschews all the above labels and cuts down to the core of its humanity.
But from a casting perspective,
Charlize may be the last person come to mind when casting for this role.
Apparently director Patty Jenkins woke up to this scene from The Devil's Advocate,
and saw a close-up of Theron's runny nose.
So she figured that any actress that would be up for that would be up for
Aileen Wuornos, which sounds like a pretty big leap of logic to us,
but hey, we didn't direct one of the best performances of the last decade, did we?
[SOUND] At number nine, we wanna honor some of the actors who were plucked from
obscurity and whisked away to fame and fortune on the silver screen.
Casting for unknowns can be an incredibly difficult process, it can involve years of
world wide open casting or waiting to bump into the right nobody on the street.
Films like Elephant, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Gomorrah filled
the screens with the kind of authenticity it's hard to get from Hollywood stars.
The Piano discovered Anna Paquin and landed her an Oscar for it,
along with The Killing Fields and The Best Years of Our Lives before that.
But we don't think but we can't ignore the pedigree of the Italian neorealism for
our nine pick, Bicycle Thieves.
>> Antonio: [FOREIGN] >> Elderly Man: [FOREIGN]
>> Antonio: [FOREIGN]
>> Elderly Man: [FOREIGN]
>> Antonio: [FOREIGN]
>> Elderly Man: [FOREIGN]
>> CineFix Host: In stark contrast to
the prevalent studio system stylings
of Italian film, Vittorio De Sica
cast the entire film with amateurs,
it wasn't always this way. Originally,
names like Cary Grant and Henry Fonda were tossed around, and
it wasn't always easy with the untested stars anxiously struggling with their
inexperience. But the end result was a performance
infused with hard-fought emotion with no prior outlet.
[SOUND] Often enough, directors, casting directors, and
even audience themselves fall into a routine with certain actors,
so-and-so is a funny man, such and such is a great romantic lead.
Jonah Hill only play fat, stoner, supporting funny guys.
This can ignore an untapped potential in an actor, and
sometimes this untapped potential also builds up in the audience.
Our favorite examples of this are those like Anthony Perkins in Psycho,
the méconnaissance of Dallas Buyers Club.
Who would have guess Mo'Nique would have done as well as she did in Precious, or
that Cate Blanchett would make the perfect Bob Dylan in I'm Not There?
But if we had to pick one,
it'd have to be Henry Fonda as Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West.
>> Frank: Nothing matters now, not the land, not the money, not the woman.
I came here to see you, >> Frank: Cuz I know that now,
you'll tell me what you're after.
>> CineFix Host: Next to Mr.
Rogers, Henry Fonda is basically the friendliest looking man on screen.
In Fonda's 33-year career leading up to Once Upon a Time in the West,
he had only played a villain once.
So when Sergio Leone approached him to play the heavy in his latest spaghetti
western, he turned him down, but Sergio flew to the States and twisted his arm.
Picture this, he said,
the camera shows a gunman from the waist down pulling his gun and shooting a child.
The camera pans up to the gunman's face, and it's Henry Fonda.
And it's exactly what happened, and you know what?
It worked.
[SOUND] Most good casting just involves trying very hard to match good roles to
the right actors,
who can turn a couple hundred lines of dialogue into a fully fleshed out human.
But sometimes,
casting directors don't just get it right, they get it [BLEEP] perfect.
Like Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, or what about Jeff Bridges as
The Big Lebowski, or Mickey Rourke as Randy The Ram Robinson?
Yes, Heath Ledger as the Joker and holy shit, Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratchet.
However, if there's a role so iconic, so immitatable, so immensely unbeatable as
Marlon Brando as Don Corleone as The Godfather, we don't know it.
>> Don Corleone: You look terrible.
I want you to eat, I want you to rest well.
And a month from now, this Hollywood big shot's gonna give you what you want.
>> Johnny Fontane: Too late, they start shooting in a week.
>> Don Corleone: I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.
>> CineFix Host: But the studio hated the idea, they wanted Ernest Borgnine.
Marlon Brando was too difficult, too unsuccessful.
The former was definitely probably true, but
the latter was just shortsighted thinking.
Eventually, Coppola shot an impressive screen test and Brando was required to put
up a band, ensuring that he wouldn't [BLEEP] the shoot, but
it all came together, and one of cinemas most iconic character was born.
[SOUND] Of course, unless you're making Buried, or All Is Lost,
casting involves a whole lot more than picking just one good actor.
How they work together is just as important.
It's the bread and butter of the successful romance, and
it's what makes the difference between Out of Sight and the Star Wars pretty equals.
Personally, we like Gone with the Wind, Titanic, Brokeback Mountain, Love Streams,
Y Tu Mamá También, Bringing Up Baby, and To Have and Have Not.
But we can definitely feel that je ne sais quoi sipping out of
every shared frame most in our number six pick with Jesse and
Celine from Before Sunrise, Sunset, and Midnight.
>> Jesse: You think tonight's it?
I mean, that tonight's our only night?
>> Celine: It is the only way, now.
>> CineFix Host: It took Linklater nine months to find the right pair here.
He liked both Hawke and Delpy, but he only loved them when they got together.
And the film only worked because every ounce of Linklater, Hawke and
Delpy's considerable talents were focused on falling in love like real humans.
Forget being funny, forget an interesting plot, just walk around, be honest, and
fall in love.
And when all the pretty lights and creative cinematography and rapid plot and
punchy jokes are stripped away, all that's left is a beautiful relationship that
doesn't falter for a second.
[SOUND] Chemistry doesn't
always have to be romantic though.
There's some incredible platonic love in films like Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid, Thelma & Louise, 48 Hrs, Heat, Shaun of the Dead, and Point Break.
Who are we kidding, there's nothing platonic about Point Break.
But to our eyes some of the most convincing and
heartbreaking chemistry of all time comes from none other than Jake Gyllenhaal and
Michael Pena in End of Watch.
>> Mike Zavala: You know what, she would be great on Jeopardy,
she's way smarter than I am.
>> Brian Taylor: All right, so you see what I'm talking about,
that's all I want, man.
>> Mike Zavala: I know you want a chick like my girl, but
I'll kill you if you touch her.
>> Brian Taylor: Stop! I'm gonna kill you, dude.
>> Mike Zavala: [LAUGH] >> Brian Taylor: Shut up, man!
>> CineFix Host: You would think that like
the Before trilogy, this kind of role would be impossible to manufacture, but
Pena and Gyllenhaal actually didn't get along at first, so
they got put in buddy boot camp. Over five months, they worked out,
ran lines, rode along with the LAPD, and fist fought in preparation for
their roles, and eventually, they found common ground.
It's a success that speaks to the hard work that good actors do to transform for
a role, and it's pretty much impossible to listen to their banter, and
not immediately appreciate it.
[SOUND] Sometimes, casting succeeds not because of fines
actors who slip seamlessly into their chosen roles, but
because the actors already are exactly those roles.
Chemistry wise, this manifests itself when actors are dating as in The Notebook or
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it happens when the actors grow up together and
in character like in Harry Potter and Boyhood.
And it also happens as in our number four slot when the similarity between
the characters and the actors are just uncanny as it is in Birdman.
>> Riggan: It's just a bunch of crafty opinions backed up by even crappier
comparisons, right, a couple of paragraphs.
You know what?
None of this cost you [BLEEP] anything, [SOUND] you risk nothing, nothing,
nothing, nothing!
I'm a [BLEEP] actor.
>> CineFix Host: It was either a genius or
an idiot who first thought of Michael Keaton in the title role.
A washed up former superhero who wants to be taken seriously?
Hey, isn't that kinda like Michael Keaton?
It all paid off though, Keaton tapped into something deep, and personal,
and awesome that catapulted him into the kind of serious,
dramatic actor status he'd spent so much time chasing and
missing post-Batman, exactly the fashion it happens in the film.
[SOUND] We spend a lot of time here trying to come
up with interesting categories in order to create a useful taxonomy for
picking apart the art of film making.
But sometimes, we just wanna say screw it, and
shine a light on some examples that rock, and we don't really care why.
There are those like True Romance, Goodfellas, The Master, and
again, The Godfather.
They nailed every individual role, got the chemistry right, and
built an immersive world out of it.
And our favorite pick o the litter, The Departed.
>> Queenan: A lot of guys wanna appear to be cops, gun, badge,
to pretend they're on TV.
>> Dignam: A lot of them just wanna slam a [BLEEP] through a plate glass window.
>> Billy: I'm all set without your impersonal job application, all right?
>> Queenan: What the [BLEEP] did you say to me trainee?
>> Billy: All due respect, sir, what do you want from me?
>> Dignam: Hey asshole, he can't help you.
I know what you are, okay?
I know what you are, and I know what you're not.
I'm the best friend you have on the face of this earth, and
I'm gonna help you understand something, you punk.
You're no [BLEEP] cop!
>> CineFix Host: It's got so
many awesome actors and awesome parts you probably forgotten them all.
Like sure, you remember Damon and
DiCaprio in some of the best acting roles of their careers.
But then, you've got Jack Nicholson in his first role in years, and
the first one where he goes full insanity mode in forever.
Then you've got Marky Mark teaching everyone some new swear words
in a role he was born to play.
Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin rounding out the police force in wonderful hit parts,
and the rest of the supporting crew lining up a cyst with hardly a missed note.
So yeah, there's no secret sauce here,
just great actors and great roles they fit perfectly, all putting in great work.
[SOUND] Sometimes, a movie comes out with a marquee that's practically
overflowing with names, big names, like where do they fit them all on the poster.
Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Fred Astaire and
OJ freaking Simpson in The Towering Inferno.
Carol Baker, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Carolyn Jones, James Stewart,
Eli Wallach and John Wayne in How the West Was Won.
Hell, The Thin Red Line had so many stars, it completely cut out Mickey Rourke and
Billy Bob Thornton.
But even these star-studded behemoths are dwarfed by the MacDaddy of them all,
an epic comedy of absurd proportion, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
>> Benjy Benjamin: So now there's only one way to figure it.
And that is, every man, including the old bag, for himself!
>> Ding Bell: So good luck, and may the best man win!
>> Benjy Benjamin: Right, except you, lady, may you just drop dead!
>> Lennie Pike: All right, all right, we all agree on that.
>> CineFix Host: We got Spencer Tracy, Edie Adams, Milton Berle,
Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Peter Falk and
Jonathan Winters in the leads, with cameos by everyone from Buster Keaton to
the Three Stooges, to pretty much every working comedian in between.
And even though a comedy as top heavy as this seems, like it should be in
absolute disaster of over large expectations and upstagemanship, it isn't.
It's a hilarious delight, and a testament to throwing everyone at the movie,
including the kitchen sink, in thriving.
[SOUND] Finally, finishing up at our number one, there's
another kind of massively cast movie we want to honor, the ensemble piece.
So what are the all-time great ensembles?
How about Saving Private Ryan, and Lord of the Rings?
What about Magnolia, or Ocean's Eleven?
And then, there's the Seven Samurai, good Lord.
However, for our top slot, we think that twelve men all in one room at once for
almost the entire film without a missed note takes the proverbial cake
in the form of 12 Angry Men.
>> Speaker 20: What does it mean?
You found another odd knife like it.
What's that, the discovery of the age or something?
>> Speaker 21: You mean, you're asking us to believe that somebody
else did the stabbing with exactly the same kind of knife.
>> Speaker 22: The odds are a million to one!
>> Speaker 23: It's possible.
>> Speaker 24: But not very probable.
>> CineFix Host: Henry Fonda was the only bankable star, and
probably the only actor in the film whose name you remember, but that doesn't make
the other eleven any less important, or any less perfect at their respective task.
And the task are difficult ones,
the success of the entire film hinges on a conflict of personalities.
It's a classic, and for a very good reason.
We met cast 12 actors of wildly different shape, size, age, flavor and
temperament in a colorful array of human experience and
conflict that feels like it was built into the very essence of its players,
which is why we think it's the best cast film of all time.
So what do you think?
Do you disagree with one of our picks?
Did we leave out one of your favorite cast?
Let us know in the comments below, and
be sure to subscribe for more CineFix movie list.
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