Casting The Anniversary: The Director Speaks
I figured casting The Anniversary would be relatively easy. After finishing a 112-minute feature with twenty-seven characters, a fourteen-page script with only three characters and no extras didn’t seem very daunting. But the period from January to April turned out to be the most exhausting casting process I’ve ever been through.
We began with a little less than four hundred submissions for the project. Later, when Tricia came on board, she sent out invitations to a hundred or so actors she knew in the area she thought might be a good fit. Again, we were only casting three characters, and no extras. We wanted to be exhaustive.
I was immediately struck by some of the different interpretations the actors offered in their readings. The script is deliberately lacking in adjectives and adverbs, and very little history between the characters is provided in the dialogue. At the beginning I always just let the actors play and see what they come up with. I usually found they needed a lot of pushing to dig deep and come up with more interesting, more extreme motivations for the characters’ deviant behavior. But occasionally the feedback they gave made me see the script in a different light. Those are my mostest favoritest moments as a director.
After a long, grueling audition period, we narrowed the pool down to fifteen actors for callbacks. I love callbacks because as a writer-director it’s the closest I ever get to seeing my story the way an audience would when watching it for the first time. We had great actors, and now that they’d had the time to absorb some of my direction from the first-round, they were on their way to creating coherent and unpredictable characters. It was very difficult to turn some of these actors away, but the producers and I agreed that three in particular stood out as the most dynamic cast for this film, and I’m thrilled to see where each of them will take these roles as we prepare for shooting.
Jason Lott, Thomas: By the time Jason came in, we weren’t even particularly interested in seeing any more actors read for Thomas. We had seen plenty of great actors read for that role and were pretty sure our callbacks were set. It would’ve taken a jaw-dropping read to change our minds, and that’s exactly what Jason delivered. As we went through the callback process his performance only became more and more interesting. His comic timing is perfect, but he doesn’t rely on stock-in-trade gimmicks. His performance seems brand new from one read to the next, and one never doubts the sincerity of the role he’s playing. In spite of all the great talent competing for that role, we simply couldn’t say no to Jason.
Kevin Hasser, Michael: Kevin is boring. I mean that in the nicest way. All he did was walk in, impress us, and leave. Time for callbacks: he walked in, impressed us, and left. Second callback: walked in, impressed us, left. During his first audition I wrote a note to Tricia: “Love as Michael!” She wrote back: “Mee tooo!” Our interest in him never waned from that point on. Really, the guy’s just boring. Let’s move on.
M.C. Wolfe, Vanessa: M.C. caught us by surprise. She was invited to the audition by Tricia, who wasn’t sure about her for the role but maybe had a hunch. M.C. came in at the end of a long and frustrating session and I don’t think any of us were very receptive at the time. She was reticent during the audition but it was obvious that she was very perceptive about the character and worked very well with the direction. Midway through her third read through the scene, I saw something in her that made me scribble the shortest note I’ve ever written about an actor: “Wow.” After the audition I passed it to Justin and Tricia. They both agreed. After two more callback sessions, she won me over completely. Tricia later explained why she had had a hunch about M.C.: “I feel like she probably is Vanessa in real life.” I hope M.C. takes that as a compliment.