In this report, Playback looks at the issues and people behind the casting business in Quebec, profiling casting directors, clients and the talent who work in the growing English-language film and tv production sector.

The report also looks at the evolving industry strategy for French-language audiovisual exports, with interviews with leading sellers and new market data following the MIPCOM ’97 and NATPE ’98 program markets.

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Home to a wealth of French-speaking talent in movies, television and the theater arts, Montreal has also emerged as an English-language film and tv production center with a multitude of talented character actors, a growing pool of children and teen talent, and a select group of players who some professionals deem ready for the brass ring.

Many Montreal companies are gearing up for major slates in ’98, among them Allegro Films, SDA Productions, Filmline International, Cinar Films and Telescene Film Group.

The city’s leading English-language casting agents report producers are ‘preparing’ them for another big year in films and series. ‘I might even have to move into a couple of the production companies. And I think the talent is up for it,’ says Andrea Kenyon, head of casting agency Andrea Kenyon and Associates.

Casting-wise, Montreal has impressed. American clients on locally produced series like Space Cases and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, both from Cinar, have been more than pleased with casting results out of Montreal.

‘Bob Keen [director on S/R Productions’ Lost World] said when he came here he was prepared not to have the choices he would otherwise have in Britain, and he was very thrilled to have actors of equal if not superior caliber,’ says Kenyon.

Over the years, Montreal has developed into a center for kids’ and family-oriented tv series and films. And today many of those kids, among them Michael Yarmush, Brigid Tierney, Michael Caloz, Natalie Vansier, Elisha Cuthbert and Jacob Tierney, are now finding work in the u.s., in Toronto, or on Canadian coproductions shot abroad.

Montreal’s leading English-language casting agencies, Elite Productions, Andrea Kenyon and Casting Lucie Robitaille, also provide resumes and tapes for casting agents in Toronto, Vancouver and l.a.

Casting on Big Bear

Elite already has five major assignments on the go in ’98: Nicknocks, a teen outdoor adventure game show pilot from Telescene for Nickelodeon, the new Cinar/Nickelodeon teen crime series The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, two new Filmline features, the Stephan Elliott thriller Eye of the Beholder and Double Nickels, a new Yves Simoneau (Free Money) action film, and Big Bear, a four-hour miniseries from Productions Tele-Action and director Gil Cardinal.

On Big Bear, Elite casting associate Lise Beauchamp has to fill some 60 roles, half of them Native, half white.

‘We are looking for Cree actors all across Canada. We actually went online for this. Using the Internet [to scout] is the future and we’re pretty excited about it,’ she says.

The production requires Quebec and Western Canadian (Saskatchewan) locations and actors.

Gordon Tootoosis will play the great Cree Chief (circa 1875) Big Bear, and Tantoo Cardinal will play his second wife, Second Running. ‘After what she [Cardinal] did in The Education of Little Tree I can’t think of a better Second,’ says Beauchamp.

Local talent on Little Tree – cast by Elite partner Vera Miller and shot here last summer by producer Jake Eberts – includes Chris Heyerdahl, Leni Parker and Lisa Bronwyn Moore.

Finding Shelby’s friends

As for Cinar’s Shelby Woo, Elite partner Nadia Rona says she’s looking for three coleads – an adult female detective, a young teen male character with a rough edge, and Angie, a female teen who is a little bit awkward and loves science and baseball. Pat Morita (Karate Kid) is the series’ colead and Irene Ng (The Joy Luck Club) is Shelby, the teenage detective who can’t resist getting involved when there’s a mystery to be solved.

The deal on Shelby Woo is Elite’s first with Cinar in several years.

Major ’97 shoots cast by Elite include Telescene’s erotic anthology series The Hunger and the Kingsborough Greenlight Pictures family fantasy Nico the Unicorn.

Elite takes credit for discovering Nico’s colead Elisha Cuthbert, who’s prominently featured in two other ’97 productions, sda’s Popular Mechanics for Kids, syndicated by Hearst Entertainment in the u.s. and seen on Global and Radio-Canada in Canada, and Airspeed, a Melenny Productions feature from director Robert Tinnell. Other young Montreal talent in Nico cast by Elite include Michael Yarmush, Johnny Morita, star of the Tele-Action/cbc miniseries The Boys of St. Vincent, and Maggie Castle.

Dealing with The Hunger

Elite partner Rosina Bucci says casting on The Hunger was an especially daunting challenge.

‘Because each (episode) is an entity unto itself, one needed actors of high caliber, and you cannot repeat actors. So it was like doing a mini feature film every single week,’ she says.

Key roles cast from Montreal in Peter Svatek’s Call of the Wild (Kingsborough Greenlight) include Charles Powell, Burke Lawrence, Bronwen Booth and Jack Langedijk.

Several key roles were cast locally in the $23-million Filmline feature Free Money, which shot here last fall starring Marlon Brando, Donald Sutherland and Martin Sheen.

Nicolas Clermont, president of Filmline, says the Quebec certification condition requiring one of the two leading players to be a resident is fundamentally restrictive, in the sense major motion pictures typically call for a second lead who is also an international star.

Per Clermont, there is only one qualifying international star who is locally resident and that is Sutherland. Clermont says the use of local support cast in the film was a bit of ‘artistic freedom,’ in that the story was set in a small, unidentified border town, and as such accents were a workable part of mix.

Local players include two very strong character actors, Roc Lafortune and Jean Pierre Bergeron (Omerta), as well as Remy Girard (Million Dollar Babies), Tom Rack, Gordon Masten, James Hyndman (Eldorado) and longtime favorite Dorothee Berryman.

Commenting on the production, Elite’s Miller says, ‘We needed really strong characters with a good sense of comedy. And [director] Simoneau is very particular in going against type and not going for the classic beauty.’

On the Telescene feature Going to Kansas City, directed by Pekka Mandart and shot in Montreal, Kansas and Finland last summer and fall, Montrealers in leading roles include Melissa Gallianos, Susie Almgren, who also appears in Cinar’s Lassie in the role of the mom, and veteran actor Donald Pilon.

Accent as issue

Miller says Montreal has many francophone actors who speak capable, accentless English, including Lafortune (Airspeed, The Minion, Frankenstein and Me), James Hyndman and Serge Houde.

Last year, Houde scored an important support role as an rcmp operative in Universal Pictures’ The Jackal, starring Bruce Willis, as well as leading roles in Georges Chamchoum’s comedy Musketeers Forever for Lorica Films, Kit Hood’s Dancing on the Moon, a new La Fete Tales For All family feature, The Sleep Room, and the Allegro mow Little Men.

Rona says the key issue for out-of-town producers considering Montreal is ‘the availability of English-speaking, `American-sounding’ actors, particularly on `Anywhere usa’ style projects.

Elite has good knowledge of the Toronto talent market, says Bucci, who has been in Toronto for the past 10 months casting the Alliance Communications tv series John Woo’s Once A Thief.

Elite undertook a major search on Telescene’s Student Bodies, a teen sitcom syndicated by 20th Television (Fox).

Of the series’ seven teen coleads, aged 16 to 21, six were discovered in Montreal and one in Toronto. Young talent includes Ross Hull, who has an active career underway, Jamie Elman, Katie Emme, Mik Perlus, Jessica Goldapple, Erin Simms and Victoria Sanchez.

‘The problem has never been to find the talent here [in Montreal] but to keep the talent here,’ Bucci says.

Casting on Grey Owl

A Quebec actress has been cast as one of the leads in the upcoming feature Grey Owl, playing opposite Pierce Brosnan.

The actress (her identity is still a secret) beat out five other finalists in a North American-wide search for a genuine Native actor because ‘[director] Richard Attenborough would not settle for somebody who just plays Native,’ says Miller, who heads up casting on the film.

‘Attenborough doesn’t like to do auditions in a typical audition atmosphere. He’s only seen eight people so far in Montreal, and has already chosen two [out of as many as 30] character actors,’ she says. The two signed actors are Vlasta Vrana and John Dunhill.

While it’s early on still, Bucci will be casting 25 to 30 character and more prominent roles on Eye of the Beholder, a u.k./ Canada coproduction suspense thriller starring Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting) and Ashley Judd (Kiss the Girls). Shooting begins March 23 for nine weeks.

In some 15 years of operation, Rona says ’97 was the company’s busiest ever. ‘In fact, we decided to move our operation to a larger space in March or April.’ Elite also casts on commercials.

Noted Sleep Room performance

Lucie Robitaille’s English-language assignments include The Sleep Room, the tv movie Platinum (Prisma Productions), the Paramount Pictures feature Snake Eyes, the Christian Duguay action film The Assignment, Alan Rudolph’s Afterglow, and this month, the new Keith Gordon (Mother Night) feature Waking the Dead, produced by Linda Reisman who shot Paul Schrader’s Affliction here last year.

Robitaille was in charge of all the casting on The Sleep Room (Cinar/Zukerman), and although casting directors were also engaged in Toronto and Vancouver, Robitaille says a lot of the talent in the $10-million miniseries came from Montreal, including Macha Grenon, Marina Orsini and Houde. Grenon’s performance in the miniseries is particularly noteworthy.

Canadian actors cast in significant secondary English-language roles by Robitaille on recent shoots include Eric Hoziel (Snake Eyes), Claudia Ferri (The Assignment), Alan Fawcett, Yves Corbeil, France Castel and Domini Blythe (Afterglow).

‘[Snake Eyes director Brian] DePalma was very precise about what he wanted,’ says Robitaille.

Another fine Montreal actress making a name for herself is Pascale Bussieres. Robitaille says Bussieres ‘has done some wonderful stuff’ and ‘they love her’ in English Canada. Bussieres has worked in English on projects like Platinum and Patricia Rozema’s When Night is Falling. Robitaille also points to Bruce Dinsmore as another first-rate Montreal talent.

She says actors like Roy Dupuis (Nikita) and Macha Grenon do not have local accents.

Dancing on the Moon

New work in early ’98 for Kenyon includes Alain Zaloum’s romance comedy Taxman, with strong roles going to Bussieres, Claire Sims (Platinum), Houde and Joanna Noyes. Kenyon is especially pleased with Sims, who she says has presence, good looks and comedic talents.

Kenyon is also casting new episodes of Cinar’s Lassie, the Allegro thriller The Best Revenge from director Marc Grenier, and Dead Silent, a feature from Blackwatch Communications and producer Bill Mariani.

Kenyon cast local child actor Catlin Foster (Dancing on the Moon) as the son of Dennis Quaid and Nastassia Kinski in the Sony/TriStar film Savior, a recent one-week reshot pickup. ‘It was a super role. We were given five pages [of script] and he [Foster] did a beautiful job.’

Dancing on the Moon, directed by Kit Kood, provided many young local talents with a start in the business, says Kenyon.

VIP extras

Kenyon was asked to cast the ‘core 500 extras’ – the vips among the 5,000 extras hired for Snake Eyes.

One of the locals, Kenneth Glegg, ended up being cast as a ref in a big fight scene and came away with ‘some great footage and a bit of a starring role,’ says Kenyon.

‘Brian DePalma had the opportunity to kick anybody he wanted off the set and he never did. So that was quite the endorsement because we had heard quite the opposite about the Atlantic City [leg],’ says Kenyon, adding:

‘A lot of the concern is whether or not there is an accent and whether we have a pool that is large enough. Unfortunately, these issues are mistakenly floating around, but the clients I have dealt with, when they’ve seen the actors that are here, have felt more than relieved, and as such misled by the rumors that preceded their visit to Montreal.’

Breakthrough talents

Kenyon’s top three picks of breakout Montreal talent on the female side are:

– Leni Parker, featured in Earth: The Final Conflict and Emily of New Moon. ‘She is an actress with great range, a solid performer, very transformer-like.’

– Michele Barbara Pelletier, featured in Tales of the Wild (Cinevideo Plus) and Airspeed. ‘She works a lot on the French side and has just gone down to visit l.a. and is not available to me and I’m upset by that,’ says Kenyon. ‘She is a very attractive girl, has great intensity, and again, a lot of talent. It’s not just a pretty face.’

– Lynne Adams, featured in Twist of Fate (Allegro) and Airspeed. ‘A very strong female actor who rose to the occasion playing opposite Joe Mantegna as his wife in Airspeed. She will break into the market across Canada. I don’t think Montreal will be able to contain her. ‘

On the male side, the choices are:

– Chris Heyerdahl, featured in The Education of Little Tree, a character actor who Kenyon says has ‘great versatility and talent’ and the ability to do bigger and better parts. ‘I’d go out on a limb for him in terms of his casting.’

– Jason Cavalier, featured in Marked Man (Allegro) opposite Roddy Piper. Kenyon says Cavalier is a highly sellable mix of genuine acting talent and action (martial arts) capability, ‘a rare occurrence in this industry. The market trend right now is to do a lot of production where action (scenes) are involved.’

– Paul Hopkins, featured prominently in La Fete’s Armistead Maupin’s More Tales of the City. ‘Paul has been around for a while but last year was his breakout year… I just see him as becoming a `new flavor.’ ‘

Kenyon’s associate Myriam Vezina handles casting on the French side (Verseau International’s L’Ombre de l’Epervier), while Randi Wells is exclusive on extras casting.

Kenyon says 1997 was really good for business, but ‘this year is going to blow the top off.’