Cast Selection Quotes

I was once up for a part, and the male star was also producing the movie. They were talking about meeting with him or having an audition with him, and then we get the message, 'He wants to have dinner with you.' I said, 'Is that the audition, or is it that he just wants to have dinner with me?'

Showrunning is when you're the constant creative voice in the show. For a year-and-a-half, you are working on the scripts, you're fine-tuning them, you're the final say on the edit, the music and the cast.

Sometimes it's all about the casting.

Cast is everything.

The network shows have this very commercial voice that you have to adhere to, and the cable shows, it's kind of like winning the lottery. The independent film world is a world you can actually get to. You can get the under-a-million-dollar film by finding a good cast and financing.

If you work on network TV, they want to pick your casts, dictate your story and how your show works. It just becomes creativity by committee, which is never good.

I think there's a lot of elements that go into making a really awesome horror film and that's like putting together like a real good group of people that you love to watch them either live or die.

I make decisions to do movies based on the cast. I'd just been working with Zach Galifianakis on 'The Hangover', and I was thinking, I've got to find something to do with this guy immediately.

I think it's about finding the character you want to play and the people you want to work with.

The only reason to do a television series is to make it successful. And if it is successful, that's a six or seven year commitment.

I pick out young people and teach them in less time than it would take me to alter the methods of people from the boards, and I get actors who look the parts they have to fill.

I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.

I think a lot of people who didn't know my work before 'The Sopranos' think I came from the Jersey Shore, like they picked us out of the mall and put us on television.

'Roc' was sort of an experiment because none of the lead actors on our show had any real television experience, especially in half-hour TV.

Launching a Broadway show is like no other endeavor. It's taxing because you're present - it's not like cutting a movie and test focus-grouping it and filling out forms.

It's everything and I always make decisions about the cast.

Sometimes, rehearsals are not worth it if you do not have an accurate cast, and that is one of the most difficult parts about a film.

You're always in a tunnel that you can't see the end of. But there's something that took place on this movie that I don't think we expected and that was that once we decided that the entire cast would be real retired opera singers and retired musicians... and these people the phone hadn't rung for them for 20 or 40 years even though they can deliver.

One thing that's nice about doing a movie about people that hardly anyone knows, you never worry if they're a perfect match.

The way I pick movies is, first, if the script is any good. Then, if the script is good, who else is in it, the director, the producer, all that. If you have all that, there's a chance the movie will be great. If the script isn't right, or the director or cast isn't right, you've got no shot in hell.

I love working with nonactors.

Ninety percent of your job is done if you find the right cast.

So many people wanted an adventure. It was really more about finding the cast that I wanted for 'Expedition Impossible,' so it had good diversity, and people could really say, 'Oh, there's the firefighters, there's the team of cops, there's the grandpa' - so that you can really relate with them.