– TV rights to Tom Donahue’s “Casting By” have been acquired by HBO Documentary Films, following its premiere at Toronto. The film shines a light on casting directors, the “unsung heroes” of filmmaking, and offers a new perspective on Hollywood history;
Casting pioneers like Marion Dougherty and Lynn Stalmaster were iconoclasts whose exquisite taste and gut instincts helped change the old studio system and usher in the New Hollywood with movies like “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Graduate,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” Afforded the unprecedented freedom and power of the new medium of television, they broke away from the traditional typecasting of Hollywood and brought a new kind of leading man and leading lady to the screen, as in actors like James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Bette Midler, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, et al.
The film includes personal narratives from the likes of Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Diane Lane, Bette Midler, Clint Eastwood, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Jeff Bridges, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Jon Voight and John Travolta.
Kate Lacey, Tom Donahue, Ilan Arboleda and Joanna Colbert produced. “Casting By” will screen next at the New York Film Festival.
– Meanwhile, Pablo Trapero’s “White Elephant” goes to Strand Releasing for US distribution. Ricardo Darin and Jeremie Renier star as two priests and old friends who, while helping locals in the slums of Buenos Aires, get caught in the violence of the drug cartels. “White Elephent” played in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard before coming to Toronto.
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