SAG ensemble award Casting a vote for perfect mix

LOS ANGELES (AP)

Alexander Payne

, executive of "

The Descendants

," likens it to "inviting people to my home for dinner."

"

Bridesmaids

" helmer

Paul Feig

describes it as spending hundreds of hours watchful for that "one aha moment."

Tate Taylor

, who wrote and destined "The Help," uses starker terms when describing a routine of crafting a ideal behaving ensemble: "One bad casting choice, one diseased link, can spell genocide for your movie. That's because we see tons of people and we don't stop until it's right."

"The Help," ''The Descendants" and "Bridesmaids," along with a wordless film "The Artist" and Woody Allen's "Midnight In Paris," are all opposed for a Screen Actors Guild's garb prize during Sunday night's 18th annual

SAG Awards

.

SAG began giving a film garb endowment in 1994, after an homogeneous prize for favorite radio expel valid renouned in a initial awards uncover a year earlier. The honor, says SAG Awards writer Kathy Connell, originated with a guild and reflects a enterprise to "acknowledge a creativity of chemistry and a teamwork that actors do."

Which is excellent by a directors of this year's nominees, many of whom spent some-more time casting their cinema than creation or modifying them.

Payne began casting "The Descendants" 9 months before filming began, starting with

George Clooney

, whom he had kindly deserted for a lead purpose in his final movie, "Sideways." Payne takes a singular proceed to building an ensemble, operative with a singular casting director, longtime associate John Jackson, for employing a lead roles, a locals and a extras.

"I don't like a Hollywood complement of employing 3 conflicting people for casting," Payne says. "I don't wish to explain myself 3 times over. we consider one chairman should be in assign of all a strength in front of a camera and move a singular prophesy to that."

Critics frequently regard Payne's knack for fixation actors in doubtful roles. (Think Kathy Bates' twice-porced mom who enjoys a "white hot" sex life in "About Schmidt.") He and Jackson did that several times over in "The Descendants," starting with casting Clooney as a clueless father who wears, as a actor puts it, "khakis adult to his armpits."

"If we expel conflicting type, we do so unwittingly," Payne admits, "because in existence we don't see that many contemporary American films. So we don't know a actor's form to start with."

That wasn't a box for Taylor, who, when bettering longtime crony Kathryn Stockett's best-selle r, wrote a roles of Minny and Charlotte privately for dual other dear friends

Octavia Spencer

and Allison Janney, respectively. In fact, Taylor and Spencer were roommates in Los Angeles when Taylor wrote a screenplay.

Taylor also wanted Viola Davis for a lead purpose of lassie Aibileen, and pushed a film's start date to accommodate her schedule. Determined not to "cast from a covers of magazines," Taylor threw a doors open for a rest of a movie's vast ensemble, hiring, among others, Emma Stone and Jessica Chastain before they became in-demand actresses.

Three weeks before filming, Taylor brought a expel to Mississippi, rehearsing in a locations where they eventually filmed.

"Mississippi infiltrated a expel and a family energetic formed," Taylor says.

Rehearsals were vicious for a "Bridesmaids" garb as well, Feig says. The expel met dual months before to filming, reading by a book and afterwards going by severe improv sessions so Feig and a movie's writers could tailor new element to a actresses' strengths and personalities.

During this rider process, a filmmakers stretched Melissa McCarthy's part, many notably, putting her in a key, emotionally layered stage conflicting Kristen Wiig late in a movie. McCarthy wound adult being a one inpidual "Bridesmaids" expel member nominated for a SAG Award.

"It's when you're rehearsing some-more and more, we start to think, 'Wow. These girls together are strong," Feig says. "That's also when, as a director, we get nervous. You're thinking, 'Oh boy. I'm a usually thing that could chuck this all off.' "

Since

SAG

began giving a garb awards, other groups, like a Broadcast Film Critics Association, have jumped on a bandwagon. Television's Emmy Awards combined 3 casting categories in 2000 and some in a industry, like "Modern Family" co-creator Steve Levitan, trust an behaving g arb endowment should be added, too.

Meanwhile, a Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that combined an charcterised film difficulty in 2001, has no skeleton to addition a 4 behaving honors.

As it stands, members of renouned ensembles, like Chastain and Spencer in "The Help," mostly find themselves in foe for a film's tip accolade.

"If a actors give clearly conflicting performances, they mount on their possess and don't cancel any other out," says Kristopher Tapley, executive editor of awards coverage website In Contention.

The beauty of SAG's garb award, says Taylor, is that, for one night during least, "everyone's on a same team."

"It's going to be a good reunion," Taylor adds. "It competence get a small loud, though."

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(news.yahoo.com)