The casting call is scheduled for 10 AM, but people begin lining up well before then. Joan Philo welcomes them all inside. No point in making them stand around unnecessarily–there’ll be plenty of that if they’re hired. Philo, a freelance film casting director, is rounding up extras for Ali, Michael Mann’s $105-million biography of Muhammad Ali starring Will Smith as Ali, Jamie Foxx as trainer Drew “Bundini” Brown, Mario Van Peebles as Malcolm X, and Jon Voight as Howard Cosell. A four-week shoot on the south side begins in late February, and by then Philo has to deliver hundreds of extras.
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That’s really all there is to it, but for Philo this is like the Normandy landing. She bounces from one group to another, smiling, answering questions, talking a mile a minute–she’s the sort of person who races through life with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cell phone in the other. She studies each face as the person speaks. “Every single scene has a look,” she says. “And you have to get the right look or that could cost you your job. You cannot throw some model-type guy into a rural farm sort of thing. In fact, that happened in one of my films–that’s how the other person lost their job and how I came on. They sent the director all these great-looking people, but that wasn’t the scene. That’s my job–to figure out who would be great in each scene to make it right and believable.”
Periodically Philo takes over for her assistants and briefs applicants on what to expect if they’re hired. They’ll be paid $6.25 an hour for the first eight hours, time and a half for overtime, plus a catered lunch; the shooting day typically begins at 6 AM and can run as late as midnight, so they should bring a book to read or something else to do during all the downtime. Because the film is set between 1962 and 1974, they’ll be costumed by the wardrobe department, but they’re welcome to bring anything they think might be appropriate–and they’d be wise to bring layers of clothing if the shoot is outdoors.
“We tell ’em everything we can tell ’em,” Philo says. But the start time depends on how late shooting goes the previous night. “It’s really hectic, ’cause we might have a hundred people, a thousand people, or whatever. You can set all these people up going tomorrow at this time, and then at the end of the day the assistant director can call you and say, ‘No, man, we gotta push the call time.’ So then you gotta call a hundred people up and say, ‘OK, your call time’s pushed a half hour.’ It’s always something like that. When you think you’re done, you’re never done. And you’re dealing with lives, you’re dealing with people. You feel bad toward treating them like that, but you’ve gotta do it.”
