Casting Actors for Low Budget Feature

Casting actors for the indie feature film, “CASS”. Shooting in scheduled to take place in August 2011 for 3 weeks in Detroit, MI.  Auditions will be held next week.

Synposis:

Joshua Whitmore, a painter with a mysterious background, arrives in Detroit, carrying all of his belongings on his back. He breaks into an abandoned house where he takes up residence.

But Franklin Morris, a single father, lives next door to the abandoned house with his daughter, Cassandra, and her younger brother, Franklin II.

Cass is the first to discover Joshua’s presence. She is drawn to dedication to his art and his passion for touching some reality she has begun to grasp. Her own father has dismissed her photography as a diversion from the real work of building a home family, in the day-to-day realities of living in Detroit. But her father has a few secrets of his own and temptations he struggles with.

Joshua focused on his own inner demons does not notice the increasing attachment the young black teen has to him. Soon though, her brother learns of their meetings and late night conversations.

One morning, when Joshua is gone from the house, Franklin and two of his friends break into the abandoned home and discover some of Joshua’s many creations which have an air of disturbing obsessiveness. Among these creations are a series of canvases which they steal and try to sell.

Unbeknownst to the three boys, their attempt to sell the paintings sets off a series of revelations where Joshua’s dubious celebrity is uncovered.

In the end, the white painter becomes a crossroads in the stories of the three family members, as Franklin II lies in a hospital bed, clinging to life after a single gunshot wound.

Cass is an exploration of art, family and the city of Detroit which serves as a magnifying glass for a sense of loss and alienation with which each character struggles.

Available Roles:

  • The Morris Family: Middle class African American family living in the Boston­‐Edison neighborhood of Detroit.

  • Franklin Sr. is in his mid-­‐40s, divorced, and working hard to keep his two children in private schools. His past experience with his children’s mother – and a more recent failed relationship with a neighbor – has left him embittered about women. He’s a kind man but disillusioned by past betrayals and has hunkered down into a middle-­‐class resentment of anyone or anything that threatens to shake his world. In contrast to his careful monitoring of his children’s behavior, he is ignorant of their rich, creative inner lives and dismisses “art” as something at best frivolous, at worst the kind of draw to the dissolute lifestyle that seduced his wife and her lover.

  • Cassandra is the hub around which this story spins. She is 15 years old going on 30, doing what she can to help her father but struggling with his expectations of her to be a stand in for Franklin II’s mother. Her passion is photography much to her father’s disapproval. At 11, she was sexually attacked by a neighborhood boy and has little time for the infatuations she sees the girls in her class showing to boys. Her best friend has recently given birth to a child and this further shakes her own sense of loneliness – and her drive to go deeper into her art.

  • Franklin II is 11, the same age his sister was attacked. He has a smile and a swagger but resents his sister’s maternal concerns. Like her is a bit lost in his own inner world of science fiction and dreams of being an astronaut. Unlike his sister, he has two close friends who have drawn him into increasingly more dangerous acts of sabotage and petty larceny. His own imagined story into space will be told through still photographs he has snuck into his sister’s room to see.

  • Dwayne is 12 and the ostensible leader of their three-man gang. He’s thin, wiry and comes from a home where his father has recently been taken away by the police for gang activities and his mother battles drug addiction. He’s a smart kid who’s been held back a grade and is angry at the world, ready with a bottle of gasoline to set it all on fire.

  • Adonis is 11 and heavyset. He’s taken ribbing about his weight his whole life and is happy to have Franklin II and Dwayne as his friends and will do anything for them. He’s the one always riding a few bike lengths behind and catching up to them a bit breathless but with a smile on his face.

  • Delia: mid 50s, early 60s – a homeless African­ – American woman who once owned a home on the northside with her husband JT. The home was lost in a Devil’s Night fire years ago and the subsequent hospitalization of her husband cost them everything they owned. She may be the smartest member of our cast, but after years on the streets has developed a quirky garrulousness that alternates with distrust about anyone that might harm JT.

  • JT is an African American in his early 60s in a wheelchair. In the same accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, he lost his voice but he’s always willing to let out a bellowing laugh at Delia’s comments that he finds funnier than just about anything in the world.

  • Tonise is 15 and once Cassandra’s best friend. She recently gave birth to a boy but the boy’s father is long gone. She resents what she sees as Cassandra’s distance during her pregnancy, a fact exacerbated by Franklin Sr’s disapproval and Cass’ limited access to a phone. She feels humiliated and is far more ready to take her anger out on a friend than the boy – man who got her pregnant.

  • Receptionist at the museum – any race, mid-to-late 20s – smart, MFA student.

  • Vanessa, a divorced African American woman in her late 30s who comes to the city (meets with Franklin Sr.) for advice on her impending foreclosure. She is flirty with Franklin and tries to use that to seduce Franklin into taking care of her. Carries a Lous Vitton purse type of woman.

  • M: a prostitute in her 20s or early 30s – she bears a passing resemblance to Franklin Sr’s ex-wife. He returns time and again, unable to bring himself to speak to her.

  • Q: her pimp, a tall, powerful man who hovers in the background ready to protect her. [Head shots only]

Compensation:

These are paid roles. Talent will receive a day rate of $100.

How to Apply:

If you are interested in applying, please notify us at YourEntourageAgency@gmail.com and email your headshots and resume to: evenws@gmail.com

NOTE: Please include the role you are applying for in the subject line of your email.