Casting By

Afforded unprecedented freedom and power by television, casting pioneers like Marion Dougherty and Lynn Stalmaster were iconoclasts whose exquisite taste and gut instincts ultimately helped change the old studio system and usher in New Hollywood through landmark movies like “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Graduate,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” They broke away from traditional typecasting and brought new kinds of leading men and women to the screen, among them Dustin Hoffman, Bette Midler, Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman. A fast-paced journey through the last half-century of Hollywood history from a new perspective, CASTING BY spotlights filmmaking’s unsung hero – the casting director. The casting director is the only opening single card film credit that does not receive its own Academy Award® nomination. However, as Martin Scorsese emphatically states at the start of the documentary, “More than 90 percent of directing a picture is the right casting.” Director Tom Donahue combines extensive archival material and exclusive interviews with A-list actors and directors, including Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Jeff Bridges, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Jon Voight, John Lithgow, Bette Midler and John Travolta, as well as Martin Scorsese, to tell the story of Hollywood’s most invisible and unheralded profession.