This Is Happening — Verse 5 Revisited
Casting Part II: James Wolk
This Tuesday, June 30th, James Wolk has a new show coming out on CBS called Zoo. In the spirit of Zoo and the impending release of This Is Happening, I wanted to revisit a post I wrote about Mr. Wolk several months back. No one deserves success more than this beautiful man from Michigan…
James is not a James. James is a “Jimmy” through and through. What I mean by this is that the “Jimmys” of the world tend to be a little more blue collar than the Jameses. The Jimmys always got your back. I’m not saying this is some hard and fast rule or anything, but they call a condom a “Jimmy” not a “James” for a reason, if you know what I’m sayin’.
Now that I’ve established that James is so much more a “Jimmy” (which he goes by, by the way), allow me to explain why he’s probably one of the more reliable human beings I’ve ever met. First and foremost, as a first time filmmaker, you need help everywhere down the line — you need a cinematographer who knows how to light and shoot a shot, a producer who knows how to run a set, an editor who can really edit, and you need actors who can act.
I learned early on that this last asset — actors who can act, is so much more layered and nuanced than I ever imagined. It’s one thing to be able to act. I don’t think a lot of people can even do that very well, so let’s not dismiss it, but acting itself is a craft that requires so much more.
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In Jimmy’s case, this means showing up every day with a smile on his face and work ethic stronger than my own, an ability to listen and understand the environment despite being told to come in and out of it constantly with cuts and technical issues interrupting your flow. What’s more, I can’t tell you how many times Jimmy pointed out continuity issues or remembered a story point that we were about to repeat or contradict that he saved in the nick of time.
Jimmy also brought ideas to both the character and dialogue that were fresh and unique and consistently made the character his own. If you handed him a new scene five minutes before we were meant to shoot, he’d have it memorized as if he’d been rehearsing it for weeks. He was also just in every scene. Even when it wasn’t his scene, even when he had no lines, if he was present on screen he was utterly present as a character — reacting to people, making slight physical shifts, always doing something that seemed completely natural to the character he created.
The guy is just a pro.
And he also happens to be a great actor. And through his great acting, I learned another important lesson about casting: don’t always cast to type and don’t shoehorn your actors into your image of what their characters should be. I can guarantee that they’ve thought about their character as much if not more than you, so listen when they have ideas.
In Jimmy’s case, he couldn’t have been further from the “Philip” I imagined. He was too handsome, too cool, too together. In some ways, I had a poor image of myself, and therefore a poor image of “Philip” as this nebbishy, neurotic, insecure guy, and I always considered actors that fit that mold.
All I can say is, thank goodness Billy Hopkins pushed me on Jimmy from the get go and thank goodness Jimmy took “Philip” a different way. He turned Philip from a fairly unlikable whiner into a leading man who happens to be enduring a struggle. He’s made the role so much more layered than I ever imagined it could be, such a more accessible and likeable lead. I can’t say enough about Jimmy’s interpretation of “Philip” and the affect its had on the overall movie.
When I point to the myriad elements that had to go just right for this film to work, Jimmy is at the top of the list. I hope everyone appreciates his performance as much as I, because he’s absolutely great. I can’t say enough about Jimmy Wolk.
Please support Jimmy and me in our effort to bring This Is Happening to theaters at http://seedandspark.com/studio/this-happening and watch Zoo this Tuesday.
