Monkees Alert News

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X-eGroups-From: Brad Waddell
From: Brad Waddell

From: “paul sweatman”

From a UK newspaper:

The young generation apes Monkees
Canadian casting call for movie draws scores of Daydream Believers
STEPHANIE NOLEN
The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, March 1, 2000
Toronto — There were boys in phat pants who wandered into line as a lark,
and scruffy, silent, street people with their dogs. Slick-haired Latino
lounge singers waited with pink-cheeked teenage girls and black men with
dreadlocks.
They were all at an open casting call in Toronto yesterday for a movie
about the 1960s pop sensation the Monkees, and apparently everybody thinks
hey, hey, they’re the Monkees.
“I came to see if there’s anything I can do here,” Christopher Bernard
said. “I vaguely remember the Monkees.”
A former Zeller’s employee who’s now unemployed, Mr. Bernard’s only acting
experience was in high school. He’s 25 — and, in rather marked contrast to
the original Monkees, black. But no matter — there were plenty of equally
improbable wannabe Monkees in line outside the CITY-TV building on
Toronto’s bustling Queen Street West.
All that aspiration for fame produced a weird day for casting director Jon
Comerford.
He heard 150 people read the same five lines into a video camera — some
die-hard Monkee fans in their funkiest polyester slacks, some burly
50-year-old men, a couple of 15-year-old girls. He was nice to all of them.
“You can’t break people’s hearts,” he said a little wearily when the
casting call wrapped up after 6 p.m.
And among all the non-actors, the curious, and the confused who wander into
the casting call, he just might discover The Next Big Thing.
“I spend my whole life trying to find that one person,” said Mr. Comerford,
who has been casting productions for 15 years, including blockbuster
musicals such as Tommy.
Daydream Believers: The Story of the Monkees is a co-production of the
American cable music channel VH1 and Moses Znaimer’s MuchMoreMusic, a
made-for-TV movie directed by Neil Fearnley, whose previous outings include
Escape from Mars. Filming begins in Toronto this month.
The original Monkees answered a 1965 casting call just like this one and
were chosen from 500 hopefuls. “They found them exactly this way,” Mr.
Comerford said.
The Monkees were infamous, at least at first, as a fake Fab Four cobbled
together by corporate interests to ape the Beatles. Imposters or not,
guitarist Michael Nesmith, drummer Micky Dolenz, singer Davy Jones and
bassist Peter Tork made a string of multiplatinum albums, had a weekly
television series, and graced all manner of merchandise.
The Monkees never did have a great deal of musical ability, though they did
give the world pop gems like I’m a Believer and Last Train to Clarksville.
Actors in Daydream Believers won’t need it either — they will lip sync the
songs.
Nonetheless, “It’s an extraordinarily difficult thing to cast,” Mr.
Comerford said. “It’s not limited to the acting ability, they have to look
like the original Monkees.”
He needed a Davy Jones who was short enough, a Peter Tork with long enough
hair — “because extensions are so tricky.”
Some of the people in line were doing their best to cultivate that shaggy
sixties look. Rob Kay, 41, even had vintage Beatle boots. He got the part
at his last casting-call audition; that one was for the Leon’s
furniture-store chain’s “Ho! Ho! Hold the Payments!” commercial.
He thought he had a good shot at the Monkee movie though, because he plays
in a British-invasion band called the Toggles. He brought his musician pal
Jim Clark, 39, to the audition.
“The Monkees were why I started playing in the first place,” Mr. Clark said.
Actors picked for the film stand to earn about $25,000 — and most likely,
plenty more movie auditions. A young Toronto woman named Liane Balaban
walked into a similar casting call a few years ago. She’d never acted
before, but won the lead role in Allan Moyle’s New Waterford Girl, an
award-winning Canadian film about an independent young woman’s ambition to
leave her rough-hewn Cape Breton hometown. Ms. Balaban is now the It Girl
of the moment in the indie film world, and Mr. Comerford might just find
her successor here.
Lucille Henry was perhaps the most unlikely person in the line, a heavy-set
black woman of 54, and there was no obvious role for her in a movie about
four white teen idols. But she has had parts as an extra in films such as
Dangerous Evidence and thought this casting call was worth checking out.
“There are girl monkeys and boy monkeys, right?” she said, apparently under
the impression that the spelling of the band’s name was just a way to make
a nature flick look hip.
Dave Jacobs took time off from his job in a steel plant in Hamilton. Mr.
Jacobs, 42, has never acted, but he has been mistaken for the diminutive
Mr. Jones his whole life, which he reckoned gave him a pretty good shot. He
won a contest in Las Vegas once with his impression of Mr. Jones.
His audition was okay. Mr. Comerford gently explained that they needed a
Davy Jones who was 19, but that there was a scene where the lad goes back
to England to talk to his father, and that Mr. Jacobs might make a terrific
Dad, given the resemblance, which everyone agreed was almost spooky.
Mr. Jacobs duly read the scene a few times in his best English accent, but
didn’t quite put the pieces together — asked if he would be happy to play
the elder Mr. Jones, he said, “The father? No, I want to be Davy.”
But Mr. Jones is supposed to be 19 and Mr. Jacobs does look all of his 42
years.
CORRECTION
Daydream Believers: The Story of the Monkees is a production of Pebblehut
Productions, of Muse Entertainment Enterprises in Montreal. Incorrect
information was published March 1.
(Friday, March 3, 2000, page A2)

(ed: I would venture that incorrect information was published again here…)

http://archives.theglobeandmail.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From: LeiHei@aol.com

Hi I just wanted to clarify that although the above info had my email
address, I was just forwarding information from Bonnie Verrico. I don’t
have any other info other than what I forwarded (people were emailing me
questions!).

I believe more info will be available in a few days from
www.shoesuedeblues.com.

Thanks!
Leisa

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