The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast · A L Katz

S4E2: How NOT To CAST A Movie

January 21, 2025·31 min·1 clip

The last thing I want any actor to do on camera is act.

Casting is the first fault line. Alan Katz keeps arguing that the wrong cast can sink a movie before cameras ever roll, and he uses Bordello of Blood as the clearest example. He keeps separating bad actors, good actors, and the people who can still make a set miserable, and says the production ran into all four types. The story then turns to the second movie. After coming back from New Orleans, Katz went in to see Joel, asked what was happening, and heard that the next movie was the one moving forward. He wanted Dead Easy. Instead, he found himself looking at a script he liked, a choice that had flipped, and a delay that could have pushed him back by another year and a half if he said no. That delay was the trap. Everything depended on the success of the second movie, which made the whole thing feel like a decision tree nobody on the ground could really control. Katz then backs up into the Universal problem, where the studio was worried Bob Zemeckis might make a deal with DreamWorks and had a very understandable reason for trying to keep him. Zemeckis had an answer: a script he and Bob Gale had written as a deal point. That is the maddening part. In business terms, Universal was trying not to eat a half-million dollars, and from that angle the move makes sense. The episode closes by pushing toward the actual making of the movie, when the actors arrive, Joel shows up, and an international incident nearly breaks out for real. That is where the mess starts.

As heard by us

A casting-room autopsy that turns a deal point into the saga's original sin.

Casting sits at the center of this Bordello of Blood chapter, and Alan Katz makes a strong case for how the wrong people can bend a movie before anyone has a chance to correct course.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want part two of a five-part Bordello of Blood retelling centered on the casting choice, this is your kind of mess.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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