Christan Kingo ...
FULL Cast Needed for Experimental Short Film
CASTING BREAKDOWN
Leif | Male | Age 35 - 45
Leif is going through an uncertain period. His everyday rhythms and practices which were once reassuring have been slipping away from him, and he feels less secure. Despite this, he tries to maintain his careful routine. His overcalculated attitude is the product of a strange physical condition that he tries to hide - dark liquid secretions that emerge from his hands, otherworldly in nature. By regarding this as a chronic “illness” he chooses to wear gloves at all times, choosing extreme privacy. In order to believe that he can make sense of such a chaotic and surreal existence, he relies too heavily on his academic, intellectual upbringing to control the world around him.
The Eidolon/The Whisper | Female | Age 40 - 45
In ancient Greek literature, “Eidolon” stands for a spectre or phantom. She may take the form of a human, but only Leif seems to be able to see her. Similarly, only she seems to know the private, intimate details of Leif’s daily routine as well as his ‘sickness’. Her general behaviour is mysterious and extremely confident. She views Leif as a sort of student and subject, treating him with care but exercising a large amount of control over him. This manipulative power is expressed most clearly when her whispering voice puts Leif under a trance and causes him to have lapses in his memory, adding to his confusion. Like a puppet master, the Eidolon understands Leif better than he understands himself.
Harry | Male | Age 60 - 65
Harry is an old fashioned working class man. He thinks of himself as someone who has “seen it all”, when in fact he can only talk about the good old days within the disillusioned plastered shelter of a bar. He refers constantly to his past younger selves as an way of escaping a life of regret and bad choices. Retelling old stories to his fellow barflies allows him to believe that he could have made different decisions, but deep down he knows it is wishful thinking, and now he can be nothing more than the loudest voice in the bar - a self promoted leader amongst deadbeats.
Reg | Male | Age 35 - 50
Reg is a suit-&-tie businessman who is clearly burnt-out and very much in denial of this. He still talks about his job in the financial sector as if he were in his twenties, and ready to rule the world with his ‘bros’. What he doesn’t realise is that he isn’t fooling anyone with this display of ambition because he is in fact at a dive bar and not at an office event. Surrounded by the collective resignation of his fellow barflies, he can stay in this yuppie fantasy. When he does come home, his family simply reminds him of his own failures.
Joss | Female | Age 50 - 55
Joss is the bartender and owner of the bar which Harry, Benny, Reg and Leif regularly visit. Over the years, her dive bar has become a place for the tired and weary to hide in while they drink their sorrows away. Personally, Joss has little respect for the ridiculous and occasionally macho talk that goes on, but remains professional and involved just enough to prolong her customers’ expenses for the sake of her business. Despite this, she has a soft spot for Leif, who comes mainly to listen and drink silently in the background.
Benny | Male | Age 50 - 60
Benny is the leftovers of what used to be a man that believed in anarchy, “punk rock”, and the second rise of communism. Due to a devastating life of addiction, seeing his community turn increasingly neoliberal and the loss of many friends, he has become nothing but a diluted drunk, barely able to express himself. His way of communicating is restricted to incoherent scraps of poetry, and erratic bursts of one-liner jokes. Even though Benny is almost not present in reality, he still carries fragments of a cold and gruesome understanding of the world, making him able to see right through the monologues of his fellow barflies.
Patient I - Karen | Female | Age 40 - 45
Karen is woman who has lived most of her life unscattered, going through the motion without much resistance, following pre-made paths. After the birth of her second child, an existential angst that had been growing inside her is released alongside developing postnatal depression. She starts seeing the chaos of societal structures and starts to doubt her existence. She began to hate her second child, as she blames it for having ripped out her last shreds of innocence. After several traumatic years of being divorced from her family, she slowly begins to realise that her unstable identity allows her to easily construct new personas.
Patient II - Andrew | Male | Age 25 - 28
Andrew is a young man who has been dealing with severe depression and schizophrenia for most of his life. He has always tried to categorise himself into different lifestyles of society, but finds himself losing his personality when he sees other people with the same characteristics. As a consequence of this Andrew can’t seem to differentiate himself from others, and is in a constant search of his own lost identity. Due to his condition, he expresses himself rather violently, as he lacks the ability to fall into regular forms of communication.
Amsterdam, NL
Casting
Onkosten
