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There are two factors that make a star shine. It is the light that stars emit and the necessity of being seen. I called her mother and exclaimed, “The woman who cast Ralph Macchio in ‘The Best Kid’ wants to meet me!”
I met legendary casting agent Bonnie Timmerman at a dinner with my husband Derek Cianfrance. They collaborated on the HBO series “I Know This Much is True.” She said she likes my job. The Super 8 movie I did, the comedy show I did, the feature film I did. I heard that people in the entertainment industry tried to lure Bonnie to their performances with her gifts. Snowman made of flowers, candies and wax. She heard that if she likes your work, it means you can become a star. I’ve been starring myself in my own movies for 25 years now. I didn’t choose to audition like many actors do. I wrote and directed my own films, so I could star in anything at any time. I wanted to play, practice, and create as much as possible. There was a problem with permissions. I had to implement my own ideas. I didn’t want to wait for someone else to decide whether my teeth were straight enough, my face beautiful enough, my voice good enough, or my figure curvy enough. Here I was, twisting my fork in a pile of pasta carbonara and wondering if I would finally be noticed.Was it me? good sufficient?
I was sitting across from a woman who made things happen for actors. She saw those who had brilliance. She recognized her talent. She encouraged actors who later became movie stars. Can I become a star? The definition of a star is…A celestial body consisting of a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its own gravity. Stars are also huge balls of hot gas.
Bonnie asked me if I had ever thought about auditioning. I was once at an agent’s office, auditioning for representation. I was in the middle of a monologue when my agent decided to answer the phone. It was as if I had disappeared from the office, from the stage, from all existence. No more auditions for me. “Stuck together by self-gravity”? I have entered a black hole. How I admired actors who accepted rejection after rejection. They constantly faced the doubt that the stage was not their place. The actor should be like soft leather. Tough, but very vulnerable. They are always training hard. They’re prepared for the situation where, “No, I’m not right for the role.” They attend multiple team tryouts until they are allowed to wear wigs and mustaches and perform fancy dance moves.
I knew I had to keep acting. But I needed to do it in an unconventional way. You have to create everything yourself. Parts, scripts, movies. Rosie O’Donnell once asked me what I was going to do with an episode of “Chopped Liver” that she and I had just co-produced. I told her I’m not very good at games…she might not be able to help. She told me that it doesn’t matter how you get “there,” just grab a machete and chop down the jungle until you get there. I intend to continue aiming for that “there” through my work even into middle age. I want to avoid the scrutiny of gatekeepers and find my own audience. Bonnie offered to help me. “For once,” Mafiaso asked, with determination in her eyes, “who do you want as your next comedy partner?” Roberto Benigni? ” Yes, Fairy Godmother.
Bonnie Timmerman rose to fame after appearing in many movies such as “Dirty Dancing,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Heat,” “Trading Places,” “Ironweed,” and “Miami Vice.” The Academy has announced a new Oscar award for casting directors in 2026. I expect her to be nominated in the future. Bonnie eats, dreams, and sleeps while casting. She is the child of a boxer and an opera singer. she’s a fighter. She has never heard her sing. As the theater lights come on and weave through the smoky streets of a dark city, Bonnie prowls in search of her untapped talent. She carried around a pocket full of Polaroids, snapshots of actors, for the director to review. She is the queen of the casting cosmos. She is a champion who wears boxing gloves and wields a magic wand. She shaped, encouraged and applauded the actors. She urged directors to take advantage of her undiscovered talent. When I think of Bonnie, I think of the moon. She is always there, reflecting the starlight for everyone to see.
She invited me to a documentary screening. The documentary was called “Bonnie” and it was about Bonnie. The room was filled with grateful actors, students, agents, and good friends. In this doc, younger versions of today’s movie stars, including Benicio del Toro, Steve Buscemi, Kate Winslet, Reese Witherspoon, Keanu Reeves, and Natalie Portman, appear in raw video footage from the ’80s. doing. Each actor sat in a plain room with no known name. There were no costumes, no sets, no props to lean on. The actors who came to audition had nothing to play the role, except their imagination and three or four pages of him in hand. A voice behind the video camera led them to the audition, and their brilliance was captured by Bonnie Timmerman. I wish Bonnie had recorded it 30 years ago.
Some people live to be seen. Some things will never be seen. Students want to be seen by their teachers, and homeless men seeking change want you to be seen. Red flowers need to be seen by butterflies to pollinate them. This world needs butterflies. I need Bonnie too. An actor who attends an audition wants to be seen by his casting director. Bonnie is looking. Bonnie says of stardom: “The more you work, the more the audience gets used to seeing you and the more they love you, but it takes time.”
26 years ago, Mark Ruffalo walked into Bonnie’s room. In his documentary, Mark reads “Armageddon” as his younger self, knowing he is not old enough to play the role. He told them they could play any role. I study his self-advocacy and his willingness to pursue this as a career. What beliefs he has! He said to the director in the room: Yeah, I know I’m an actor. I’m playing a character. ” Years later, Mark comments on this audition. “I’m going to promote myself because I don’t know who else is going to do it. I believed that someday someone would give me a role.”As a performer, I watched the document and entertainment was for me I think it might not be the right place. But at 53 years old, the only other way I know how is to make a dry martini. Is it too late to become a marine biologist? Then Mark says, “At some point, you realize, hey, there’s no going back, hey, there’s no bridge behind you. I built the bridge in front of me.”
A few days after the screening of Bonnie, I watched Mark Ruffalo again. This time it was live. In 1986, he gave a reading of Kenneth Lonergan’s “This Is Our Youth” at the West Park Center in Manhattan.th street. The center was raising money to protect against the looming threat of new construction. Plans for a skyscraper were floating above. The space was both a church and a theater. At this venue, he accepted two beliefs: believing in the existence of things that cannot be seen. If bread and wine can be body and blood, Mark Ruffalo, 56, can be a stoned, neglected 19-year-old on the Upper West Side. Once again, we saw Mark create something out of nothing. In the sanctuary where whispered prayers were once answered, Mark worked his magic. Abracadabra. He was 19 years old. We all believed in him.
The black stage was empty except for the folding chairs where three actors and a man reading the stage guide were sitting. Mark read from loose pieces of paper on the music stand. He took his audience from reality to the world of imagination. For two hours, we talked about the upcoming holiday, about the subway that broke down, about the pole between us and the stage, about laughing loudly after the yes line, giving righteous applause, and whistling. I forgot about the man in front of us. of cannabis. The only tangible item that Mark teleported from reality to this pretend space was a baseball cap. Mark has built a make-believe world where conversations light up the walls of the apartment, soccer balls are pantomimed, props fall and break, and everything is heard only through the actors’ reactions in silence. He drew our attention to the invisible with his remastered childlike play. And we could see everything! We didn’t need a set, no furniture, no real bags of cocaine to drop on the floor. We saw a white cloud rising from his feet. When he opened the case, he saw a suitcase with money that wasn’t there. We were able to see what Mark saw because Mark was our guiding light.
I ask Mark about imagination. He told me about his teacher, Joan Linville. She taught her students to build the environment around them. On a Zoom call, I saw him in his office, sitting under an oak tree behind him. I saw him leaning forward and admiring the flowers in an Italian garden. It smells like tomatoes! He said actors have to relearn to use their imagination. It will disappear at some point. it is Why has my stuffed animal stopped talking to me? We used to commiserate about canned spinach. When we got scared, we moved closer. They were my best friends and then one day they were gone. I’ll put it in a black trash bag. Something broke our reverie.
“Catch the real Mark. From Earth to Mark!” Mark Ruffalo said this is what happened. Society starts telling us to get out of there. My cousin said stuffed animals can’t talk. I still don’t believe her. Mark says imagination is a muscle. “Hold it gently like a bird, but if you loosen it too much it will fly away.”
Mark’s performance reminded us what a great gift imagination is and how desperately we need it today. To imagine in someone else’s shoes, to imagine peace, but more importantly to imagine how to get there, to imagine potatoes for fuel, to imagine a shovel, or to prison. It’s about imagining new forms of punishment. Imagination is a tool better than any other. It’s where ideas are born and reality grows from them.
Stars have different meanings to different people. I tilt my head back in awe as I watch the stars in the night sky, the stars on the silver screen, people riding high wires, and pelicans flying past the sun. After all, stars are just twinkles, and they can disappear. Mark doesn’t consider himself a star. he said so. But I’ll do it. Through his acting, he brings to light the tragedy, hardship, folly, and imperfection of being human. We are a crowd of onlookers waiting to see from His light who we are and who we can become. As he draws on his pretend experience, we watch his performance and recognize our own flaws, unbridled anger, and unbridled joy. We practice compassion by empathizing with his character. Mark has a light that keeps the stage bright. He doesn’t flicker or dim. He’s like that oak tree I imagined on our Zoom call. He is strong and patient and will do everything he can.
Bonnie wanted to be a violinist. When she finally sat down in the orchestra pit, her bow was up, but everyone else’s bows were down. She couldn’t hear the music anymore, she said. She knew it was time to leave. “She needs to know what she can and cannot do,” she says. And when she realized what she was doing, can Do it…bang. “They don’t give up on getting to Somewhere, and eventually Somewhere explodes. It expands and expands and you become the star at the center of your own galaxy. There’s a lot of magic in this business.”
In the entertainment galaxy, actors may be called stars, but everyone has felt that star status at one time or another, or even now. Some of us are involved in sports, some are mothers and fathers, some are in the hospital, some are on the street, some are in the classroom where homework is read aloud, some are artists. There are some too. We have our moments. You have to work really hard to keep it bright. When we feel exhausted and in doubt, we ask ourselves why we are doing this. When we continue to love what we do even though we are not seeing results. When you know there’s something you need to see, say, or hear, someone will probably turn to you. People like Bonnie, then you’ll know we’ve just been seen. Carl Sagan said: “Even when you’re having the most difficult days, remember that we’re all made of stardust.”
Sometimes it’s good to believe that the moon sees you. That’s when you know you’re shining.
Shannon Plumb is a performer, writer, and director who currently stars in the comedy show Chopped Liver. Her films have been shown at festivals, cinemas, museums, and galleries.Her essays are published on her Talkhouse.com.
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