Pay to play, Hollywood disrupted casting
Forget casting directors schlepping to 99-seat theaters to check out plays, another once-common, now nearly extinct form of assessment. "Productions aren't paying for them to make discoveries on their time," says manager Alan Mills, a partner with Marshak.
Technological disruption has changed the landscape, too. Perhaps the most significant change occurred in 2003, when Gary Marsh's Breakdown Services, which has a virtual monopoly as a clearinghouse for casting notices for upcoming TV projects, went from messenger delivery to digital. This has been a boon for efficiency but cut a key human element out of a human resource function. "Breakdown streamlined a ton of things," says Scott David, who casts CBS' Criminal Minds and also owns a workshop studio, The Actors Link in North Hollywood, where he runs classes. "Agents used to come to people's offices and discuss their clients with a book of their clients. Now you can get a reel on somebody in seconds via online."