Kate Zambreno

"Did he smile?" the little girl asks of her scowling 10-year-old brother. The mother clutching his black-and-white grinning headshot shakes her head "no."

"Awww, man..." whines another boy in his puffy pastel-blue track suit, hair slicked forward into a tiny cowlick, making him look like a Puerto Rican Ed Grimley, as he shuffles into the practically empty waiting room with his family trailing behind. "He thinks he's got a doctor appointment," whispers one of the sisters. But he's actually going to get his picture taken at a virtual casting call held simultaneously in seven other U.S. cities for a chance for him and his family to leave all this behind and star in a Hollywood film.

His mother fills out the form: "How much do you weigh?" she asks her son, who replies with a shrug. "How tall does he look?" she then asks the teenage employee who's helping take the digital photos that will then be sent to the LA casting director. "Four feet," he guesses. Meanwhile, another hopeful stage mom combs out the blond mop tops of her three boys, their baggy pants grimy as if from rough and tumble during recess, yanking the bowl cuts until they shine. All of them fit into the 9-13 age range sought for casting Buddy, the 11-year-old child of a broken home in "Karma Police," a father-son kidnapping caper. "Buddy is a rough-around-the-edges kid who is not coiffed or polished. Buddy enjoys baseball," reads the handout.

"In Los Angeles there are a lot of stage kids. I think they're looking for a more natural look. It's like the It factor. They know it when they see it," says Lisa Ackerman, the Midwest regional director of Star Caster Network that provides software for the entertainment industry and is sponsoring this initial casting call. She explains that the electronic casting system they use is a more cost-effective tool to see as many boys as they can across the country, and a helpful way for Midwestern talent to be connected to the mother ship in Los Angeles.

The soggy weather has kept many boy wonders and their wondering moms at home, but Ackerman hopes more will be back tomorrow. This is the first casting call Ackerman's one-woman Chicago agency has participated in, and the turnout will determine whether her company will do more of these sorts of searches. For a Chicago boy to win the part of "Buddy" would be the equivalent of a mom-and-pop convenience store selling a winning lottery ticket. "It would be exciting if a kid was cast from this center," Ackerman exclaims.

(2003-02-05)

Also by Kate Zambreno

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Doggie smile
At Sutton Studios in Evanston, it takes a communal effort to get an 8-year-old panting golden retriever named Summer to sit still enough to be captured in a candid pose with her owners.
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Bubblicious
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The War on Nightlife
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Caught on tape
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Being Ira Glass
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Bull masters
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Splendor of the night
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Your chariot awaits
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What a Riot
(2002-11-13)

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