As my first year of college came to an end, the decision to leave UCLA was an easy one. I’d been in school for fourteen years straight and it was time to move on with my life. Plus, thanks to the confidence of my parents and their willingness to risk a chunk of their hard-earned savings on my yet-to-be-proven talent, Craig and I were going to make our feature film. I didn’t know it then, but this next four years would be the most difficult, frightening, and exhilarating period of my life, one in which I would learn a hell of a lot more about people, life, business, and filmmaking than I ever would have as an undergraduate at UCLA.
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As Craig and I began preproduction on our very first feature film, the first thing we needed was to find a cast. So began one of the most arduous processes of the entire film. We knew we couldn’t hire union actors because we had no money to pay for them, so we started hunting everywhere, trying to find unknown but natural actors to play our leads. We scheduled casting sessions anywhere we possibly could. We would go to the local colleges and high schools and hold open calls. We would run ads in the newspapers and movie trade journals. For days and weeks on end we would sit through tediously long open casting calls, interviewing anyone who cared to walk in.
Our first big find was a young, unknown actor who grew up on Catalina Island about thirty miles across the Pacific Ocean from Los Angeles. His name was Gregory Harrison and he was a bearded and affable twenty-three-year-old surfer who only had one minor film credit to his name. Greg told us all about life growing up on Catalina where his father, Captain Eddie Harrison, was the skipper of the famed glass-bottom boat tourist attraction. Craig and I used to take the Big White Steamer over to the island to go scuba diving and it was funny to hear that Greg was one of the local kids who used to greet the big boat, swimming alongside as tourists tossed them coins. We might have thrown coins to our future star! Craig and I immediately liked this guy and figured that if we took to him so quickly, audiences would too. And then one day, Greg shaved off his big bushy beard to reveal his amazing matinee-idol good looks. It was a lock. We had our Jim!
To broaden our casting horizons we placed an ad in the Los Angeles Times, announcing a Saturday casting session in a rented conference room at the upscale Century Plaza Hotel. A simple act, but this move turned out to be one of the most important moments in my professional life. Halfway through an arduous four hours of actor interviews, in walked this tall, handsome, and urbane man in his forties, dressed in a crisp black suit. He very diplomatically introduced himself as Rory Guy and we all shook hands. He had an amiable and intelligent air about him and reminded me of a young Gregory Peck. Little did I know that this actor and I would go on to make horror history together over a four-decade working relationship. He would ultimately change his screen name to the much more horror-appropriate “Angus Scrimm.”
Angus read for the role of Jim’s father, Russell Nolan, an alcoholic, out-of-work wreck of a man. His reading was very low-key, almost vulnerable. At times he would mumble. No other actor had made choices like Angus. For the first time it was like we were sitting there with the Russell Nolan we had imagined. This was a terrific actor with sharp acting chops and Craig and I were sold.
I would be remiss in not mentioning one more key piece of casting. We needed to find an interesting character actor to play an oddball hang glider pilot who literally dropped into the second act of the screenplay. Craig had heard about an actor who was reputed to be the greatest talent in the drama department at Long Beach City College. The guy was also a musician, so one night Craig and I went down to meet with him at a dive bar near Belmont Pier where he was performing. As we nervously entered the Wooden Keg (we were a few years shy of drinking age), Reggie Bannister was onstage wowing the crowd. He finished his acoustic set to raucous applause, set down his guitar, and joined us at a table. Reg was a striking figure with his trademark bald pate and ponytail and was one of the absolute coolest cats I had ever met. Funny, warm, and friendly, he immediately asked the curvy barmaid to set us all up with a round of beers. She complied, and even though we had known him all of five minutes, we hoisted our brews and Reg enthusiastically toasted this great new movie project that we would be working on together. Not only was this my first alcoholic beverage in a real bar, it was the beginning of a lifelong partnership with a loyal compadre who a decade later Phantasm fans would describe as “the guy who would lay his body down on the fires of hell for his friends.” We had our cast. Time to shoot this thing!