'Cold Mountain' Casting Logic Criticized

The Asheville Citizen-Times ^ | Dec. 23, 2003 | Paul Clark

[anymouse]

ASHEVILLE - Director Anthony Minghella said one reason he didn't film "Cold Mountain" in Western North Carolina was that he found the Civil War's harshness elsewhere, in the gaunt, hard faces of Romanian soldiers.

Marty Cherrix doesn't believe it. She's a casting director from Canton who found actors for "Cider House Rules," "Domestic Disturbance" and "Chocolat." She also conducted the talent search for the kids who play Wendy and Peter in "Peter Pan," a movie also opening Christmas Day.

[anymouse]

Off-shore casting for a Civil War film? Wonder if viewers of this movie realize that much of it was filmed in Eastern Europe rather than North Carolina.

[dirtboy]

Off-shore casting for a Civil War film?

At this rate, we'll be seeing Clint Eastwood making westerns in Spain.

[John H K]

Eh, you win some, you lose some - "Last of the Mohicans," set in Upstate New York, was actually shot in North Carolina.

[IYAS9YAS]

Dangit, don't bring your logic 'round here.

[Jalapeno]

Marty Cherrix doesn't believe it. She's a casting director from Canton...

Sounds like sour grapes because her firm did not have any guant actors with rough faces available.

Used to be, all 'locations' were a backlot studio, that didn't do any less for the film.

[Charles Henrickson]

Speaking of Cold Mountains . . .

Actress Renee Zellweger arrives at the premiere of the film 'Cold Mountain'. . . .

[Texas Eagle]

I haven't seen the movie yet but based on the 20 minutes of previews of it I had to sit through before seeing "Master and Commander", it looks like something of a chick flick.

Anybody know if it is?

Anybody?

Anybody?

Bueller?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I liked the novel Cold Mountain, I like Jude Law, I don't like Nicole what's-her-face, but neither one of them belongs in this movie.

When I was reading it I pictured Liam Neeson as Inman.

Anybody but Nicole would be okay for Ada.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It was not a chick novel.

Based on who they cast for the movie, it may well be a chick flick.

[Cicero]

Is that the "slim" look the article talks about?

[Wallace T.]

Most of the actors in the movie were not Southerners, or even Americans, for example: Nicole Kidman (Australia); Jude Law (England); Donald Sutherland (Canada); Brendan Gleeson (Ireland). Among the few Americans in the film are Renee Zellweger (a Houston native of Norwegian-born and Swiss-born parentage) and Natalie Portman (born in Israel but raised in the suburbs of New York). Neither of them are representative in appearance or heritage of the predominantly Anglo-Celtic white Southerners, especially in that era. The Anglosphere actors may have the physical appearance of most white Southerners circa 1860, but lack the sort of connections they mught bring to a similar story based on British history.

If most of the Italian-American actors in "The Sopranos" can be played by Italian-Americans, then you would think white Southerners could do better jobs in "Cold Mountain." I don't like George Clooney, but at least he is from Kentucky. The same can be said for Kim Basinger, but she is a Georgian, after all.

[SevenDaysInMay]

From my family oral tradition, much of the farming south still had Irish and Scot accents as they were first or second generation Americans, exported by the Brit overlords because of the potato famine.

I recall reading that the average soldier was 5'8", 140# fit for battle. Imagine carrying a 10# musket and more than 60# of pack in rain and mud, many without boots, eating flour and grease "sluish" roasted curled around your bayonet. No concept of the "germ theory" in drinking water. Men and women were educated and tough as nails.

Character counted then.

America really did nearly lose an entire generation of its best and brightest. We changed forever because of the slaughter and federal power violations of our Ratified Constitution. The latter drove away the South which ignited Lincoln's War of Northern Aggression.

Religion was allowed by blackrobes, for bluecoats and homespun alike.

Nicole's best attribute is burried under period dress.

[Inyokern]

"The faces of the background actors in Romania I don't think will look like a true Southern face," Cherrix said

[Tax-chick]

They probably could get much closer to the appropriate body type in Eastern Europe. Modern nutrition makes people totally the wrong build for 19th century costuming. I've seen Joe Wheeler's Civil War uniform, and Audie Murphy's WW2 uniform. They were both shorter than I am (not quite 5'4"), and narrower in the shoulders; they had smaller feet than mine, which means shorter arms. A man of my height wouldn't fit those uniforms, either. People have been hungry for several generations in Romania - they would fit!

[Tax-chick]

She's bulked up, must be pregnant.

[PistolPaknMama]

Your ignorance is transparent.

[spodefly]

"It's difficult for me to support," she said, "because I feel it really exemplifies the lack of foresight of our federal government in its lack of support for the one clean American business that marries technology to the arts."

WTH? It's Bush's fault?

[fella]

Haveing read the book and seen the tv advertizements, I think a lot of people are going to be disapointed in this film.

[Rytwyng]

There are probably thousands of re-enactors who'd have been happy to be in the film for a pittance. What are these people thinking?

I'm reconsidering my plan to see the film because of this.