Casting couch

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The casting couch, casting-couch syndrome, or casting-couch mentality is the demanding of sexual favors by an employer or person in a position of power and authority, from an apprentice employee, or subordinate to a superior in return for entry into an occupation, or for other career advancement within an organization. The term casting couch originated in the motion picture industry, with specific reference to couches in offices that could be used for sexual activity between casting directors or film producers and aspiring actors.

It is not to be confused with the adult entertainment industry, where such actions are prerequisite, and the term "casting couch" has become a popular genre.

Video Casting couch

Notable casting couch remarks and incidents

United States

• The legend of the Hollywood casting couch coincided with the rise of the studio system in the 1910s. Several mogul producers were rumoured to have been enthusiastic practitioners, and it has been claimed that many actresses attempted, with varying degrees of success, to attain stardom via this route.
• In 1945, Maureen O'Hara was quoted as saying, "I don't let the producer and director kiss me every morning or let them paw me". In 2004, she repeated: "I wouldn't throw myself on the casting couch, and I know that cost me parts."
• In a 1996 interview, actor Woody Harrelson declared "every [acting] business I ever entered into in New York seemed to have a casting couch ... I've seen so many people sleep with people they loathe in order to further their ambition."
• At a 2005 class reunion, producer Chris Hanley told his former classmates that "almost every leading actress in all of [his] 24 films has slept with a director or producer or a leading actor to get the part that launched her career".
• In 2006, a New York City producer was accused of sexually harassing several members of the cast of the off-Broadway play Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead. She had previously been accused of harassing actors Gabriel Byrne, Aidan Quinn, Esai Morales and Joey McIntyre.
• In 2017, Lance Bass of 'N Sync wrote that "as a society, we've been become far too comfortable with the pervasive 'casting couch' adage that it no longer resembles what it truly is--sexual assault. ... I grew up in the entertainment business and I've experienced my share of unwanted advances from both men and women who saw me as a target.
• In 2009, Megan Fox stated that "Any casting couch shit I've experienced has been since I've become famous. It's really so heartbreaking. Some of these people! Like Hollywood legends. You think you're going to meet them and you're so excited, like, 'I can't believe this person wants to have a conversation with me,' and you get there and you realise that's not what they want, at all. It's happened a lot this year actually."
• In a 2009 interview with OK! Magazine, actress Charlize Theron claimed that when she was 18 she was propositioned at an audition by a pajama-clad Hollywood director. "I thought it was a little odd that the audition was on a Saturday night at his house in Los Angeles, but I thought maybe that was normal."
• In a 2009 interview, actor Mickey Rourke declared: "There's definitely something called a casting couch... if you take a girl from the Midwest with a pretty face and instead of inviting them in for an audition in the morning, the directors invite them for dinner at night? ... I can recall with certain women, we'd go out, I'd park the car on Sunset and by the time I'd got to the curb there'd be three or four producers handing them cards. ... There's ways you get a job and ways you get a job."
• In a 2010 interview with Access Hollywood, actress Lisa Rinna said a producer had asked her for "a quickie" when she was a 24-year-old candidate for a role on a prominent television series. At the same interview, Rinna's husband Harry Hamlin claimed that a female casting director attempted to seduce him in the late 1970s when he was 27.
• In 2011, Corey Feldman alleged that children were also victims of the casting couch. Paul Petersen said that some of the culprits are "still in the game" and Alison Arngrim claimed that Feldman and Corey Haim were given drugs and "passed around" in the 1980s. During the Harvey Weinstein scandal in 2017, Feldman launched a campaign to make a documentary to bring down a powerful Hollywood paedophile ring.
• In the November 2012 issue of Elle, Susan Sarandon spoke of a "really disgusting" casting-couch experience in New York City in the late 1960s or early 1970s. "I just went into a room and a guy practically threw me on the desk. It was my early days in New York and it was really disgusting. It wasn't like I gave it a second thought. It was so badly done."
• In 2015, Rebecca Carroll wrote a piece about being sexually assaulted when she was 14 by a famous New York City TV anchor.
• In July 2016, television executive Roger Ailes was accused of sexual harassment by former Fox News Channel anchor Gretchen Carlson. More than twenty other women, including Megyn Kelly and Andrea Tantaros, have since come forward with similar allegations about Ailes' predatory casting couch-like behavior in the television industry over a 50-year period. Since then, Fox's Bill O'Reilly has also been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment; $45 million has so far been paid to six women.
• On 1 November 2016, defence lawyers for Bill Cosby, who has been accused of sexual assault by over 60 women, wrote that, "Even if proven (and it could not be), the age-old 'casting couch' is not unique to Mr. Cosby, and thus not a 'signature' nor a basis for the admissibility of these witnesses' stories, let alone a conviction."
• On 15 October 2017, Alison Doody and Ruth O'Neill recounted their experience of the Los Angeles casting couch.
• On 3 November 2017, Kyle Richards described a producer saying "very perverted things" to her when she met him to discuss a role at the Beverly Hills Hotel when she was younger.

Europe

• In 1956, British fan magazine Picturegoer published a four-part casting-couch exposé entitled "The Perils of Show Business" featuring interviews with actresses such as Joy Webster, Dorinda Stevens, Anne Heywood and Marigold Russell.
• In 1998 and 1999, producer Alain Sarde and actor Robert de Niro were two of the high-profile filmmakers involved in two Parisian court cases exposing the borderline between the casting couch and prostitution for aspiring models and starlets.
• In 2002, actress Lesley-Anne Down spoke of finding fame in the late 1960s: "The casting couch was in full swing, people expected it... My teen-age years were pretty intense, a lot of pressure and a lot of horrible old men out there". In a 1977 interview, she had also said: "I was promised lots of lovely big film parts by American producers if I went to bed with them... Believe me, the casting couch is no myth".
• In 2005, French film director Jean-Claude Brisseau was found guilty and convicted of "casting couch abuse" against two actresses between 1999 and 2001 during auditions for Choses Secrètes (2002).
• In 2007, actress Helen Mirren claimed director Michael Winner had treated her "like a piece of meat" at a casting call in 1964. Asked about the incident, Winner told The Guardian: "I don't remember asking her to turn around but if I did I wasn't being serious. I was only doing what the [casting] agent asked me - and for this I get reviled! Helen's a lovely person, she's a great actress and I'm a huge fan, but her memory of that moment is a little flawed."
• In 2008, actress Ingrid Pitt described the unwelcome advances of two producers in hotels.
• In August 2012, actress Julie Delpy spoke out about casting-couch paedophiles in France in the 1980s.
• In October 2012, filmmaker Ben Fellows published claims that the casting couch was rife in the worlds of British television, theatre and advertising when he worked as a child actor and model in the 1980s. He claimed "the problem is both institutional and systemic in the entertainment industry."
• In 2013, Myleene Klass stated that, "I don't think there's a single person in the entertainment industry that hasn't, at some point, experienced the casting couch thing". Earlier, in 2010, she revealed a major Hollywood star (named in 2017 as Harvey Weinstein) wanted to sign a sex contract with her.
• In 2013, Thandie Newton told CNN of how, aged 18, she was auditioned by a male director and a female casting director. "The director asked me to sit with my legs apart - the camera was positioned where it could see up my skirt - to put my leg over the arm of the chair and before I started my dialogue, [I was told] to think about the character I was supposed to be having the dialogue with and how it felt to be made love to by this person. It turned out the director used to show that video late at night to interested parties at his house - a video of me touching myself with a camera up my skirt." She declined to name the director.
• On 20 October 2017, an article by English actress Sarah Solemani described the "inappropriate" behaviour of a director when she was 19 and the "appalling" audition room practices of a "toxic" industry.
• On 24 October 2017, discussion a sexual harassment he has allegedly experienced, actor Kevin Sorbo said that "Casting couches have always been around. I don't play that game, nor do I care to."

Asia

• In 2003 and 2006, Chinese actress Zhang Hao (??) released several graphic audio recordings and sex videos that she made herself to document her allegations that she won roles through the casting couch. The videos were released on YouTube but have been subsequently removed.
• In 2009, Indian actress Suchitra Krishnamoorthi reported an incident in her blog where she narrowly escaped sexual advances from a producer while casting for a film role.
• In 2014, Indian actor Shashi Kapoor said that the casting couch existed in India in the 1960s for newcomer leading men by established leading heroines. Therefore, he was grateful to star Nanda for not subjecting him to the casting couch when she agreed to star with him when he was an unknown actor.
• In 2015, Ranveer Singh described a "sleazy man in Andheri" who invited him to his house on the pretext of a lucrative opportunity.
• In 2016, actress Tisca Chopra recounted how she avoided the casting-couch plans of a producer.
• In March 2017, South Indian actress Varalaxmi Sarathkumar tweeted about being propositioned by the programming head of a leading TV channel and wrote that "I didn't come to the industry to be treated like a piece of meat." Other Tollywood actresses have made similar accusations.
• In November 2017, Kangana Ranaut and several other actresses spoke out against Bollywood's casting couch.

Maps Casting couch

See also

• Me Too movement
• Sexual abuse in Hollywood
• Weinstein effect

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References

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Further reading

• Anger, Kenneth (1959). Hollywood Babylon. J.J. Pauvert.
• Bardot, Bessie & Barker, Geoff (2012). Casting Couch Confidential. Momentum.
• Ford, Derek & Selwyn, Alan (under the pseudonym "Selwyn Ford") (1990). The Casting Couch: Making It in Hollywood. London: Grafton. ISBN 0-586-20386-9
• Freedland, Michael (2009). The Men Who Made Hollywood: The Lives of the Great Movie Moguls. JR Books Ltd.
• Halperin, Ian (2007). Hollywood Undercover: Revealing the Sordid Secrets of Tinseltown. Mainstream Publishing.
• Hofler, Robert (2005). The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson. University of Minnesota Press.
• Mutti-Mewse, Austin and Mutti-Mewse, Howard (2014). I Used to Be in Pictures: An Untold Story of Hollywood. Antique Collectors' Club.
• Phillips, Julia (1995). You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. Random House.
• Slide, Anthony (2012). Hollywood Unknowns: A History of Extras, Bit Players, and Stand-Ins. University Press of Mississippi.
• Walker, Derek & Hutchinson, Tom (1956). "The Perils of Show Business". Picturegoer, 14 July.

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Further viewing

• David Stenn's documentary Girl 27 (2007) explores the political power of movie studios in 1930s Hollywood, as well as public attitudes toward sexual assault that discouraged victims from coming forward.
• Ken Sheetz's documentary Discover Me! (2012) features a 6-minute section entitled "Sexual Politics" where several struggling actors describe their casting-couch experiences in Hollywood.
• Amy Berg's documentary An Open Secret (2014) follows the stories of five former child actors whose lives were turned upside down by multiple predators, including the convicted sex offenders Marc Collins-Rector, Brian Peck, Martin Weiss and Bob Villard.

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External links

• Chowdhury, Chitra (November 6, 2016). "15 Celebrities Who Became Victim of Casting Couch in Bollywood". Postoast. 
• A selection of contemporary articles regarding the casting couch in the American silent film industry from Taylorology.
• A storytelling podcast about the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century by Karina Longworth.

Source of article : Wikipedia