Allison Jones
speaker
268 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Allison Jones’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard · Allison Jones (Award-Winning Casting Director) · 18 Dec 2024
podcast
My year right after business school, I went to work on Madison Avenue in New York City for an agency called Doyle Dane Bernbach, which was mentioned in Mad Men quite a bit. That's why I love Mad Men so much. I was the tail end of when Mad Men would have ended, or maybe a few years after Mad Men.
And they had so much makeup and high heels. It was my first time ever spending much time in New York City. I was not cut out for advertising either. But my friend said, Allison, you should come to AFI. It is up your alley. You can get a loan for a low rate. So I did in the producing section. Again, no goals. Just said, no, that'd be fun. I think I'll do it.
Yeah, you're just following the next thing in front of you. And so I went to AFI. Loved it. I've never met people like that before in my life. You're ending up with, oh, that person's uncle is somebody famous. Anyway. In the student films, I enjoyed the casting part of it. And again, the same friend, Lydia, said, I think you can get a job in casting. I was like, no way, that's a real job.
She's a great friend. She's a very successful writer, producer. But yeah, we hit it off because we both flunked one of our tests together and we were singled out.
Yeah, totally.
I just dug it. We were casting a student film. In those days, AFI had sort of a little SAG connection, but not really. We're talking 1982 or 81. You really had to pester people to get anything done in those days. There was no email. As you know, it was just calling people up and getting hung up on that kind of thing.
but every time I watched a TV show, like I would see somebody on Marcus Welby MD and then I'd see her in a Spearmint Gum commercial. It was like, oh, she's doing a commercial. How does that work? I didn't know what casting was as a kid, nothing.
Yeah, the first big gate that's being cast. You guys appreciate that, but not many other people do. Yeah, right, right. Or even know it.
Yeah, but anyway, I thought the casting process was really cool and creative and required a certain level of dedication.
discernment and taste and realizing wow one actor can completely change a student film versus another actor I went to Larry Edmonds or something and got a little catalog of casting directors and producers and I started typing my letters to casting directors and I think I sent out like you had to put a stamp on the envelope Milna and then I think I got two answers
And one woman hired me, Judith Wiener.
Yeah, she was. And that was at Sunset Gower. And I remember walking in on the Gower entrance on Sunset Gower and looking to my left and there was the Hollywood sign. So it was like, wow, this is cool. Again, goalless, but just like, this is bitchin'.
Yes, exactly.
The first thing you do as a casting assistant, back then it was answering the phones. And my first office job was with Judith, and we shared an office with the late Tim Flack, who was the casting director, and they were doing the pilot of The Cosby Show. Oh. Wow.
And we were working on a show called Benson, all at Sunset Gower, which was an amazing old historic studio to work at, because even today it looks the same as it did probably in 1925. Literally inside, if you've ever shot anything at Sunset Gower, looks like you're in the 1920s. The old school payroll windows and stuff, that's really, really cool.
And they shot some magnificent old movies there, including The Three Stooges, which was my big comedy influence growing up as a kid with a bunch of brothers. We hit each other all the time, and it was all because of that. Because we were joking and not joking.
Yeah.
They're calling. Those days, I was learning how to put people on hold and say, hold, please, and get back to someone. And my boss would say, don't keep anybody on hold for more than two seconds. So I'd be going back and forth, hold, please, hold, please, hold, please. It was like, oh, my God, there's a big agent on the phone. What do I say to a big agent? So it was a lot of answering phones.
It was nowhere near as hectic as it is now. Oh, it's gotten more hectic. Much more hectic. Oh. You have tenfold more agents, managers, representatives calling you all the time. So much so that you can't get your job done. So we've had to pretty much switch to email and texting. Right. But back then, in the early 80s, we were working on a show called Benson.
Tim was doing the pilot for the Cosby show. And we were doing a show called Condo. And... A pilot. So there was a lot of casting sessions to set up. And in those days, you had to call the agent, talk to the agent's assistant, give the time, the place, leave the sides at the Gower Gate for the actors to come pick up. In the days, there was no fax.
Showing 41–60 of 268 · page 3 of 14
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