TEAM PLAYER
Veteran casting director Jackie Burch on how the legendary ensemble of Predator came together…
hoW did you get the casting job on Predator?
Arnold had a lot of trust in me and also, by that time, I had done some other big projects with him and the cast had really gelled. What every big actor wants when they are doing a new movie is for people that are easy to work with on the screen.
When I got the Predator script obviously the big thing was to find a lot of muscle. My take on it, and the director later told me I was correct, is that these guys had probably all been Vietnam veterans. There were a lot of Vietnam movies around at the time, so I took that as my lead – a more exaggerated version of them because obviously this was a sci-fi movie…
do you reMeMber the casting process?
Arnold was already cast. JeanClaude Van Damme had done some work by then but he was not a major star. I think when we cast him he felt that this was going to make him a big name – however, the original suit just did not work for him and the Predator itself began to develop. Originally, if I remember, we wanted someone to do some martial arts work but obviously that was not how the film turned out. Jesse Ventura I cast because of The Running Man, which was just before Predator and I worked on that as well. no one really knew him back then, but he was trying to get a big break after being a wrestler – believe it or not he was worried about where his career was going. Carl Weathers was quite well built and he had been in Rocky so he was great for being opposite Arnold.
so it Was Quite a testosterone-Fuelled set?
I guess it was [laughs]. Actually, one of the biggest challenges was that we needed a strong actress to stand with Arnold. That was quite a long casting process – but I loved elpidia Carrillo, she was great. The audience who had seen
Commando responded really well to Arnold being with a woman of a different ethnicity. I am not sure why that was, but in our feedback from Commando that was what people really loved – that little love story, which was unusual for the time I guess. Hollywood was so conservative. So with Predator, and also The Running Man, that is why you see him with more exotic leading ladies.