Casting ODIE, Part Two: The People Odie Meets Along the Way

ODIE is a one-man odyssey, but nobody crosses a city alone. Today, the people Odie meets along the way.

Edwina Thompson plays Angela. We are keeping the details of her storyline close, because it lands harder if you do not see it coming, but we can tell you this: some of the most difficult material in the film lives in Angela's scenes, and it needed an actor who could make a dangerous situation feel like an invitation before it feels like a trap. Edwina auditioned and there was no second conversation.

Syd Goin plays Blu, and once you have seen Blu you do not unsee Blu. Blue wig, full glamour, the kind of presence that changes the temperature of a room the moment the door opens. Blu is one of the most visually distinctive characters in the picture, and Syd plays her with a generosity that keeps the character from ever becoming a costume. Two days on the schedule. We expect them to echo through the whole film.

Mirtha Martinez plays Miss Vaughn, who works the front lines of the shelter where the last act of the film unfolds. Miss Vaughn is the face of a system that is trying its best inside rules it did not write, and Mirtha plays the tension between the clipboard and the heart as well as anyone we read. She anchors the biggest block of our shoot, three consecutive days where the film's entire emotional resolution gets made.

Mathew Mitchell plays Gerald, shoeless philosopher of South Austin, forever working on a styrofoam cup, one half of the pair that talks Odie into the trade that changes his day. The funniest material in this film lives in Gerald's scenes. So does some of the saddest. Usually in the same scene, sometimes in the same line, and Mathew walks that wire like he built it. He is also, in true indie fashion, lending the production far more than his performance, but that is a story for another post.

And Daniel Freeberg plays Moose, of the too-small shirt and the legendary chin trick, a man who treats a case of beer as both prop and philosophy. Daniel is pulling double duty on this film: he is also one of our producers. Which means he spends his mornings solving the production's problems and his afternoons causing Odie's. We find this arrangement poetic.

Every one of these actors auditioned for a role smaller than they are capable of. Every one said yes anyway. That is the quiet math of a film like this. You do not get a world this alive by hiring people at their ceiling. You get it by hiring people the industry has been seating in the back row, and handing them the scene.

Thursday: the day players and the community of ODIE, otherwise known as the deepest bench in Austin.

ODIE begins principal photography May 18.