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John Papsidera, Connie Wilson and Director Jason Reitman after the “SNL” Premiere in 2024,

After a thrilling film introduction with scenes from many of the 240+ films that John Papsidera cast, the Nashville and L.A. based casting director talked about his switch from acting, which he had studied, to casting movies instead of acting in them.

Papsidera remembered a long-ago casting call for a Pepsi commercial based on the original “Top Gun” and becoming aware, as he left the casting site, “I can’t do this, I didn’t have the confidence or the wherewithal to allow a camera to study me, to peer into my soul.That takes a huge amount of courage and guts to do that. And I didn’t have it, And I reaiized that.”

So, I ran restaurants for a bunch of years in New York and then moved to Los Angeles and got  into casting, “

He went on to say that casting is about saying yes.

Moderator question Q1:  “You got your start in casting huge action pictures like ‘Clear and Present Danger.’ What did casting movies like that teach you about story versus star power?”

A1: “Did it teach me anything?” (laughter) “Those were films that were very much centered on star power and very much centered around the stars. Now, Harrison Ford, I have to say, was very interested in the rest of the cast and the story of “Clear and Present Danger.” Other stars and directors, not as much. So, it gave me an insight into the politics more than anything else. It gave me an insight into how the business works, how the studio works in the nineties and the early two thousands, to a great degree.”

Q2: “In speaking of those time periods, I have to bring up ‘Austin Powers.’ Austin Powers became one of the defining comedies of its time. At the time, did it feel like you were working on something this special, or did its success surprise everyone?”

A2:  “Nobody wanted to do ‘Austin Powers.’ (audience laughter) Mike had just done ‘So I Married An Axe Murderer.’ It failed and this was his next movie after that and literally it was begging people to do the movie in a lot of ways. So, no, it wasn’t that way and then—it irritates me—the movie was a big hit and everybody signs up for two…there’s Tom Cruise and there’s Nicole Kidman—and it was slogging the first movie to really get it cast, but it was Will Ferell’s first movie and it was a lot of people’s first film that came out of SNL and came out of the improv and Groundlings and places like that.”

Q3:  “That must have been a really fun casting experience, I would imagine.

A3:  “It was fun. It was. Mike was heavily involved. Jay Roach directed that movie. And, yes, it was a very fun movie to cast, and it was also the very first film that I cast by myself. It was a unique experience.”

Q4:  In 2000, you launched your own company, Automatic Sweat.  What convinced you it was time to build your own company?

A4:  I’d never been more broke. I was partners with another casting director. She deemed it not worth her time to do Austin. She was spending all of her time on another movie that we were doing together and so I went off and did it myself. Subsequently, we then started on “Face-Off” right after that, the John Woo movie, and she came to me and said—wait a minute—well, I know why she said it, it was John Travolta and Nick Cage and she said, ‘I think I want to do this one on my own.’  I’m like, ‘That’s not how it works when you’re partners.’ So I was forced—it really forced my hand—to go and start my own company.”

Q5:  ‘Is there a story behind the name Automatic Sweat?”

John Papsidera, casting director par excellence, speaking at the 57th Nashville Film Festival on September 25, 2026,

A5:  “A homeless man said it to me. He used to hang out around my offices. He said, ‘Life ain’t anything but an automatic sweat.’ And I thought, truer words were never spoken.”

Q6:  “You’ve cast nearly every Christopher Nolan film since Memento in 2000, including ‘The Odyssey’ that many people have probably seen recently. What did that first collaboration look like?”

A6:  “I’ve said this before. It’s probably one of the easiest films I’ve ever cast. Because Chris didn’t know anybody. This is how relationships work..the same producers called me and said we have this little movie, Would you be interested? And I said I was, so they sent me the script and I had to read it three times before I understood it (laughter from the audience) And he said to me, ‘Bring me your favorite actors,” and so I did. And it was incredibly easy. Maybe 3 weeks. Incredibly fast and thrilling.”

Q7: Nolan is known for building a repertory of people across films?

A7:  We do talk about that at times. There’s a couple things that play into that. Early on in our relationship we’d talk about this and he’d say, ‘Well, we have Michael Caine.’ It kind of came out of that. As the years have passed, I’ve kind of had a different window into Chris’s mind. He is a control freak and he wants to know exactly what people are going to do, He’s not looking for people to create. He’s trying to fit the piece in the Swiss clock that is already in his head. He just wants you to be a little cog in the machine. He doesn’t want you to re-invent the machine. And so it’s a very different way of casting, So, it’s a very different type of casting than of me doing  a search and a hunt and going in search of the perfect pieces just for him that will line up with how his vision is, as opposed to a Jason Reitman, who is much more exploratory , much more of “Let’s try this; let’s improv that,”  Chris’s much more of a control freak And so, over the years, I think it becomes an easier thing for him to say, ‘Oh, yes, I can see this person doing that.”

Q8:  Over the years, have you ever seen a shift away from that, where you can see it going a different way?

A8: Going back to ‘Inception,’ Chris had not known of Marion Cotillard, and I knew her and loved her. Rebecca Hall is another one. She had done very little. She went on tape and she had done a lot. I saw Rebecca’s tape and sent it to Chris and it really started her career in a big way. We didn’t know what she would do with it. We sent it to DeCaprio and never heard back. We sent it to Joaquin (Phoenix) and he met and explained how he didn’t like, nor did he want, to make big movies. It’s ironic, because he was in one and won the Academy Award for playing the Joker. We met with Heath (Ledger). It was exhilarating and exciting and he understood that it wasn’t about trying to fill the comedic shoes of Jack Nicholson, but that the Joker was an anarchist and that he just wanted to tear it all down. And that was his take on the Joker. So, yes, there have been some examples that are exciting to me that were not in the usual way”

Q9:  You said something about when you were meeting with him it was exhilarating,

A9:  It’s hard to describe. I truly believe that it’s a magic that if you believe in the process it shows up in different ways. I’m just in the process right now, I was in L.A. this past Monday for screen tests for a huge show for Amazon and we had screen tests for the lead female. And one of them is just electric. You feel it. There’s something palpable. It’s chemical.  It is the thing that keeps me coming back. I play golf—badly—and people will say, ‘Oh, that shot will keep you coming back for 6 months.’ The idea of being in a room with the artist, those moments when you feel it, it’s indescribable and exciting. It’s a little bit about where magic meets practicality.

Q10:  With having such a long relationship with Christopher Nolan, what has that taught you about the trust that is necessary between a director and a casting director?

A10:  I think there’s always a question mark as to how much someone trusts you or not, It depends on how much you go out of the guidelines.  Chris still will not forgive me for bringing in, on “Memento, Crispin Glover. I  love Crispin Glover. I think he’s an amazing unpredictable actor, exactly the type of guy that Christopher Nolan does not like. Unpredictabiility not wanted, I’ve learned that. So it kind of depends on what you’re looking for, how you go down that road with directors, but the game is to gain their trust—at least as their confidante and they trust your opinion. I’m blessed, at this stage in my career, that I have it with many directors and I’ve done it long enough so that people will say, “What’s John think?” But that’s the job. You want them to seek your counsel.And you want them to know that you’re not just telling them what they want to hear, that you are not just being a cheerleader or a  yes-man, but you are telling them the truth. Does that answer that question?

Q11: Walk me through your process. What happens from the time you get a script until you cast a character?

A11: It’s much like being an independent casting director, I’ll read a script, I’ll see what I think about it. I’ll have a meeting with the actor or producer and talk about who I see in those roles or why. And if they get the job and if they are available, we then start a process. We’’ll start to get reads in. We funnel that to the producers and directors. And then we negotiate a deal.

Q12:  How do you judge rapport among actors, especially when you’re building an ensemble?

A12:  I think mostly this is world creation. And, in a movie, you want it to be grounded in a real world. So you want actors with like minds in that they can put ‘em together. I liken it to a painter painting a picture. Certain colors need an accent next to it, It’s really about creating a world with a certain soul.

John Papsidera interviewed onstage at the national Museum of African American Music at the 57th Nashville Film Festiva on September 25, 2026.

Q13: How much do you push back against a director?

A13:  You weigh all these variables, A studio, a director, television director has a page. I could call an executive director and say, “You’re wrong. That kid is amazing” in Scooby Doo,, It depends on relationships. Had I not done Wednesday with that director I probably wouldn’t have called. You only have so much creative freedom.

Q14:  The difference between an in-person read and a taped read?

A14:  It’s a really divided thing. I’ll start with the pros: it has opened the door to casting much more than anything else in my career. In the old format, casting calls had to get the job done and you would have a group of 40 or 5o or 100 actors and you knew they would be good. Those are the actors who have been displaced most and you hear them complain about it a lot. It’s those people who were in the small, select group and now you can look at a much broader group. We will go back and ask them to re-do, re-tape. We have years of relationships. (Richie Montgomery in Carnivale and Kingfish stands up in the audience to testify to working with Papsidera early on, ) Really having personal connections and insights into an actor in a personal way helps, but more people get seen and you have control in a taped session. You as the actor get to do it a hundred times till you get it the way you want it, so embrace the power of having it, because actors do not get the chance to be powerful often enough.

Q15:  How many of these auditions are you watching?

A15:  Fourth Wing project. We’ve seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of actresses and actors for the 2 lead roles. For Scooby Doo, we probably saw 600 kids. I’m working on a Christie McQuorry film that will be a smaller process. For Oppenheimer I saw a large number of people. For a Taylor Sheridan movie we see hundreds of men. They don’t build men the way they used to build men.

Q16:  Iconic ensembles…The Dark Knight…Batman Begins….Inception….

A16: I was looking through breakdowns today and I get to select actors who I like who I think are good actors. The common thread that runs through it is my taste. At the end of the day, it’s the smartest and the brightest actors who are available (and the budget).

Q17:  How do you balance known versus unknowns?

A17:  In “The Odyssey” those characters going in lived in people’s minds for a long time. They were next to God. So we wanted the super heroes of our time. So, to do that we intentionally went with the known stars. There are plenty of times when I look at movies and I look at the names to remember and there was no need for a name to be changing a wagon wheel by the side of the road. It felt like it was important in “The Odyssey”.

Q18:  Do you have a philosophy about when to cast an unknown versus these veterans?

A18:  It sort of depends on budgets, and things way out of my control. Casting a budget is the first thing we do on every project. They will just take the money, so we’ll find somebody who will do it for that. It’s a battle to try to find enough money. You try and find interesting people. So many of the Dunkirk actors have now gone on. We had so many amazing guys who have had amazing careers. It is a hugely satisfying part of the job. It take so many people to find them. That story of Lana Turner being discovered at Schwabb’s. That happens so rarely, if ever. It usually is a manager calling me and saying “I saw somebody in a  play, etc.” Yes, it’s true that I put Charlize in “Two Days in the Valley” and it was her first job, but it’s because a manager called me up saying, “You’re looking for a 6 foot Scandinavian girl. I was behind one in the bank line. Would you meet her?” And I said yes. I believe in saying yes and great people come from all kinds of places.

Q19: How do you stay confident in your choices, even when you have seen so many actors>

A19:  I don’t know. It’s really not based on ego.It’s based on a lot of different things. Honestly, now that I’m thinking about that question,  it’s  probably because I’ve looked at the 600 other people that aren’t getting it. When you’ve looked at so many other things that aren’t it, you have an incredible amount of faith that that IS iit. And so I think that’s probably where that passion comes from.  I don’t know how to do it, other than being passionate about it,  So, I say to people all the time, if you want an opinion, ask me, because I’ll give you one.I’ve got plenty of opinions, but I think that is my job. To not have an opinion and to not help guide and create you’re abdicating your job I you don’t have an opinion and if you don’t take a  position, you don’t campaign for what’s best.

Q20:  You’ve had such an amazing career, over 240 films, I’m curious if you have one that sticks out to you because it was an amazing experience, or that sticks out to you for reasons that might not be so obvious?

A20:  I mention ‘Dunkirk,’ I love Dunkirk, if only because of finding so many guys and it was very un-Chris-like, even though it was told in 3 different time frames, because he can’t help himself. I read it, and the process with Chris is that I’m one of the first people to read the script when he finishes. He’ll call and tell me to come over and read the script, I do, and then he comes in afterwards and says, ‘What do you think?’and “Who do you think?’ And when he walked in after ‘Dunkirk’ I said to him, ‘It’s a sweet love letter to England,’ and he said, ‘Yeah. It is.’ It’s a very different emotional thing for Chris to write that. “Inception’ I love. I love ‘The Offer.” I’m really proud of ‘The Offer, ‘ the mini-series that he did about the making of ‘The Godfather.’ I think it’s cast really, really well, and we tried not to just do ‘The Sopranos’ casting, So, we worked a lot of different ways to do that.  Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” I’d known all those guys since college. They called me and said, “We shot this little thing on a video and we’re going to try to make a pilot. Will you help us?” I said, ‘Yeah, Sure.”  So I was in the first season of “Sunny.” I love “The Madison,” something very emotional that Taylor doesn’t really write all the time. He’s a very masculine writer, not necessarily writing women. In fact, when you ask Taylor Sheridan how he writes women, he’ll say, ‘I write them just like men.’  And I think “The Madison” is very different, and I love it. Because I’m proud of all of those casts. I had a different relationship with each of them. “Life Itself” is another movie that nobody talks about—a Dan Fogelman movie—I thought it was very beautiful, and it got no love. But that having been said, my relationship with all of my movies is to employ actors and watch them do what they do. And helping a director create art.

Q21:  This is really my last actor question:  Are there one or two pieces of advice you could offer for the actors here who are doing those self-tapes?

A21:  At Florida State I taught a class about acting for the camera and after the semester was over and I thought about it, I thought, ‘If there was one thing I could give those student actors, it would be confidence.’ It’s telling that I started this interview with a story about how I didn’t have confidence, myself,as an actor, but if there’s one thing, it truly is confidence: it separates the wheat from the chaff. You feel it in the room. I used to tell my students that, before an audition, they ought to go in the bathroom and do a Superman pose in the mirror: whatever it takes for you to feel confident when you walk in the room. Producers feel it. Directors feel it. They don’t want Nervous Nelly on the set with them.And it doesn’t mean being cocky. It means finding that peace within you that you’re confident. If it’s something that you love to do, take any opportunity to do it. I think that’s it. Certainly be smart about choices; certainly make choices. Certainly have multiple choices in your head. I’ve always found it alarming that actors will come in and they’ll be given the grace to do it again and they’ll do it exactly the same way. It’s not about doing it differently from A to Z. It’s not about being a weirdo.  It’s about being smart and a professional. Choices and confidence is what I would give everybody as advice.

Q22:  Beyond casting, you’ve created an art facility, The Salon at Automatic Sweat, I’m curious if collecting art and curating art is sort of curatorial.

A22: I think so. I guess so. I think back to where that even came from, It’s fascinating to me. Most of my collection, if they are portraits, the faces blur and I think it is an off-shoot of seeing so many tapes all day long. I love the idea of it. In my collection, it’s like the memory of a face, but the faces are almost eradicated. (His wife pointed it out.) I think it speaks to so much of my inner life. So much of what I do all day long is judge, judge, judge. It’s very hard to turn it off and a piece of art that I love, I don’t have to judge it, I can enjoy it. And I think that’s the same when I show artists, which is seeking out stuff that I enjoy,

Q23:You split your time between Nashville and L.A. Do you find that splitting your time that way gives you a different perspective, and what do you make of Nashville’s growth in those areas?

A23:  It certainly has changed my perspective of the business. Again, they might like to hear it; they might not. The rest of the world does not care about the things that L.A. and the business, per se, has prioritized. And that is hard to break through, to get them to hear that, because they are surrounded by it. When I live here, they hear Chris Nolan’s name and they don’t care. They hear Taylor Sheridan and they say, “You do what?” I think that’s the reality of the world, and you are creating entertainment for everybody and the demographics of ‘you gotta have this’ and “you gotta have that’ (in a movie) and I say, “Guys: the rest of the world doesn’t give a shit about this.”  And so it’s changed my perspective a lot about that.  I’m thrilled for Nashville trying to embrace the business and grow, I think it’s a sad reality that California has lost so much of the entertainment business.  I’d rather see business go just around the United States and not to Canada or England just because of tax credits and opportunities.

Q24 (Audience):  In the casting of Elliot Page in “The Odyssey” was it you or was it Christopher Nolan saw something there that would benefit the movie?

A24:  I’m glad that you thought it was a positive…I’m assuming that. It’s sad to me that this world is in a place where it’s at where an artist gets attacked, and not only Elliot, or Lupita, but Chris as a filmmaker. We’re making art. We’re making paintings, We’re not making political statements. The nonsense that it should have been this or it should have been that.  Are you going to walk by the Mona Lisa and say, “Oh! She should have been smiling.” It’s insane, and I think it’s a divisive statement of our times which is not fair to anybody. Elliot came up—I’ll give credit where it’s due—Kelly Bush is his publicist and she asked, ‘Is there anything for Elliot in the movie?’ And we all thought about it for a minute and then it struck us that Sinon was the weakest among the characters in the story, and that he didn’t want to go to war. (I’m going to get emotional about this) And he went.And we thought there was something really special about Elliot playing that role. I said a couple of weeks ago, ‘I wish it were a tad more emotional.  I wish he were screaming in pain outside of that Trojan Horse, but I thought it was a lovely moment and I just cast it,

A.I. 

The last audience question was about the use of A.I. in movies. Papsidera came out in favor of live characters, saying “It’s innate.” He added “I think that replacing human beings with computer images mimicking human beings is not something I want to see. But, then, I’m not a big cartoon guy, I’m a grown ass man. “ He admitted that he didn’t know enough about it. “It’s a horror in some ways. It’s a horror in a lot of ways. It started at camp fires with cavemen telling stories. It’s why we go into a dark hall with flickering images telling stories.” Papsidera did acknowledge that there might be budgetary advantages.

MOST HOPEFUL ABOUT THE INDUSTRY?

Audience question:  What are you feeling most hopeful about?

Answer: “Do you know me? I tend to be a half glass guy. I am hopeful that maybe stories break through and people return to personal stories in independent films and that we see the last of…I don’t want numbered films…I don’t watch a lot of 2’s, 3’s and 4’s. (sequels). I hope that it turns to storytelling and less product being made, but they’ve opened the gates to the guys who care about data and algorithms and not really telling stories that shape your lives. I hope that people will return to telling stories that matter and thatshape our lives. Those are things that shape human beings. I don’t find that in Avengers #6.”