Officials: Film portrays West Virginians as inbreeds, carnival sideshows
February 28th, 2008From the Philadelphia Inquirer, Fox News, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
A casting director for the horror film “Shelter” has been fired after West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin and other state officials objected to what they called an insensitive casting call for extras with unusual physical features.
Donna Belajac Casting of Pittsburgh had been seeking extras for a scene in a “West Virginia holler.” They had advertised for extras who are extraordinarily tall or short, those with unusual body shapes and unusual facial features, and people with physical abnormalities as long as they have normal mobility. Also sought was a white girl with “other-worldly look … could be an albino or something along those lines … ”
“It’s clear that they have no real understanding of who the people of West Virginia are,” Manchin said. “And that’s not only unfortunate, but in this case offensive.”
“For the producers of this movie to issue such a blatantly insulting and demeaning casting call is not just a slap in the face to tens of thousands of West Virginians, but to millions of Americans who may not fit the ‘norm’ of Hollywood beauty,” said Cecil E. Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers union.
… “It’s the way it was described in the script,” Belajac said. “Some of these ‘holler’ people — because they are insular and clannish, and they don’t leave their area — there is literally inbreeding, and the people there often have a different kind of look. That’s what we’re trying to get.”
… “It harkens back to a dark time in our nation’s history when flimflam artists roamed the country making a quick buck with traveling ‘freak’ shows, displaying human beings who may have different bodily characteristics, in darkened cages,” Roberts said. “I believe our society has progressed past that point — maybe not in Hollywood, but it has in other, more enlightened parts of America.”
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