May 11, 1996

Today's auditions were plagued with more cancellations and no-shows than usual--only four of the eight scheduled actors appeared. Most of today's crop was interesting, but ninety seconds after the last actor left I called Edith Meeks and offered her the lead role of Mimi. If it works out for her to take the part, I will consider myself very lucky--I didn't dream I'd be this completely happy with any candidate. She and I are meeting on Tuesday to discuss details and to look over the storyboard, so she can see how I'm planning to shoot the movie's sex scenes.

We have at least one interesting candidate for the male lead, but we're waiting a bit on that situation. If Edith works with us, perhaps she'll want to participate in the search.

After hearing my dialogue over and over during the auditions, I'm itching to rewrite a lot of it, and I did a little retouching this evening. Interestingly, it seems much easier to write good dialogue after going through this audition process--I feel the characters more clearly now that they've been refracted through so many actors' personalities.

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