Casting Call Brings Out the Halloween in Hollywood

--The Hollywood newspaper and trade journal ads announcing an open casting call for rock star David Lee Roth’s first movie, “Crazy From the Heat,” invited women with unusually beautiful faces or bodies. Ask for unusual in Hollywood and you get unusual. A grandmother in tights. A trio with beehive hairdos. A couple of unemployed actors trying to slip through in drag. Motorists who drove past the Palace Theater on Vine Street might have thought someone was holding a dress rehearsal for a Halloween party. “This is a hell of a way to spend a Sunday, isn’t it?” said a smiling Roth, motioning toward the 10 applicants who had just been paraded in front of him on the stage of the Palace. “This is great.” Roth and director Pete Angelus said they were hoping to fill seven or eight principal roles from the day’s casting call that drew a thousand people. Dozens of others would appear as extras. The movie, a $10-million rock comedy, is scheduled to go into production in January, probably in Mexico. “We’re looking for people who look interesting on film,” said Roth, who is one of the real stars to emerge from rock videos. “Some of the most interesting people in our videos are not what you’d call pretty people.”

--Neighbors and friends raised the roof for Doug Mitchell and his family this weekend. They pitched in to build a three-bedroom house, in a show of compassion for the wheelchair-bound man. “It’s hard to believe I’m in this chair. I should be out there pounding nails,” Mitchell, 21 and a paraplegic, said as about 40 volunteers from Sharon Mennonite Church in Plain City, Ohio, were at work. The house is worth an estimated $80,000, and the family paid half that amount for the materials. Doug and his parents, Carl and Betty Mitchell, are not even members of the local Mennonite church. They belong to Plain City Methodist Church. But the raising of a house or barn in a day is a traditional Mennonite gesture for neighbors in need. The new farm house has ramps, wide doors and halls and a special bathroom to accommodate Doug’s wheelchair. “The old house is just not set up for a wheelchair,” the father said. Doug was injured when he was thrown from a pickup truck in December, 1984. After 5 1/2 months in a hospital, he returned to his parents’ farm. He can use his arms but has no use of his legs and very limited use of his fingers. “It’s tough to accept help,” said Carl Mitchell, who farms 720 acres about 20 miles northwest of Columbus. “But I guess if I was on the outside, I’d do the same. You can never repay, except, sometime down the road, you can help someone else.” The Plain City Lions Club contributed $1,000 toward the $3,500 cost of training a dog to help Doug in daily living.