TV-commercial casting director Laura Slutsky interview

BEHIND THE SCENESMiss Slutsky findscommercial successBy Frank Lovece

(Intro: "Mission: Impossi-ble" theme music)

"Good evening, LauraSlutsky. Your mission, shouldyou decide to accept it, is tofind an old-fashioned volun-teer fire department for a'real people' TV commercial.We need a brass pole, a spotteddog, at least one woman fire-fighter and a fire chief with adeep voice. The firefightershave to catch colds betweenJanuary 1 and mid-March, andsome of them have to switch toAlka-Seltzer PIus. No coach-ing. Oh, and make sure there'ssnow on the ground."

This was one of Slutsky'seasier assignments

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fire-houses tend to stay put. But ifshe had to, the queen of com-mercials casting could proba-blv track down the MalteseFilcon. The biggest ad agen-cies have Slutsky's People-Finders company hunting forreal folks named Honda and

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Laura Slutsky

Ford who drive Subarus, burlyeonstruction workers who likccandy and truckers with novisible tattoos and the sniffles.

"I don't like the term 'realpeople,"' the highly animatedMiss Slutsky contends. "Actorsare real people, too. I find typi-cal consumers who'll talkabout products they really use.On the other hand," she adds,"What's typical? Typical peo-ple in New York aren't liketypical people in Maine. Let'sjust say I find you."

Finding is exactly what the36-year-old has been doing formore than a decade. She looksin shopping malls. on farms. inNew Jersey truck stops. Forlegal and ethical reasons, shedoesn't let on she's castingcommercials. "I just say it'smarket research," she ex-plains, "which it is."

Miss Slutsky also can't coa-ch or ask leading questions.After screening-out people andcollecting a group that fits theadvertiser's needs, she gener-ally does hidden-camera inter-views. When she gets whatshe's looking for, she revealsher secret to those who haven'talready guessed, and has themsign a release. Most agenciespay people in commercials be-tween $200 and $20,000, de-pending on if, and how long, acommercial runs.

"The fabulous thing aboutthis job," Miss Slutsky says, "isthat people seem to like me.They take me in like an oldfriend. You meet a Iot of peo-ple and Iearn about society."

What has she learned? MissSlutsky pauses. "Most people,"she says, "are basically good.They just get screwed up alongthe way. There's a lot," shesighs, "of hate out there."

Release the wepk of Nov. 3-Nov. 9, 1985