The Story
Daunte, an up-and-coming actor, still lives at home with his alcoholic father, who fails to fully appreciate his passions. After an argument that goes too far, Daunte only reaches the door when a sudden shriek and crash brings him back to the kitchen – his father has died.
Three months later, Daunte finds himself in a bar staring down a glass of liquor beside his best friend Nick. After a heartfelt speech, a sudden thought springs into Daunte's mind based on something Nick jokingly says – they should hold an audition to cast him a new dad!
A dozen plus men audition for the part, but all for nothing. At least, not until Antonio – a fat Italian man with a loud mouth – walks through the door. Daunte hires him, but instead of for a role in a film, for a day pretending to be his dad.
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Antonio and Daunte spend the day playing mini golf and grabbing ice creams, a perfect father-son bonding trip. However, just as Daunte begins to feel accepted for the first time, his false reality comes crashing down. Antonio's son pops out from inside the house and brings Daunte back to reality.
When all hope for a happy ending is lost, Antonio reveals his own tragedy – he lost his dad too. He ends their perfect day by telling Daunte that he always has a home with him and more importantly, that his dad was proud of him!
Plot
Themes
Race
In Casting Dad, we offer a commentary on race and society in a subtle, yet present way. After Daunte's father –a black man– dies, he attempts to replace him with an open casting call, where actors of mixed races come. All of the men, including the black actors, offer him disappointing answers – all except Antonio (a white actor). Despite the clear racial difference, Antonio visually looks similar to Dad: both men having bald heads and round beer bellies. However, more importantly, what catches Daunte's attention is the similarity in both their speeches. Recall how Dad yells into his phone, "I've been waiting three frickin' hours," a similar line to the one Antonio says when Daunte meets him for the first time. Even above that, what Duante seeks isn't a physical representation of his dad, but an emotional one. He seeks a father figure who understands him, in the wake of his own father who never did. In this way, Antonio offers Daunte what he was searching for the entire time – his "father's" approval! These days families come in infinite shapes and sizes, what matters most is the love and respect, not the race of the individuals who call each other family. The lesson here being: the racial identity doesn't make someone a real father, instead fathers must be there emotionally for their kids.
Male Bonding and Emotional Volnerability
It's a common trope that men lack emotional intelligence. In this script, there are no female characters, having a major theme be the emotional vulnerability shared between men, playing out mostly between a father and son, but also between best friends. Wes attended an All Boy's School from Jr. kindergarden through high school. He was also raised with an older brother and shared a rich relationship with his father who struggled with his drinking. Considering this, Wes focuses primarily on male relationships in his film work: seeking to discover what it means to be a "good" male friend and how fathers can show how they "understand" their sons. Wes, himself, would spend every Saturday for lunch in high school at the same bar back home in PA with his father. It was at that high top table where his dad unpacked much of his emotionally charged childhood to Wes and even where the two of them decided Wes would become a director in the movie industry. In an age when male issues seem to be out right rejected, Wes seeks to shine a spot light on the common problems men uniquely face: including alcoholism, suicide, depression, and the feeling of being emotionally left astray by parents. The scene between Nick and Daunte illustrates how it's okay for boys to be open and emotionally honest with their friends. The final conversation between Antonio and Daunte serves to show how a father and son should speak to one another – that being that fathers ought to tell their sons how proud they are of them and allowing their sons to feel understood and empowered to be honest about their feelings.
Alcoholism and Personal Loss
The script for Casting Dad was inspired by the 1999 Japanese horror classic Audition, with some clear creative differences – mainly less killing. In replacing the horror genre with drama, Wes wrote the script based on his own lived experience of losing his father in the spring of 2022. Note how Antonio reveals in the end that he also lost his father when he was young. This short is meant to suggest the common reality that many children share of losing a parent and offer an understanding on behalf of the filmmakers to their audience. Wes's own father was a life long alcoholic, Wes wanted the theme of drinking to be subtle, depicting Dad as a heavy pourer and having Daunte later reject the drink at the bar. Despite the fact Dad dies in the film from a heart attack –as a complication of his heavy drinking– Daunte does not reject Antonio for his own drinking habits: Antonio answering that he does drink. Many people often question how children and spouses who lose loved ones from alcoholism can ever drink again. While logical, and for some people true, Wes's own experience with drinking has remained unchanged. More importantly than the act of drinking, is the overarching relationship one shares with it. Yes, Antonio drinks, but he can also joke with himself, and care for his son with whom he is proud of. As Wes has learned in his own life, alcohol isn't evil, how people abuse it is: his own father having been an alcoholic in order to escape a pass he couldn't handle.