“Magic City” has kind of gotten lost in the shuffle around here. The Starz drama, set in 1950’s Miami and starring Watchmen’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan, has been pretty decent in its first season, but in a television landscape dominated by Warming Glow favorites like “Justified,” “Community,” “Mad Men,” “Game of Thrones,” and “Eastbound & Down,” as well as the extensive coverage devoted to “Girls” and Guy Fieri’s stolen Lamborghini, it really slipped under the radar. Sometimes that’s just how the cookie crumbles, I guess.
But then this morning I stumbled across an article from the Miami Herald titled “‘Magic City’ TV show struggled to find real breasts in Miami casting,” and I thought to myself, “Hey, there’s something I can write about that will allow me to put the word ‘Boobs’ in the headline under the guise of legitimate television coverage.” So, you know, here we are. From the article:
Producers discovered many women of South Florida have been surgically enhanced beyond anything natural to the late 1950s.
“I’ve actually had better luck finding synchronized swimming groups than I did finding real boobs,” said Bill Marinella, local extras casting director. “We did a lot of research and reached out to burlesque clubs and just finding people on the beach and literally walking up to them on the street and saying, ‘Hey, you look like you’re right out of The Great Gatsby.’ ”
Oh, that is smooth, Mr. Casting Man. Real smooth. Unfortunately, being all classy-like and referencing fancy books to female pedestrians wasn’t achieving the desired results, so they tried a more direct approach. And by “a more direct approach,” I mean “putting out blunt, all-caps casting calls.”
“GIRLS HAD FULLER FIGURES BACK THEN,” said one casting notice sent, in all caps, to local models and actresses. “SO NO SKINNY MODELS. ALL-NATURAL — NO PLASTIC SURGERY/BREAST IMPLANTS.”
“AND ANOTHER THING: WHAT’S WITH ALL THE TATTOOS? I DON’T LIKE THEM. NEEDLES ARE SCARY. I MEAN, MAYBE A SMALL BUTTERFLY OR A ROSE OR SOMETHING ON YOUR LOWER BACK, BUT, GEEZ, PEOPLE NEED TO SETTLE DOWN, YOU KNOW? ANYWAY, I’M GETTING OFF TOPIC. THE POINT I’M TRYING TO MAKE IS THAT MY JOB IS HARDER THAN YOU THINK AND IF YOU HAVE REAL BOOBS YOU SHOULD CALL ME. THANKS.”
As to why the producers were so concerned about bust-related accuracy, the answer is jerks on the Internet like you and me. Mostly me.
[Executive Producer Mitch] Glazer said he never imagined he’d be thinking about breast implants professionally. But at the end of the day, he just wants the show to be accurate. “We live in a world of bloggers and people devoted to scrutinizing,” he said. “I’m sure that’s kind of thing that would bring on thousands of emails, you know, about a woman’s breasts or whatever.”
Emails? They’re called pageviews, homeboy.
