Strollerderby

It's the choice no aspiring stage mom ever wants to make: whether to audition her child for a role that calls for ugly. Or "inbred"-looking. Same difference, right?

But it's the choice starstruck moms across West Virginia are having to make, thanks to on-location filming of an upcoming Julianne Moore movie. These mothers are putting away washboards and setting aside the chicken scratch to stare long and hard at their offspring's misshapen heads and the tangeled branches of the Jones family tree, or so a Pittsburgh casting agency hopes.

The call to audition for extras with an "inbred" look has set off a firestorm (probably started by uptight neighbors, the ones with the pretty kids). Historians, area leaders and people who bristle at stereotypes in general condemned statements by the Pittsburgh casting director. She botched it when she tried to clarify what was meant by "regular looking people," who had been told not to show up.

From Pittsburgh Live:

"It's the way it was described in the script," Belajac [of the casting agency] said Monday. "Some of these 'holler' people -- because they are insular and clannish, and they don't leave their area -- there is literally inbreeding, and the people there often have a different kind of look. That's what we're trying to get."

The actual ad wanted people who are Extraordinarily tall or short. Unusual body shapes, even physical abnormalities as long as there is normal mobility. Unusual facial features, especially eyes."

Also ..."a 9-12-year-old Caucasian girl with an other-worldly look to her. Could be an albino or something along those lines -- she's someone who is visually different and therefore has a closer contact to the gods and to magic. 'Regular-looking' children should not attend this open call.'"

Asked if she felt the characterization might be offensive to West Virginians, Belajac said: "We tried to word it in a way that's not offensive. I hope it's not an offensive thing. It's not meant to be a generalization about everyone in West Virginia. That's why we put that it's in a 'holler' in the mountains."

So she only mean to offend the mountain people of West Virginia (who are too inbred to care, I'm guessing). The casting director has been fired.

And with that, let's get back to the mom who can now see her son's buck teeth as an asset, his floppy ears as nothing short of "otherworldly" -- a ticket to Hollywood, fame and fortune.