ugly? inbred? wanna be in a movie???

As a person who spent her formative years living in a “quaint” and “rustic” mountain area in Eastern Ohio, and who also has plenty of friends and relatives hailing from the great state of West Virginia, I found this story to be so ignorantly offensive that it’s almost humorous.

According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

A movie about to be filmed in Pittsburgh is casting Gothic characters -- including an albino-like girl and deformed people -- to depict West Virginia mountain people. That's the gist of an open casting call for paid extras for "Shelter," a horror film starring Julianne Moore that will begin shooting in Pittsburgh in March. The announcement -- which was sent out in a news release and posted on the casting company's Web site -- asked for people with the following attributes:

"Extraordinarily tall or short. Unusual body shapes, even physical abnormalities as long as there is normal mobility. Unusual facial features, especially eyes.” It also reported wanting “a 9-12-year-old Caucasian girl with an other-worldly look to her…Could be an albino or something along those lines..'Regular-looking' children should not attend this open call.'"

In an attempt to defend the casting call, the casting director said, "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."

Turns out the casting director was fired for being an ignorant ass. Imagine that.