DON'T CALL THEM, THEY'LL LINK YOU; ONLINE CASTING THE LATEST TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Daily News Staff Writer

One casting director sits behind a desk heaped with actors' resumes and black-and-white head shots, with even more sorted in ``foot files'' around the office floor. The phone is ringing incessantly with calls from agents wondering whether he received their clients' bios, and what did he think, huh, huh, huh?

Another casting director logs onto her computer and sorts on screen through multitudes of performers suggested for a role, weeding out some and stashing others into electronic stacks as she sees fit to classify them.

The computerized submissions still have hyperbolic embellishments - ``This guy you gotta see!'' or ``Look no further. I've found your star!'' - and the casting directors still can reply - ``You've got to be kidding'' or ``Don't spend that commission just yet.''

The first scenario is the way casting directors and agents have played their game for decades, indeed the way most still operate.

The second seems to be the wave of the future.

A new online service called ``The Link'' marries the Academy Players Directory, a 60-year-old publication of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with Breakdown Services Ltd., a well-established company that gets the word out to agents on what roles are available and where to send their clients for auditions.

It is speeding up the way casting directors post their roles and the way agents and managers can submit clients for consideration. It also has the potential to phase out time-wasting, demeaning ``cattle call'' auditions where actors wait for hours on end, often to hear nothing more encouraging than ``leave your resume, thank you very much, next.''

It also could put a big dent in the messenger and photo reprint businesses.

Through the Link, casting directors can post descriptions of the roles they have open in movies, TV shows or commercials, including specifics such as nudity requirements or special skills needed.

Then agents can pull an electronic file of one or more clients' resumes and photos, packaged with the appropriate superlatives, and fire them off to the casting director over this specialized Internet service.

The Link still is a fledgling venture, up and running only since April. It seems to suffer from that Catch-22 syndrome; it needs more users on both sides of the business in order to attract more users.

Gary A. Marsh, owner and president of Breakdown Services, estimates there are 230 casting directors working in episodic television and feature films in the Los Angeles area, and about 260 franchise talent agents. Of those, about 17 percent of casting directors and 7 percent of agents are using the Link on a regular basis.

Too on-the-go

For some the drawback is that they are too on-the-go to work electronically, even in this age of laptop plus cellular phone plus lounge chair beside the Beverly Hills Hotel pool equals office.

For others, there is a comfort in doing it the way they always have done it, chaotic though it is. Or maybe outright computer phobia gets in the way.

But for those who are equipped and inclined to tinker, the tool is irresistible.

Keith Gonzales is the editor of the Academy Players Directory, a four-volume set published three times a year and featuring actors' and actresses' head shots and agents' names and phone numbers.

It still comes out it print, but it was launched on the Internet in January, allowing entertainment professionals with password access to call up photos and resumes, even to find actors by attribute as well as by name.

When inputting an actor's resume, Gonzales' staff adds such basics as height, weight, age range and ethnicity as well as special skills such as fencing, hockey, fluent Chinese, medical equipment skills or ballet.

A casting director can go into the directory online and seek out, say, someone who could portray a piano-playing nurse (there are 83 possibilities), a woman who does a Russian accent, can fire a gun and and ride a motorcycle (one - she knows who she is), or a basketball-playing doctor (14, none of whom is ``ER'' star George Clooney).

Pushing the envelope

Of course, that does not prevent agents from pushing the envelope in deciding whom to suggest for which role. On the Link, there is no sorting, no keywording that would prevent a given performer from being submitted for a role that goes beyond his or her resume description.

``Nowhere in the process has the computer abrogated the agent's responsibility to be creative,'' Marsh said. ``It's not about 5-foot-2, eyes of blue. It's about actors' abilities and agents' abilities to say, `Here, go with it.' ''

A listing in the print and computerized directories requires that the performer be a member of one of the acting guilds or have an agent, and the charge per listing is $75 per year.

Gonzales said, ``The last version of the book had close to 17,000 listings. Since mid-July we've included about 8,000 new listings.''

Amid the thousands of relative unknowns and ``oh hims'' are some very famous faces: John Travolta, Glenn Close, Alicia Silverstone and John Goodman, for example.

There are some stars who choose not to be listed - Tom Cruise, Michelle Pfeiffer, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage, Madonna - the implication being that, as with high-priced jewelry, if you have to ask who their agent is, you can't afford them.

CAPTION(S):

Drawing, 2 Photos

Drawing: (Color) NEXT!

ONLINE CASTING

Directors dump the cattle call for the computer mouse

Bradford Mar/Daily News

Photo: (1) no caption (ACADEMY Players Directory)

Phil McCarten/Daily News

(2) Keith Gonzales, left, and Gary A. Marsh demonstrate the Link, a new service that can speed up the way casting decisions are made.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News