It was one of the funniest lines of the night: 'This is freaking insane, and I have one before you, which is also crazy.' Toward the end of her acceptance speech, Cassandra Kulukundis, onstage as the winner of the Oscars' first casting award ever for her work on One Battle After Another, shouted out the movie's director, Paul Thomas Anderson. Her tongue-in-cheek jab spoke to their history as creative partners, and to the fact that Anderson had been nominated 14 times for an Academy Award heading into Sunday night. Those 14 nominations might as well have been shared between them: The two have been working together since Anderson's first feature, 1996's Hard Eight. (Anderson would end up winning his first Oscar later that evening, for Best Adapted Screenplay.) Even the most casual moviegoer can understand the importance of casting directors. The job requires working closely with a film's director to select the actors who eventually appear on-screen. That means choosing the right...
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