Fred Savage knows from experience what it’s like to work with child actors.
“It’s just incredibly important, particularly with young actors, to have a positive atmosphere on the set,” said Savage, who makes his big-screen directing debut with “Daddy Day Camp,” now in theaters. “I want it to be a place where the kids are looking forward to going to every day, and hate to leave when they have wrapped.”
Savage was 12 when he first appeared as Kevin Arnold, the wide-eyed kid growing up in the 1960s in “The Wonder Years,” which ran six seasons on ABC. Since then, he has matured as both an actor (starring in the short-lived sitcoms “Working” and “Crumbs”) and as a director of episodic TV — including stints on such kid-centric series as “Zoey 101,” “Hannah Montana,” “That’s So Raven” and “Unfabulous.”
“My experiences working as a young actor helped inform the way that I approach directing other young actors, and with actors in general,” said Savage, 31, now married and with a year-old son. “You know what approaches worked and what didn’t, and where you really made a connection with the director and where you didn’t feel connected at all. And you try to incorporate the good stuff and leave out the bad stuff.”
In “Daddy Day Camp,” Cuba Gooding Jr. plays day-care operator Charlie Hinton (the role Eddie Murphy played in 2003’s “Daddy Day Care”), this time working to rescue his childhood summer camp from bankruptcy.
The movie was filmed last summer in Utah, with a cast of child actors mostly chosen locally.
Hiring that much local talent is unusual, said Judi McKee, Utah casting director for “Daddy Day Camp.” Usually, major child roles are cast in Hollywood.
There are, however, budgetary issues. “When you have to bring a kid in from out of town, you also have to cart along their parents,” McKee said. “It gets very complicated and expensive, so they really like to find kids locally.”
“There tends to be a veneer of professionalism with kids in L.A.,” Savage said. “The ones we got in Salt Lake were totally professional, but they were just real kids.”
Of the 10 major child roles in “Daddy Day Camp,” eight are filled by Utah kids. (One child is from Las Vegas, and the 10th, the role of Charlie’s son, is played by Spencir Bridges — the son of former “Diff’rent Strokes” child actor Todd Bridges.)
McKee said Savage worked with the child actors during the auditions, helping them work through their nerves.
“I loved being in the auditions,” Savage said. “We talked to the kids, and they wanted to get out of there quick because they had Little League practice to go to, or they were missing camp. I loved that, because that meant to me they were real kids. Being in a movie wasn’t nearly as important as having a great summer.”
Most child actors, past and present, are great kids, Savage said.
“The majority of child actors turn out to be great, and to have these terrific and fulfilling and wonderful lives, whether it’s in the business or not,” he said. “People tend to focus on the tabloid sensations of a few kids who have had troubles.”
Many of the most talked-about cases happened “a generation or two” before “The Wonder Years,” Savage said. “As awful as it was for those actors to go through those problems and those struggles, the positive is that we, the generations that followed, learned from those mistakes.”
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