Calling tough characters

''OK, I got the money right here. Give us the stuff," said Joseph Deltufo with a threatening sneer. ''Give us what we paid for. Where's the rest? I gave you the money. Now give us what we paid for."

Deltufo, 45, of Dorchester, did not wait long for an answer.

''Thanks, Joe," said casting agent Carolyn Pickman, waving him away from the camera.

Deltufo, who hopes to be like Al Pacino someday, was one of several hundred Hollywood hopefuls who lined up yesterday for an open casting call at Curley Community Center in South Boston.

All had less than a minute to prove they had the local flair and speech patterns necessary to win a bit part in ''Gone, Baby, Gone," a film set in Boston and directed by actor Ben Affleck. Extras earn $100 a day and, as Deltufo puts it, the ability to tell their grandchildren they once were in a movie.

Some sneered at the camera and spoke in a sinister hush. Others shook their fists as they dropped their r's. As they waited their turns, they studied blue handouts describing the film as a journey ''through the darkest underbelly of the Boston crime scene," and rehearsed their choice of seven possible audition lines, all seemingly designed to highlight the local accent.

The laughter and restless energy in the orange-walled waiting room hardly conjured up a ''dark underbelly." But as soon as the aspiring actors reached the casting table manned by Pickman, of Boston's CP Casting, they acted as fierce and local as they could. As he finished, Deltufo's gangster frown dissolved into a wide smile. Deltufo, who works for Boston's Department of Public Works, had attended two previous casting calls for ''Gone Baby Gone," and knew his lines well.

''I want in," he said. ''I'm going to keep coming until I get in. I think I got the look."

Sandra Flaherty, a secretary from Raynham who grew up in South Boston, sounded less confident. ''I don't feel like I look like I'm from Southie," said Flaherty, 40. A tall woman with strawberry-blond hair, Flaherty surveyed the audition line, then gestured toward a middle-aged woman in a white sweater.

''That's it," Flaherty whispered. ''Tough-looking, with a real Irish face."

Tough-looking or otherwise, all aspirants had their photos snapped by Peter Dudgeon of CP Casting, then stepped up to read their lines into the camera.

In the first hour, most chose these lines: ''I have a missing person, and I need you to help me find her. I don't care if you don't think you can help. Just try, I'll pay you."

Some readers received feedback, others a quick dismissal.

''Be more suspicious," Pickman advised one hopeful.

''Slow down," she urged another.

''Thank you!" Pickman cut off the next reader midsentence, before the offer to pay.

Despite the speed of the audition process, Dudgeon estimated that ''Gone, Baby, Gone" would accept more extras than it turned away. He predicted the film would use up to 800 local extras, most in nonspeaking roles, and that he and Pickman would audition 1,200 people before shooting begins May 22.

For some of yesterday's hopefuls, the audition was not their first attempt at celluloid glory. Erin Clifford, 36, of Dorchester, served as an extra in Martin Scorsese's film ''The Departed," which is set in South Boston and is still in production. She enjoyed it enough to brave the heavy rains for a ''Gone, Baby, Gone" audition.