If the screenwriter had been a better writer, maybe he could have run with that. “On second thought, let’s not investigate her murder. I mean, it’s not like any of us are really sorry she’s gone, right?”

I mean, heck, unless the CD is a B-movie aficionado herself, how is she even going to know what kind of movies your credits are from? If she doesn’t recognize the title (and she almost certainly won’t—there are enough independent movies coming out that nobody can possibly keep track of them all), for all she knows they could be any kind of independent movie, or even student films. Okay, granted, some titles, like “Chainsaw Cheerleaders”, do sort of give away what kind of movies they are, but even for those, I’ve never seen or heard anything to imply that having been in such a movie actually prejudices casting directors against you. On the contrary, in general the more credits the better; once you have been in enough A-list stuff you can start taking the lesser stuff off the résumé, but until then it’s important to let casting directors know you’ve been working.

Seriously, I don’t know who your sources are here, but I’m still convinced you’ve been seriously misinformed on this matter. But I suppose there’s no point in arguing at length about this; maybe we can just agree to disagree.

That being in in low-budget productions actually makes it harder to get A-list parts flies in the face of everything I’ve heard from acting teachers, casting directors, and other professionals. The truth is, it’s very hard for anyone to break into doing big, A-list parts. I’m sure the vast majority of actors who’ve done lots of B-movie work have never broken into A-list stuff, because the vast majority of actors in general have never broken into A-list stuff—maybe having done lots of B-list work doesn’t help that much, but I seriously can’t believe it’s actually an impediment; that goes against everything I’ve seen and been taught. That someone with lots of low-budget credits is worse off than someone who’s only done community theater and a walk-on role at Law and Order… no. I’m sorry, but that’s just wrong. Casting directors want to see credits, to the extent that actors without many other credits even list student films on their resumes. There’s no way that having lots of B-movie credits would actually be a hindrance.

In Tiffany Shepis’ case, for what it’s worth, her IMDb page mentions the following quote: “I go after parts in horror films ’cause I have the most fun shooting them. I mean, wouldn’t you rather be covered in blood fighting some fucker with an axe than doing some lame romantic comedy?” So it’s entirely possible that she’s continuing to work in such movies out of a choice on her part. Certainly, according to her IMDb credits, she’s doing an impressive number of movies per year (twenty-one movies in 2009? Yow!), enough that, low-budget or not, she’s definitely making a decent living.