[3] In his junior year, Kasten and his friends (street artist Maya Hayuk and producer Daniel Griffiths) appeared in John Waters’s film Hairspray.
He was the last editor on the infamous film Skinner starring Traci Lords and Ricki Lake and directed by convict and ex-boyfriend of Heidi Fleiss, Ivan Nagy.
Kasten first made his mark with Mindfire/CFQ Entertainment as editor of the superhero spoof The Specials directed by screenwriter Craig Mazin and featuring Rob Lowe, Thomas Haden Church, Paget Brewster, Judy Greer, Jamie Kennedy and James Gunn, who also wrote the film.
In 1997, Kasten began work on his own feature, The Attic Expeditions, a low budget experimental horror film starring Seth Green and Jeffrey Combs.
In The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia Peter Dendle described it “like something Barbara Steele should have been in and Mario Bava should have made in black and white.” [8] The Thirst (2006), Kasten’s third film and second for Starz!
[15] When Erika Larsen, the daughter of the founders of The Magic Castle, created the Brookledge Follies in 2008 and reopened her family’s historic Los Angeles Theater, she chose Kasten as its original director.
During his tenure at Brookledge, he collaborated with world-renowned variety performers including Penn Jillette, Michael Carbonaro, Ann Magnuson, Billy the Mime, The Lampshades, Kristian Hoffman, Puddles Pity Party and Neil Hamburger.