As a result of winning at the Latino Book Awards, it looks like there s a good chance I may be invited to speak at the Latino Book Festival in early October
Cool!
when I got back to my house I actually had a moment of sadness when I realized Frankie wasn't going to greet me at the door.
You just reminded me of a story I heard about Ewan MacGregor yesterday. He was working on a movie with a Jack Russell Terrier (sorry too lazy to gogle details right now) trained by the same person who handled Eddie from Frasier. The way you teach a dog to look at the actor (I heard) is to have the actor hold a piece of the dog's food between his eyes before you feed it to him, so he bcomes bonded to the actor and looks him in the eyes. I guess on the last day of shooting when Ewan realized he and the dog were going to part company he ran out and got himself a rescued poodle about the same size and color as the dog from the movie. He knew he could never live without a dog again.
{{{Pix}}} You are totally in the right here and the donation offer is really an amazing gesture.
Nah, you really don't want performing animals to form particular bonds with actors -- they'll probably work with hundreds of human actors in the course of a career, generally without a lot of rehearsal. Their bonds are with the trainer, not the actors. Anyway, it's fairly basic to train "look in this direction" behavior, especially when you can put said trainer right off camera in any direction.
On the other hand, that doesn't change how FREAKIN' ADORABLE it is that my secret celebrity bf Ewan got turned into a dog person.
Ewan is my secret celebrity bf since forever, too, and I love that he got a rescued poodle. I'm both a Ewan person and a rescued poodle person.
The movie is
Beginners
and the interview was with the writer/director Mike Mills on NPR.
Mills did go on about how different the dog trainer he hired was. He said it was the best casting couch experience ever, asking a passel of Jack Russels "Now which one of you loves me the most?" but that most of the animal trainers were very rigid and strict. When Moose's trainer arrived she was in a car full of dogs and she handed the director a chihuahua through the window so she could maneuver herself out of the car. He said she was different from any other trainer and that's why he hired her.
he ran out and got himself a rescued poodle about the same size and color as the dog from the movie. He knew he could never live without a dog again.
DAWWW. And yeah. Turns out I'm a dog person, just add Frankie (actually, it was a long road starting with Liberty the boxer, and then Jonah, and the adorable but unfortunately named Cowpie, and Lulu, and Pippin, and a cast of many. But with him I fell in love at first sight).
As the owner of a rescued poodle, can I say that this proves that Ewan is My Secret Boyfriend? BECAUSE IT TOTALLY DOES OH YES.
Any screenplay I write from now on is going to have a dog in it because I Want That Casting Couch!
I can't believe, now that Bartleby is the center of my universe, that I was ever NOT a dog person. Now, I love all the dogs.
Bless Ewan's heart...and good on the pooch he rescued!
I read an article once about the guy who trains most of the dogs in Broadway shows -- at the time the article was written, there was the chihuahua in Legally Blonde and he'd just finished with Sandy in the umpteenth revival of Annie, and there were a few others -- and he said that he gets the dogs from shelters, not breeders. To find them, he goes to the shelters and tries to find the dogs who, in the midst of all the other dogs and the noise and the people and everything, are just chilling out and minding their own business. He says that, if they can be calm in that situation, then he can train them to handle the lights and orchestra and applause without freaking out.
