Do some dogs simply have the “it” factor?
In life’s vast kennel of hopefuls and have-nots, can encountering certain canines be – for the makers and breakers in show business – like discovering a new starlet: one look and they light up the room?
Can acting pooches show great promise and potential, only to derail their own careers with a series of bad decisions or a scandalous addiction to dried meat goods?
For a small section of the film and TV industry, these are serious questions (although maybe not the last one) that tend to trigger answers in the affirmative. With potentially tens of millions of dollars on the line, it’s no surprise that casting decisions for a movie such as Red Dog: True Blue are made with as much scrutiny – perhaps more – than those for any human-centric production.
To say the massive success of its predecessor, the 2011 family film Red Dog, was a surprise is something of an understatement. The real-life-inspired tale of a nomadic four-legged friend in search of a new owner chewed through over $21m at the local box office, making it the 10th-highest-grossing Australian film of all time.
With the star of the show – a kelpie named Koko, who belonged to producer Nelson Woss – having now, sadly, passed, a younger dog-actor named Phoenix follows in its paw-steps.
And yes, absolutely, there is an “it” factor, according to Woss, who also produced True Blue.
“Some dogs have a certain star quality where, when they walk into a room, they change the temperature,” Woss says. “When you see it, you just know. They light up the scene; you can see their emotion. Anybody who has had a dog, or connected with a dog, can understand that it’s real.”
Kriv Stenders, returning to the director’s chair for True Blue, agrees. “When you look into his [Phoenix’s] eyes, you sense a soul, you sense a spirit and you sense a connection,” he says. “Koko in the first film was a lot more, I guess, middle-aged, while in this film, Phoenix is sort of the teenager or young adult. A bit like casting Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.”
Stenders has a chuckle at the end of that last sentence, but is quite serious when he discusses the differences in personality between the two tail-wagging thesps. Koko was “a lot more mercurial than Phoenix” and “had more idiosyncrasies”, he says, including freaking out about loud noises. Scenes involving rowdy pub patrons clapping and cheering in the original had to be mimed on set, with the audio added in post-production to prevent the star from running away.
There’s no question that Red Dog and its prequel, which opens on Boxing Day in Australia and is trotting to Sundance next year, occupy a significant place in Australian popular culture. They belong to a canon of enduring, animal-themed Australian films that have a big influence on young viewers in their formative years, including classics Storm Boy, Babe and The Silver Brumby.
They are also part of a more contemporary slate of locally produced child-friendly movies that have collected big bucks at the Australian box office. These include three 2015 releases: Oddball ($11m), Paper Planes ($9.6m) and Blinky Bill the Movie ($2.9m).
Both Stenders and Woss believe this success with viewers whose shoe sizes exceed their age (or thereabouts) comes down to a simple fact: Australian kids love local content. They are certainly more partial to homemade cinema than teenagers and young adults, who tend to gravitate towards the kind of bling-lathered SFX bonanzas only Hollywood can deliver. “Kriv and I grew up watching films like Stand By Me and Empire of the Sun,” says Woss. “We wanted to make a unique family film that was iconically Australian, that we could show our own kids.”
Stenders is currently among the busiest Australian film and TV directors, with several productions in the pipeline, including Danger Close with Sam Worthington, Australia Day with Bryan Brown and a re-adaptation of Wake in Fright for Channel Ten. He had an epiphany last year while sitting down with his son and his son’s friend to watch Paper Planes, director Robert Connolly’s tournament movie about the competitive world of paper plane throwing.
“They completely loved it,” Stenders says. “They got it. They didn’t judge it by stacking it up against an American film. Paper Planes and Oddball were built on, I guess, the pathway we created with Red Dog. What’s great is that these films have cleared it, and made the pathway wider and longer.
“I think there is a definitely now a proven conduit: Australian kids love watching Australian kids and seeing their own stories on screen.”
• Red Dog: True Blue hits Australian cinemas on Boxing Day
