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Kill Jerry

[Anthony Head]

M
Y DOG DIED
last night. I knew it would happen, and I talked with him all about it beforehand. I even trained him for it. But we really didn’t know what it would be like until we both arrived at the preapproved location, a miniature-golf course.

As we walked through the magic castle arcade, which led to the tiny putting greens, someone asked, “Oh, is that Ruthy?” I said it was, even though my Beagle’s name is Jerry.

I noticed that the man wore a telephone headset as he bent over to scratch Jerry behind the ears. “We buried you the other day,” he cooed in that cutesy voice people use when speaking to dogs. “Tom,” he barked into the mouthpiece, “the dog’s here. Can you read me?” Then he turns to me and says, “Okay. Time to die.” Jerry smiled—he does that—and flipped his tail in the air like he was tracing his name in the sky.

I was a little confused. I knew we were all here to kill Jerry—Ruthy, that is—but I wasn’t aware that he’d already been buried. I guess that’s Hollywood.

You see, I live in Los Angeles and my dog was discovered this year. It happened just like in the movies, when some young hopeful starlet is discovered in a diner. Only in our case, the diner was a sidewalk and none of us have Lana Turner’s legs. We were walking in our neighborhood when a guy approached and chatted me up about the dogs. (I was also with Clark, my Weimaraner, who plays no significant role in this story.)

He starts sizing up Jerry, literally measuring him with his hands and squeezing his belly like he’s figuring out if my dog’s ripe. He says that he’s working on a film and needs a Beagle.

When I ask if Jerry needs to be trained, I’m informed that if he can lie down, he’ll do just fine. What luck! Apart from eating and pooping, lying down is my dog’s raison d’être. I start envisioning a great future for Jerry: a double-wide trailer on the set, walks up and down the red carpet before the Academy Awards, maybe even first-class tickets to Cannes. I tell the guy that I’ll throw in the Weimaraner at no extra charge. The guy says no thanks and tells me that Jerry won’t be paid for his time, so it doesn’t matter anyway.

A few weeks later when we get to the first set location, which is a house, the atmosphere is electric. Everyone is wearing headsets—it’s like we’re at NASA. There are miles of thick black cable lying everywhere. Three trucks of equipment hold a gazillion lights and a wardrobe collection. I actually hear “Quiet on the set” and “Rolling” somewhere in the distance. Jerry, though, is only interested in the table crammed with peanut butter crackers, Cup-o-Noodles, muffins, and bottled water. (It’s good to see that stardom hasn’t changed him.)

We then learn that Jerry is playing a female dog named Ruthy. To cover up Jerry’s…uh, maleness…we take a trip to the wardrobe trailer and try on his new doggie pajamas. He comes out wearing a onesy with holes in it for his front and back legs and his tail. It is sunshine yellow with white baby ducks all over.

Jerry sets his chestnut brown eyes on me with true disdain, but he’s such a professional that he marches right onto the set undeterred. The director and the actors light up when he enters, all decked out in his baby-duck PJs. When the sound engineer wants to get Jerry’s voice—his lines, if you will—down on tape before the cameras roll, Jerry improvises some fantastic barks and howls. Really inspired stuff. Then he tries to sneak back to the buffet table.

This is where it gets tricky, because contrary to what I was told earlier, Jerry does not just have to lie down. He must lie down, then stand up. It sounds simple, but if you’re familiar with the axiom “An object at rest tends to stay at rest,” then you’ll understand Jerry’s philosophy of life. It doesn’t help matters that he has scarfed down two or three muffins on the sly and has begun to lapse into a carbohydrate-induced coma. But since there are endless delays on a movie set, I have time to run through a quick training session covering how to stand up on cue.

And it works. Jerry nails it the very first time. And then he does it again. After each take the director says “Perfect”—and we have to do it all over again. After a few more flawless tries, the director yells “Cut” and says we can go home. We’ve been on location for four hours, and were on the set for forty-five minutes. By my best guess, the scene will last about eleven seconds on film.

The director comes over and says Jerry was better than he expected. “So, we’ll all get together again real soon when we need to kill him,” he says with a wink.

Jerry displays a flawless “play dead” at my feet, then lets out a huge, exhausted snore.

Which brings us to our second day of shooting. It was a night that would culminate with Ruthy’s (Jerry’s) death scene, and he was ready for action. On the drive out to the miniature-golf facility, where the scene was to be shot, Jerry rehearsed playing dead in the backseat, though he sometimes broke character with a loud snore.

We arrive at midnight and he perks right up when the scent of toaster waffles from the set’s buffet table wafts into the car. We both head through the medieval castle arcade to find the crew. At first, we’re told that the director is ready for us, but then there is one of many delays on the set. So we head off to the putting greens, where Jerry burns off some of his nervousness by chasing a squirrel through the windmill and down past the candy house before ultimately losing the pursuit after it scampers into the clown’s head.

To kill some more time, Jerry and I rehearse. I had read the script beforehand, so I knew that Ruthy was to be hit by a car. We spend some time going over what I had taught him already. Jerry was to roll onto his side and simply put his head down for this trick. Even though he refused to stop breathing, he would lie still for a few seconds, looking like a miniature beached whale, before popping up to see if there were still some Rice Krispies treats left at the buffet.

Then we were called to the set. The night air was thick with movie magic. There was to be an establishing shot, in which one of the actors would hide in a wooden barrel with Ruthy. At some point, Jerry is supposed to pop his head out of the barrel and look cute. We hadn’t known about this scene beforehand, and I admit I was a bit worried. Sure, Jerry has proven that he’s got great range—what with the standing up on cue and all—but coming into a scene like this so unprepared would unsettle any performer.

The actor, who was wearing a pith helmet, climbed into the barrel and then I carefully lowered Jerry inside. Confused, he looked up at me, his floppy ears pinned anxiously against his head. In his six long years of life, clearly this was his first time squatting inside a barrel with a total stranger wearing a funny hat.

But when the director yelled “Action,” Jerry’s inner thespian took over. The actor spoke a few lines of dialogue, which was my cue. Standing offstage, I then called to Jerry, who popped his head up out of the barrel and stared right into the camera with a bleary-eyed expression normally found on pet-store puppies.

It was golden. The audience was going to eat it up, I thought. It was so perfect that they only asked for six more takes before, I supposed, we would be moving on to the death scene.

But then something curious and a bit sad happened. I was told that Ruthy’s demise would not take place as planned. It had been decided that there would be a shot of a car crashing into the barrel, followed by a closeup of Ruthy’s red leash lying among the wreckage. Her death was to be implied rather than shown for a greater emotional payoff.

No on-camera death? This was to be Jerry’s career-making scene—the very onset of his fifteen minutes of fame (which, in dog years, equals an hour and forty-five minutes, by the way). I wanted to call Jerry’s manager or his agent, but he had neither. I wanted to scream, “But this is when you’re supposed to kill Jerry!”

But it was futile. So we just grabbed some cookies and left. As we reached our car, I heard a screech of tires and a sudden crash. “Well, I guess you’re dead,” I whispered. Jerry just smiled—he does that.

During the drive back home through the blossoming Los Angeles morning, Jerry continued to dazzle me with his “death” pose in the backseat. It was brilliant, until he broke wind. But even without that fatal scene, my dog now has a résumé and I think he might be eligible for his SAG card.

The movie is due to be released soon. It’s called
Think Tank.
If Jerry’s scenes don’t end up on the cutting-room floor, then I highly recommend this movie. So please go and see it. And if Steven Spielberg is reading this, have your people call Jerry’s people (that’s me).

The Dinner Party

A Screen Treatment

[Erica Schoenberger and Melissa Webb Wright]

Premise: What social life would be like if people behaved like dogs.

O
PENING SCENE:

A living room. Some of the guests have already arrived and are racing around the room, variously hugging, colliding, dancing around each other, patting one another vigorously on the shoulders, and jumping up and down.

Another guest arrives at the door and rings the bell. Everyone runs over to the door, evidently excited beyond belief, and stands or jumps around, jostling one another while staring at the door and yelling, “WHO’S THERE?!?! WHO’S THERE!?!?!”

The guest on the other side of the door yells back, “WHO’S THERE?!?!? WHO’S THERE!?!?”

Somehow, the new arrival enters and the party resumes as before.

T
HE CAMERA FOLLOWS SEVERAL OF THE GUESTS AROUND, INCLUDING:

A muscular male dressed all in black who carries a Frisbee everywhere, clutched tightly to his chest. If anyone touches the Frisbee, he whirls abruptly around and stalks off, glaring over his shoulder.

Another man, dressed in plaid, rather jolly, who has a drooling problem. Every so often he shakes his head and drool flies onto adjacent guests, who don’t even notice.

A depressed-looking woman who spends the entire evening methodically ripping a large, stuffed chair to shreds.

A small group huddled together in a corner. They are all talking loudly and at the same time about completely unrelated subjects.

A huge guy, with jeans jacket and tattoo, who goes up to various people, drapes his arm over their shoulders, and gives them a giant squeeze. Whoever it is immediately hands their hors d’oeuvre to the guy, who eats it.

A very small old lady with frizzy hair who leaps out from behind the furniture at passersby and speaks sharply to them. Even the huge guy is daunted.

The party Lothario who sidles up to anyone, male or female, and tries to smooch, but often misses the other person’s face. Nobody seems to mind.

V
ARIOUS BITS OF ACTION OCCUR:

Someone emerges from the bathroom, and everyone rushes over and crowds in to see what’s happened.

A guest, looking out the window, suddenly gets very excited and yells, “A CAT!!! A CAT!!! A CAT!!!” Everyone rushes to the window and joins in, yelling, “A CAT!!! A CAT!!! A CAT!!!”

Two people—one big, one little—grab an appetizer at the same time. They stand stock still, each holding on to it and staring out the corner of their eyes at each other. Suddenly, the big one whirls around and tries to walk off with it. The little person, however, doesn’t let go and is flung around in the first one’s wake.

In the kitchen, several guests have knocked over the garbage and are going through it.

In the backyard, several people with little spades are digging holes.

A fight breaks out in the living room between two guests, but it’s over in three seconds and the opponents hug each other joyfully.

Several guests can be seen hiding bits of food around the living room. They carefully scan for a likely spot, put the food down, then pick it up again and start looking for a better place.

One guest, with his hands full of food, simply holds on to it and snarls at anyone who approaches him. He keeps trying to add more food to his pile, spilling as much as he acquires.

D
INNER IS SERVED:

Everyone races over to the table and there’s a big to-do while the seating arrangement is worked out.

Then all the guests eat as fast as they possibly can. Every so often, one guest simply grabs something off the plate of the person next to him/her. Sometimes that person grabs it back.

When everyone’s finished, they jump up and change places to inspect one another’s plates.

After dinner, everyone takes a nap. They are sprawled around the room, some in little groups huddled together, some on their backs on couches with their feet up on the arms and their hands flung over the back, some curled up awkwardly in overstuffed chairs with their chins propped up on the arms. Occasionally, we see limbs twitching and hear little contented noises.

P
ARTY
G
AMES:

Tug of war

How many tennis balls can you hold?

A relay race in the backyard where the baton is never passed off. Each member of the team simply grabs hold when his or her turn arrives and everyone runs together.

Tug of war

Singing together around the piano, but everyone sings a different song.

Tag

Grab the tail of the donkey.

Musical chairs, where shoving is allowed and you can sit on more than one chair. The big guy in the jeans jacket always wins.

G
OOD
-B
YES:

A real dog party, of course, would never stop. So we have to introduce another group of humans who gradually arrive to pick up the guests. This is no easy task, as the target guest runs off when called. There’s a lot of milling around and loud confusion as the caretaker humans go after the guests, sometimes grabbing them by the collar or the arm and hauling them away while the guest looks back at the crowd, waving joyfully.

Outside, on the sidewalk, a passerby is knocked down by a group of departing guests.

Everyone looks very happy, and the good-byes are loud and enthusiastic.