Tag Archives: dogs

The Friend, A Movie Well Worth the Wait

The moment I learned that the National Book Award for fiction winner centered on a Great Dane, I was out of my home and on my way to a bookstore for a copy of “The Friend.” The 2018 book by Sigrid Nunex has been described as a story of love and loss and also about grief as experienced both by human and animal survivors. It spoke to me in any number of ways. 

Not only am I crazy about Great Danes, but they often figure prominently in my annual Christmas letters to friends and family. At a recent holiday party hosted by former neighbors who had known only my last dog, Lotte, I was greeted with the words: “Did you really have nine Great Danes?”  “Not all at once,” I assured them.

I had to chuckle to myself at the horror of neighbors thinking that someone might move in with nine giant dogs! As it is, I have moved to a pretty small apartment with a size limit to the dogs that are not allowed. This of course precludes Great Danes, the breed known for sleeping away great swaths of their days. Many small, yippy dogs are allowed (although, fortunately, most are sweet and mostly quiet). On some occasions, though, I do wish I’d recorded one of our Great Dane’s deep-throated barks to quiet incessant yipping. Just open a window and push the play button “WOOF!” It worked in real life, trust me. Like a grumpy old man whose mid-day nap has been interrupted.

Obviously, I devoured Nunex’s book and purchased additional copies to give as gifts. Once I’d learned a movie was in the works, I made a pest of myself to all family members and friends who might have known our dogs down through the years, sending snippets of information about the film’s progress.

Aiding me in my obsession about “The Friend”: Nick Paumgarten’s richly detailed story in The New Yorker. 

Two cinematographers, David Siegel and Scott McGhee, partners in more than 30 years of movie making, reacted to “The Friend” much as I had. But in their case, because they are movie makers, they moved quickly to secure the movie rights from the author, inviting her out for coffee and discussions that resulted in a signed contract and an intensive search for a star, the dog to play the part of the grieving animal. 

They turned to a world-renowned animal trainer, Bill Berloni whose credits include dogs and other animals we’ve all loved and cried over in movie roles. Berloni’s first demand was “change the breed of dog.” “Great Danes,” he said, “are big and dumb, lazy and impossible to train.” The two moviemakers and all the others involved in the production said “no;” the breed of the dog is central to the story. The dog stayed.

Berloni and the others traveled to meet dogs in many states until their auditions’ file had more than 30 headshots of prospects. One dog from Anchorage was auditioned during a visit to New York for the Westminster Kennel Club show.                                                                                            

Ultimately, Berloni found the perfect Dane to play the lead dog, Apollo. The dog star was a Great Dane named Bing, who not only landed the role, he changed the trainer’s opinion of the breed. “Great Danes are intelligent and sensitive,” he told the producers. “And moreover, if you don’t use this one, I’m going to represent him.”                                                                                          

A friend who has retired to the northwestern United States often sends me articles that include mention of the breed and I was hardly surprised when his clipping of the same New Yorker article arrived.  I thanked my friend and said, ‘I’m way ahead of you this time, but isn’t it a wonderful piece?” I placed his copy of the New Yorker clipping next to mine and said “I can’t wait for the movie.” 

But wait I did, along with many other dog lovers as scheduling conflicts and then the actors’ strike delayed the movie again and again. As I followed the progress, I also peppered friends with quotes from people involved with the production. (“Being seen with a dog like this is like being seen with a rock star.”)

Four years went by before progress on the picture resumed. Bing was now six years old. Nunez was not involved in making the film but was nevertheless anxious about whether the big dog would hang in long enough to participate. Great Danes have many wonderful qualities, but longevity is not among them. The New Yorker article cites an average lifespan for a Dane as eight years. When we started our Great Dane obsession in the early 1960s, the stated average life span was seven years. And with the experience of living with nine of them, I can say that’s about right. We had one that lived past 10 years, but most were with us for far less time. It’s heartbreaking, but Great Danes are worth it. 

Both of my daughters grew up with Great Danes, and of course, I hoped they’d get to see a film with a real Great Dane, not a cartoon version – or a cartoonish version, like the 2002 “Scooby-Doo” film. Ed and I went to see that one and were the only adults in the theater not accompanied by children. I hated it. I would have walked out — but I didn’t want to spoil the experience for the kids in the audience. I remember the film manipulates the dog’s mouth somehow so it seems as if he is speaking. It was creepy and dumb. 

And then finally, earlier this year, “The Friend” was released in theaters. I went to see the film with one of my daughters — and loved every minute of it. Again, I was on a mission to encourage everyone to also go see the film. But movies don’t stick around in the theaters as long as they used to. In what seemed like no time, “The Friend” was no longer on the big screen. But  then, wonder of wonders, I saw a notice that Netflix has “The Friend.” Finally!

I encourage you to watch “The Friend.” I will be watching it again.

Note about the art: At the top of the page, you will see my beloved Great Dane bookends (credited by the artist, Louise Peterson, as “Claynines”). We collected a lot of Great Dane art over the years — including several sculptures by Peterson (you can find her website here: www.danesculptor.com). A friend recently tried to count all the Great Dane art (including everything from sculptures and paintings to calendars and fridge magnets) in my apartment. I think she got to 80, but might have missed a few. After I saw “The Friend,” I was pleased to see one of my Dane figurines had similar black-and-white coloring as Bing.

Hellos & Goodbyes

Lotte's face“April is the cruelest month” wrote T.S. Eliot in “The Waste Land,” his monumental poem considered by many the greatest of the 20th century. It’s full of contradictory thoughts such as lilacs emerging from the dead ground after winter. The line kept reverberating in my mind while I missed the first of my self-imposed goal to post at least two pieces on my blog since starting this website.

Four separate groups of out-of-town friends visited during April, and it was fun, even as we fitted them in between the days in a calendar chock-a-block full of medical appointments. But then at the month’s end came the painful decision to euthanize our wonderful, beautiful Great Dane Lotte, probably the last in a long line of nine of these majestic dogs we have known and loved over the years.

The details appear as an ending to Great Dane in the Morning, my as yet unpublished book that you can read here if you like.

And now to get caught up in May.

Morning Does Not Become Us

????????????????????????????????????A friend sent this video of a Great Dane puppy reluctant to rise up from the comfort of his owners’ bed. She said it made her think of us because, I assume, that has always been our dog breed of choice. I’m not sure if she also knows that reluctance to wake up in the morning is a trait I share with that puppy.

I’ve written before about our current Great Dane Lotte and how she stays in her bed until I drag myself out of my own bed across the room. As I make my slow way up the stairs to the living room, she similarly hauls herself up behind me, eventually flopping down again on the floor and going back to sleep. It’s something I’d also like to do most mornings but don’t. There are the papers to read and the email to check and, in a while, a dog to be fed and walked. But getting to that point is, for me, hard. One of my daughters told her high school friends, “My mother gets up at 5, but she wakes up at 10.”

A few years back, at a sorority reunion – older women trying to relive their college years – I came down the steps the first morning to the cacophony of many women’s voices, bright and chipper-sounding and made my way in silence to the coffee machine. I found a corner to sit, just me and my coffee cup, but a woman came up and tried to start a conversation. I grunted. Another woman, my roommate when we lived in this sorority house, told my interlocutor, “Don’t try to talk to her until she’s had her coffee.” My roommate from long ago remembered! I was touched.

In the early days of our marriage, and indeed for many years, Ed would bring me coffee in bed, a lovely perk of marriage, I thought. He’d bring his own coffee and the papers and we’d sit in bed drinking coffee and reading the papers, even on work mornings. I wonder what became of that practice and when it ended. Perhaps when we bought reading chairs and designated part of the living room “the library.”

Medical experts are now saying that teenagers need to sleep longer in the morning and some schools are trying to accommodate by starting classes later. That leads me to think, once again, I was born in the wrong time. Or else, disturbing thought, that I’ve never actually grown up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71smG5d29to

[Photo: “Shameless,” pewter sculpture by Louise Peterson

My Dog Is GREA-A-A-T!

Quality Times

“That’s a GREA-A-A-T Dane!” the smiling young man said as we passed on the street, doing a perfect imitation of Tony the Tiger from the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes® commercials. “Thank you!” I called after him.

That was a new one for my 140-pound dog. Walking Lotte around the neighborhood, I hear all sorts of comments. Lots of horse-related ones: “Nice horse you got there.” “Got a saddle for that thing?” One day recently when Lotte was being particularly lethargic and trailing behind me, a guy offered “Your horse is following you.” A while back we passed a group of Latino workmen on break outside a construction site. “Chihuahua” one called out. “Grande Chihuahua,” I replied, thereby exhausting my entire Spanish vocabulary. (What is someone who studied French for six years doing in a city that is more than 36 percent Spanish-speaking?)

Some folks call her Marmaduke. “Lady Marmaduke,” I remind them. Children sometimes make reference to Scooby-Do. “Hi Big Guy,” a person might say. “Girl!” I tell them. “Oh sorry about that.” It’s okay. I understand that people naturally assume a dog this big just must be male. Occasionally I tell them it’s a lazy person’s dog: You don’t have to bend down to pet her.

Lotte is our ninth Great Dane. There are several reasons for this: We have been at it for a long time, Great Danes are not long-lived, and we are people who like consistency (all but one of our cars in 54 years have been Volkswagens).

“Of course you’ll get another Great Dane,” our New York daughter said when we were ready for a new dog. “It’s part of your image.” Well, at least it gives us identity. When we run into people unaccompanied by our dog and are greeted by blank stares, we can always remind them, “The people with the Great Dane.” “Oh yes,” they’ll reply. It’s a comfort to know we’re not complete ciphers.

If you’d like to know more about Great Danes and why anyone would own nine of them, I’ve put my book Great Dane in the Morning up on this website . It’s the story, with pictures, of each and every one of them. They were all GREA-A-A-T!

Sculpture: “Quality Times” by Louise Peterson