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THOR FREUDENTHAL on 'HOTEL FOR DOGS'
Contributed by Michael J. Lee, Executive Editor
for Radio Free Entertainment
January 9, 2009
In the family comedy Hotel for Dogs, Emma Roberts and Jake T. Austin star as orphan siblings who foster a sense of family when they use their resourcefulness to renovate an abandoned hotel and take in the city's homeless dogs.
The cast also features Don Cheadle as a compassionate and determined social worker looking to match the kids with a suitable home, and Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon as reluctant--and sometimes comically clueless--foster parents. In this interview, director Thor Freudenthal talks about the making of the movie, from coordinating massive legions to dogs to working with his human stars.
Hotel for Dogs is now playing in theaters everywhere.
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The Interview
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MEDIA: How did you go about casting the dogs?
THOR: For me, it was a matter of like how can we get as many different personalities, shapes, and sizes, into it, because when you have that many sort of hero parts, they better look and feel different from each other. As much as I like golden retrievers and German shepherds, them next to each other wouldn't be too even. So these ideas of like, okay, if we have a big mastiff, just have his friend be a Boston terrier. Why not? So yeah, it took about two weeks to sort of be set on the types, and then we just tried different members of that species, of who would perform best.
How do you decide on the specific breed of the dog that will be your hero?
Well, I didn't think of it, but the studio had done some exploration, and they came up with a more long-haired [dog]. It looks a little more girly, you know? And I was like, "This guy has got to be scruffy and kind of streetsmart." And it's funny, I said, "Okay, let's make him white because he has to stand out against the oak or grey city environment, and I think black eyes would really pop." And he just can't look very neat. The hair too long, you always think of like a purse dog or something. So he has to be just a streetsmart dog. And then we found him, and he was cast, and then later I realized...You know, I grew up with the Tin Tin books. I don't know if you're familiar with them, but he has a dog named Snowy, and it's pretty much that. [laughs] So maybe a subconscious childhood memory was [at work].
What's the first requirement of a director working with animals? Is it patience?
It's patience and it's being aware of the limits of it. I have a bit of background in animation, where you can pretty much do whatever you want. You can say, "If the ketchup bottle on the fridge teeters, the dog just stops it." Well, no, can't do that [in live action], because it'll look unnatural. So a director really has to work within the framework of what is possible, and exploit that as much as possible. Also, on a sheer filmmaking level, what few people know is when you have 20 dogs on the set, there's about 40 people that take care of them. And they call them, or they speak to them. Every time you see a dog react in the movie, he's not reacting to the kids, he's actually focused on his point person. So how do you shoot a scene avoiding seeing all these people? [laughs] Because they are everywhere.
How tricky was filming the massive flight from the pound?
The flight from the pound was tricky because when they release the dogs and they all stream out into that..."Green Mile" is what we called it...It had to be coordinated chaos, so nobody runs the wrong way or into the lens or whatever. So it was difficult. The key to these things is to sort of separate the scenes into manageable chunks that the dogs can pull off. If they run out the door and then around the van, well, that's three different setups that have simple A to B motions that you can repeat and cover differently.
How much of the movie was filmed on a studio lot, versus on location in Los Angeles?
There was some lot. We shot the hotel exterior at the Universal lot, which now no longer exists. That actually, I think, was one of the last things that was shot there before it burned to the ground. So it was there. We shot some chase elements at Paramount.
Was that because you needed a more controlled environment for certain scenes?
Yeah. Because at some point, you don't want dogs running around downtown for too long. It becomes too difficult. To give it enough sense of reality, we did corner off an intersection in downtown LA one Saturday afternoon, and we did have them cross the intersection. We shot chase elements there just to get the reality of the city, because a lot looks like a lot, often.
We understand you didn't actually get Lenny the mastiff to howl on cue.
He didn't howl. That's the thing. He did this. [demonstrates the motion] And he emitted sort of little barks. Most of the animal sounds, actually, were done by Elliott Koretz who is the sound designer, and he did a wonderful job actually making it looked like it's happening right in front of you. So you cannot make the dog howl on command, you're right. But the motion of just raising his head and looking somewhere, and opening his mouth, is what we trained him to do, so that you later on could fill in the howls.
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Lisa Kudrow said that you were trying to convince her to lick a spoon that a dog had licked in the kitchen scene, but that she wouldn't do it...
I was only told by the trainers that a dog's mouth is sterile. It's cleaner than a person's mouth. She wouldn't buy it, and I'm fine with that...And she said, "Even if you're the kind of director who goes ahead and does things and expects their actors then to do the same," like a nude scene or something...We talked about it for about two seconds before she told me no. So we then came up with shooting it in two different cuts, and it looks remarkably good, because he licks, then we switch the spoon out, and she pulls it away from him, and he luckily just did a [motion] so it seems like he's mid-lick.
How do you schedule and coordinate the dogs with the kids, logistically? It seems like it could be a difficult task.
It's as difficult as you imagine it to be. I mean, it's a constant obstacle course. You have to sort of think about how much time do I have with [Emma], with Jake? How is the scene actually shot, so we can capture dogs and kids, and sort of finish the kids in time, and then we end the day on dog material that we need? A lot of over the shoulder shots of kids are not them. I mean, that's one thing. [laughs] We worked with doubles extensively, and that helped a little bit. I shot commercials for six years prior, and that is always insane. I mean, it always forces you to work at lightning speed and make quick decisions and just go bam, bam bam. So pre-planning, knowing what the shots are, and working like the wind are the ways to do it.
What special quality do you think Emma Roberts brought to her role?
I knew she had a bit of the movie star quality. When we put her in front of the camera, she just sort of lights up the screen, as you would say. She has a certain shine to her that is hard to even quantify what that is, and that's why it was really hard to cast the brother, Bruce. Because he had to be somebody who could really believably be her relative, but also live up to her kind of energy, in a way. What I was slightly aware of is that prior to this, she had done other sort of light fare--she had done Unfabulous, and the sort of the teen star route, and we talked a lot prior to this. "Okay, you can have your sense of fun, but let's break this open a little bit..." She is the responsible sibling, and she ultimately is responsible for her brother's well-being. And when it all falls apart, she feels like she failed him. And that had to be as painful as possible, obviously. So we talked about her and events in her life, and how she could relate to the character, and sort of break that open and make it grounded as much as possible. And I think she surprised me, as much as this kind of material can take it. She was good at just like deepening it every now and then. And I think she did really great, and I hope she does more of that in the future.
Speaking of the emotional scenes, you have a dog trapped under a fence, you have a three-legged dog that gets abandoned then rescued, and you have orphans, for God's sake...Just how much do you expect people to cry at this movie?
Right, right! Rubbing it in! [laughs] I shot them just always kind of coming from a character and story standpoint, hoping that it would touch people to some extent. But upon a first preview screening, I sort of realized that a lot of people were crying, and told me afterwards that they were crying. And I'm a great crier in movies. I love it. I mean, E.T. is my favorite movie, and I cried my heart out when I was very little. I don't expect anyone to cry, and if they cry, hopefully not for the sake of crying, but for feeling a certain closeness to the idea of family, that these days, can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and is not the set kind of "this is who you're born with" or "this is who was assigned to you," but you make your own family. So hopefully that theme translates into a feeling in the audience, that they come back inspired and enlightened to some extent.
How did you feel about getting an actor like Don Cheadle in the role of Bernie, the social worker who builds a relationship with Emma and Jake's characters?
It was an idea of mine that I thought was a little hopeless in the beginning. Like I love Hotel Rwanda and Devil in a Blue Dress and all his stuff, and he's so versatile. And I'm like, "Why not?" Like I felt something that's so fanciful and whimsical and kind of heightened would really benefit from an actor that grounds it, because he's so effortlessly believable. So actually, we had a lot of artists on hand painting sort of moods and inspirational paintings--the hotel interior or the apartment. Like what is the mood of the look and feel of the film? The kids were in there. And I was like, "Every time you paint Bernie, just paint Don Cheadle. See what it looks like." And I collected these paintings, copied them, made a little book for him, and I sent it to him with a letter saying, "Look, I love your work and I know this is not the kind of thing you usually too, but here's how I want to do it...I think this would really benefit from you." And he told me later on that what appealed to him was A) of course, the paintings, and B) the fact that Bernie sort of doesn't sugar coat his dialogue with the children. And he sort of revealed to me that he has two girls and he talks to them very much the same way. [laughs] Which I liked. And he also wanted to make a movie that they could watch, finally. And I felt blessed every day that he was there. Also, if you're working with kids and dogs, every time you do a scene with adults, it's like a vacation, you know?
Did you adopt any of the dogs yourself?
I did not. But quite a few were adopted. Because we shot in downtown LA, and two of the producers, Lauren Shuler Donner and Ewan Leslie, are extremely involved with Karma Rescue and like groups like that. So they picked up dogs from the street, and some of them lived in the production offices for a little while. And grips, costumes designers took dogs home. But it happened throughout the movie.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks, guys.
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