Lots of nervous energy at the casting call for Victoria’s next big television production Wednesday.
Hundreds showed up for the auditions at the Legion on Gorge Road.
Some were vivacious, outgoing, friendly. Others eyed each other warily. A couple appeared to have disappeared deep within themselves, down wherever it is that serious method actors go. One attempted to mount my leg — apparently the Hollywood casting couch is alive and well.
Yes, dear reader, if you’re fed up with a steady diet of Trump, Trudeau, Trans Mountain, or whatever else has set your blood boiling in these dog days of August, there are worse places to spend a morning than in a roomful of squirming puppies.
The dogs were there to try out as bit part (as opposed to bite part) actors for Puppy Prep Academy, the working title of a 20-episode Disney Channel series being shot in Victoria this fall. The show is being produced by Air Bud Entertainment, the same outfit that has made four Pup Star movies here since 2015.
Owners had their own reasons for auditioning their dogs. Gary Rose figured the experience would be good for his six-month-old boxer Stewy, whom he would like to see become a therapy dog. Trish Monkhouse had a similar reason for bringing six-month-old, 90-pound mastiff Jack: “I like to keep him social.” Nicole Blackburn thought her sheepadoodle Winston and friend Lorna Paterson’s labradoodle Daisy would make a good team (think Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, or Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper).
Not all were puppies. Jennifer Hawke was there with her five-year-old golden retriever Buzz and four-year-old pug Pearl because they matched the call for well-behaved dogs. “Neither of them has a mean bone in their bodies.” (Just like Tom Hanks, the closest thing Hollywood has to a human yellow lab.)
Everyone had a favourite dog movie. Monkhouse liked Homeward Bound. Rose tilted toward Turner and Hooch. Hawke chose Best In Show. You could go on and on: Old Yeller, 101 Dalmatians, Beethoven, Benji, The Incredible Journey, Air Bud — the last being one of a score of canine films made by the company casting in Victoria this week.
Dogs have long been box office gold. (Remember that it was back in 1944 that MGM shot Son Of Lassie around Victoria; starring Peter Lawford and June Lockhart — and, of course, Lassie, or at least his son — it was filmed largely at what is now the Rocky Point ammunition depot in Metchosin.) It seems the public has an endless appetite for pooch pics. Other pets, not so much (nobody ever made a heartwarming movie about a boy and his cat).
So here’s the basic question: Why the appeal? Why are dog shows so popular? “I think dogs have a personality that calms people,” said Jeevan Sohi, waiting patiently in the Legion with her labradoodle Cooper (no relation to Bradley).
Or perhaps it’s because, like Hollywood, dogs offer an idealized version of ourselves. While some people might sniffily dismiss them as servile beasts, other see the qualities we cherish in canines — loyalty, friendliness, courage and unconditional love, not to mention the ability to remain poker-faced while breaking wind — as the same that we value in humans. To quote Andy Rooney: “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”
Certainly dogs are better behaved, less likely to disappoint, than many other movie stars. They don’t ditch spouses for younger models, or punch photographers, or make racist comments at drunken traffic stops, or go full diva. (Longtime Victorians might recall the story of actress Shirley MacLaine who, while staying at the Ocean Pointe Resort in 1994, went ballistic after being awoken by construction workers building the television set from which Ron MacLean and Brian Williams were to host CBC’s coverage of the Commonwealth Games. A housecoat-clad MacLaine hollered at the workers, threatened to take away their hammers, tore up their plans and reportedly shook the ropes of a window washer’s platform, too. “Terms of endearment absent at star’s hotel” read the subsequent Times Colonist headline.)
But I digress. Puppy Prep Academy will be shot in Victoria between mid-September and Christmas, airing in 2019.
