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A dog can be a friend for life, and the most scene stealing of colleagues. Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, the human stars of Marley & Me,
tell FOCUS how they coped.
Picture the scene, you’re emoting for all you're worth in a scene that's at the emotional heart of your movie, giving a performance that has Academy Award written all over it. And the dog you're sharing the scene with is looking somewhere off camera.
Does the pooch get a reprimand? No, he/she/it gets a retake safe in the knowledge that the best efforts of the animal acting fraternity are rewarded with a tasty treat and the inclusion of their best take in the finished film.
"Yeah," sighs Owen Wilson in his characteristic drawl, "you’re bringing up a lot of.............."
"..............painful memories," co-star Jennifer Aniston offers, helpfully. But in deference to the performer who essays the title character in the blockbuster hit Wilson adds that the aggravation they suffered was not so bad, once they grew comfortable with the notion of 22 different dogs playing Marley at different ages and different points in the movie.
"Clyde was the main dog," says Wilson, and he was pretty consistent about misbehaving and doing stuff."
"And his misbehaving only enhanced things," Aniston adds, "and gave us more to play with. It was never, it was like working with a really great actor, each take was never the same twice."
"But it was a little you'd say your line and wonder 'is he going to pick up that thing...YES, he's got it,' so I can go on to do my other line,'.
It was of course W.C.Fields who is the oft quoted author of the line about never working with animals or children. As if to underline this advice legend has it he spiked the orange juice of a young co-star with vodka, thus rendering him incapable of upstaging the wily old comedian.
In the more recent past animal trainer Joe Camp claimed that jealous actors would deliberately upset their canine co-stars to make themselves look better, or even have them removed from the scene. It's a dog eat dog business, after all. But Wilson and Aniston had no such animosity to the dogs in their film, perhaps because they grew up around the animals.
"We grew up with dogs," smiles Wilson wistfully. "Our first dog was a Dalmatian named Nutmeg, and the main dog we had growing up was a Labrador named Blue who could swim to the bottoms of pools to retrieve golf balls. That was his special trick."
"My dog couldn't do that," Aniston states with a shake of the head, "but then he didn't like me very much. Dimitri was a poodle, and I used to think he was something I could play with and ride on. No wonder he bit me. I thought I'll never be a dog person after that, but now I have two wonderful dogs."
Yet the irony is, for all that Marley & Me has the dog's name in the title the film is the story of the relationship between journalists John and Jenny Grogan. As they settle into married life, responsibilities, parenthood, professional pressures and the stresses of everyday life, the unpredictable and high spirited Marley remains at the centre of things.
Adapted from John Grogan's bestseller, the popularity of the film on its pre-Christmas release in the US suggests that it is timely, as people are questioning so much that they once took for granted, and looking inward for love and support closer to home.
"I think the fact that the film did as well as it did was a sign of what people are really hungry for," Aniston agrees. "It's a very simple story of this family, the dream that you go on with them over 15 years of their life when they start and how excited they are.
"Everything is right in front of them, and as your family grows as children enter the picture, career changes, career decisions, and the not so sort of rosy side of life. Seeing a real portrayal of a marriage, I think, was very refreshing. It's such an accessible story and I think people were really ready to laugh really hard, to cry really hard. To feel something."
ANWAR BRETT
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