BEFORE: That's right, I said no to "Toy Story 5" but yes to THIS animated film, as it was kind of a choice between the two, with limited slots left in the year. I stand by that decision, because this film is SO much harder to link to, and there are probably two dozen ways to link to "Toy Story 5" next year - and that could really help me out of a linking jam, you never know.
I've been trying to watch this film ever since I was working for the SECOND of two animators, and I worked for her during the closing days of the DVD era, when movie distribution companies would send Academy members films on DVD for free in hopes of getting more votes for nominations. It turns out that Academy members can't really vote for films if they haven't seen them, it's an awareness thing - so back before streaming (the Academy's exclusive streaming site didn't even exist before 2022 or so, if you can believe that) so my boss had built up an impressive library of DVDs during her time as a member. Sure, they all had burn-in subtitles that read "Not for public exhibition" or "For Academy Member use only" during the whole film, but I still borrowed a bunch of DVDs from her and gave, well, most of them back.
So I think this is one of the LAST films that were in her library that I wanted to watch, from the pre-COVID list, anyway. This one came out in 2010 and there's still "The Breadwinner" from 2017 and "Faces Places" too, but those are darn near impossible to link to - at least with this one, I had a fighting chance. So I watched this on Vimeo, and that's another whole failure story for a web-site. Vimeo used to be a BIG deal, at least for filmmakers, it was a great place for animators and indie directors to post their work, because it wasn't overrun with junk like YouTube, in order to post on Vimeo you had to have a membership and be recognized as a competent creator, one of my bosses paid an annual fee to have an account, the company was based in Brooklyn and once we had a film posted there, we could link it to FilmFreeway and be reasonably sure that only the RIGHT people would see it there - because who the hell went to Vimeo instead of YouTube - and that probably wouldn't interfere with distribution. In other words, how did you get distributors to see your film without EVERYONE seeing your film for free? Just post it on Vimeo.
But time passed and I eventually started a YouTube channel for that boss, because we suddenly WANTED everyone to see his work, suddenly that was a good idea after his deal with Shout Factory expired, so I got that YouTube thing going and I wanted to cancel his Vimeo account, maybe save a couple hundred bucks a year, only the customer service at Vimeo was non-existent, I could not get anyone there to answer a phone call or an e-mail - they're based in Brooklyn so I often considered taking a subway there just to find out if anyone still worked there. Look, I don't know what the problem was, maybe they laid off everyone at some point, but answer your damn messages, because I want to cancel my account. That was simply impossible, so I imagine that's why this film is still available there for FREE - just Google it, but you didn't hear that from me - because getting in touch with anyone there to cancel your account just ain't gonna happen.
Isabella Rossellini carries over from "Problemista", or at least her voice does. She's been in a few movies this year because I used her as a link through four romance movies in February, including "Roger Dodger" and "Cousins" at long last, then she turned up in one documentary about Roy Orbison, so with three films in November she should finish strong for the year, with 8 appearances. That should tie her with people like Chevy Chase and John Belushi, but she'll still be a few films behind John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
THE PLOT: The story of a man who rescues a German shepherd and how the two became fast friends.
AFTER: I think part of the problem in getting to this film was me confusing it with "My Dog Skip", which came out 9 or 10 years earlier, and is NOT an animated film, but it does have a similar title, that's my bad. Look, the good news is that I'm finally getting to this one, and I put "My Dog Skip" on the someday/maybe list, so that should settle things at long last. As a member of the animation community in NYC for a very long time, of course I knew who Paul Fierlinger is, or was. He died in 2025 at the age of 89, I've noticed that there are some animators who live to a ripe old age, like George Griffin or Joan Gratz or Max Fleischer. I used to attend ASIFA-East screenings and there were usually a number of older people in attendance, who had long and illustrious careers working on "Popeye" or "Tom and Jerry" shorts back in the day, they just wanted to still be part of a community and meet the younger animators working today.
Paul Fierlinger was the son of a Czech diplomat, born in Japan but he moved to the Netherlands in 1967 and then to the United States at some point. You've probably seen his work if you watched "Sesame Street" as a kid, he did a number of animated segments for them including "Teeny Little Super Guy" which featured a hero character animated on Dixie cups, I think. He did other animation work for Nickelodeon and in TV commercials, but may be best known for his animated autobiography, called "Drawn from Memory". I remember that was a big deal in the animation circles shortly after I got into the business.
This film, a stunning animated achievement no matter how you slice it - yes, someone was still making hand-drawn films in the 2010's, I know it's hard to believe - was based on a 1956 book by J.R. Ackerley, who was an editor for the BBC in addition to being an author. It relates the story of how he formed a relationship with an Alsatian (we used to call them German shepherds, but I guess that name fell out of favor in the U.K., what with World War II and all) dog named Tulip. This film won the Grand Prix - best feature film - at the Festival of Animated Film in Zagreb in 2011, that's nothing to sneeze at, from what I remember of my time entering festivals. This took two and a half years to animate, which is really quick for an animated feature, and they mostly used TV Paint software, not paper, even though the digital technique retained a hand-drawn look. My former boss was always looking to do the same thing, go digital and employ fewer people, but keep the hand-made aesthetic.
Several different styles are used here, all still look hand-drawn, but some are fully fleshed out animation, some segments look like simple child-like drawings, and some look like notepad sketches. Well, some are meant to represent real things that happened and other sequences are fantasies, it's nice to have a visual distinction there. What's weird is that the fantasy sequences involve rather graphic sex between dogs, and sometimes those dogs take a human-like form, or a naked woman is seen swimming with whales, or other impossible things. Yeah, I can confirm first-hand that if you want your animated feature to fail in the U.S. and not get seen or distributed, be sure to put a lot of adult-oriented sex scenes in it. Both of my bosses tried that again and again, there's hardly any market for this in the U.S. as we're a nation of parents who believe that animation is ONLY for children and sex needs to be kept out of cartoons. Other countries in Europe and Asia are more forgiving, and sure, you can animate whatever you want there, it's fine. But putting graphic sex, even between animals, into an animated film in the U.S. is a recipe for disaster, or at least something other than success.
Look, I'm just not a dog person, I'm a cat person, that's never going to change - I've been close to 7 or 8 cats in my life and they're easy, I get them, and dogs are just way too complicated. I like them fine, but not to live closely with them. Get me a stray cat, I'll get it spayed or neutered, and we will be fast friends, either immediately or eventually. Dogs you have to take out for walks, you have to train them, you have to pick up their poop, and then with a bunch of them you have to do something to their anal glands that I don't even want to know about. Then this film gets into the very difficult and socially awkward practice of breeding your dog, and for the main character here, this involves dealing with other British dog owners and their brutal or inept dogs, assisting in the lubrication process and such, and just uggh. And ewww...and also iccck.
I mean, it's fine, it is what it is - and this was a different time, the book was written in 1956 and back then cleaning up after your dog was NOT mandated, at least not in the U.K., so again, ewwww.... and also yeccch. I remember reading MAD magazine back in the early 1970's and Al Jaffee cartoons that tried to solve the problem of cleaning up dog poop with various unlikely or impossible machines, so yeah, that was a problem in the U.S. as well for a long time, and it only got worse as the population kept growing and more people meant more dogs. At least laws requiring people to clean up after their dogs got passed at SOME point, which is why you never see white dog poop any more, people are at least conditioned to deal with it right away now, even if that means dumping it in MY house's trash can, despite a sign that reads "PLEASE DO NOT PUT DOG POOP IN HERE"
This is still a wonderful little film about owning a dog and bonding with a dog, told by a man who apparently was never able to have a long-term stable relationship with another human, male or female, friend or lover. Well, sure, it happens, I guess, maybe you just never meet your soulmate or even your best friend, it's the luck of the draw, only I'm thinking if this Ackerley guy had been just a bit nicer or a bit less British, it could have happened. Well, at least he had a dog and they bonded for a while, but still, all relationships with dogs or cats are transitory, right? It hurts when we have to say goodbye to them, and it's even rougher when the humans go first and the animal is left behind.
As I said, I've bonded with seven or eight cats over the years, and right now I have one. Yeah, do the math there, and you realize how many times I've had to put a cat down or carry a dead body to the vet's office with a towel over the carrier. One time there was a dead cat in my neighbor's driveway and he didn't know what to do - I was able to show him how to scoop it up, bag it and label it for the trash pick-up. And with stray cats now I can't even get personally involved, because that only leads to a multi-year commitment that could get very expensive. We lost one last year on Thanksgiving so that anniversary is coming up, but I still have Heidi, and she sits with me while I watch TV and she makes biscuits on my belly when I'm on the couch and it's time for me to go to sleep. She purrs very loudly when she does this, and tends to drool a lot because she's missing a front tooth, but you know, it is what it is.
Here in the post-Halloween week, we're still dealing with death though, not just of dogs with weird medical conditions, but also this was the final film that Lynn Redgrave ever worked on, and Christopher Plummer passed away in 2021 also. At some point, every movie's credit list becomes just a list of dead people, doesn't it? I mean, you gain some form of immortality when you appear in or work on a film, but it's just a theoretical one, people will still know a bit about you decades later, but it won't matter to you, you'll be gone. This is somehow both inspiring and depressing.
After watching this animated film, I had a long stress dream about going back to work for the animator that I served for 31 years. Something about watching an independent hand-drawn feature film, I guess - so I dare not watch any of the 7 animated features I worked on, because it's only going to come back and haunt me overnight. In the dream I had moved to Portland, OR, which is a notable production location for animation, only to find that my old boss had opened a studio there, with financial assistance from Matt Groening, and I was being coaxed back to work there. Stress immediately set in - how long would the money hold out? We have to pay HOW MANY people every 2 weeks? How can I do this while avoiding any disagreement or confrontation with you-know-who? I woke up in a hot sweat this morning and I was questioning all of my life's decisions. So yeah, thanks for that.
NITPICK POINT: Or, you could just NOT breed your dog at all, wouldn't that be a lot simpler? But again, I realize it was a different time...
Directed by Paul Fierlinger and Sandra Fierlinger
Also starring the voices of Christopher Plummer (last seen in "The Last Station"), Lynn Redgrave (last seen in "The Jane Austen Book Club"), Brian Murray (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Peter Gerety (last seen in "A Complete Unknown"), Paul Hecht (last seen in "The First Wives Club"), Euan Morton (last seen in "The Night Before")
RATING: 6 out of 10 puddles of dog pee that need to be cleaned up
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