The latest heartwarming story from a dog’s point of view, care of canine companion film masters W. Bruce Cameron and Cathryn Michon, is the made-for-Netflix “A Dog’s Perfect Christmas.” The film follows an elderly basset hound named Winstead, a corgi puppy named Ruby, and their “pack,” the three-generation Goss family.
In an interview with RogerEbert.com, Cameron, author of the book that inspired the film, and his wife Michon, who co-wrote the screenplay with him, directed, and plays a tyrannical boss, talked about finding a new way to shoot ice skating, “angrily fashionable” eyeglasses that define a character, and working with dogs and children.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The film is from Fezziwig Productions. Is that named after the wonderful Fezziwig character in A Christmas Carol?
Cathryn Michon: Because Dan Angel, our producer, has good taste in literature and is a huge fan of Dickens, and that’s why he named his company that. Fezziwig’s the good guy.
On to a mean boss: What made you decide to play Mrs. O’Brian, and how did you pick out those eyeglasses? They are really character-defining.
CM: If this movie were “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I would be Mr. Potter. I loved the part. I asked Netflix to let me audition like everybody else. They picked me, so that was great. The glasses are so angrily fashionable! She’s from Silicon Valley, and she wears very expensive clothes. She lives in a fancy house and just thinks the Midwest is the flyover people.
I’ve directed three movies, and I was in all of them. It’s great because I started as an actor in the business, and I love actors and love interacting with them. And I think when you’re part of the troupe, it really helps. I think the best directors are often former actors or current actors.
What made Traverse City, Michigan the right setting for the story?
W. Bruce Cameron: I know Traverse City very well. I lived there for three years, and I was born in Petoskey, which is about an hour and a half north of Traverse City. And I still own a place in the Charlevoix area. Traverse City is a very normal Northern Michigan town. It’s pretty small, but in the summer, of course, the population swells.
The house that the Goss family lives in would be a very expensive house in most places, but because it’s Traverse City, you could buy it on a middle-class income, and that’s what this family has done.
You shot the ice-skating scenes beautifully. They’re magical.
CM: Because the ice skating was a part of the original novel, I became obsessed with how I was going to shoot these scenes. First, I wanted actors who could skate, and my wonderful casting director said it was possible because dancers often skate. We found these two marvelous actors: Brooke Lena Johnson, who plays Ello, and Ethan Loomis, who plays Sean.
Ethan is a hockey player. Brooke was a competitive Olympic-level pairs skater who had a devastating injury, but she’s still a great skater and an amazing actress. So, we found the needles in the haystack.
I was scrolling through Instagram when I found this guy, Jordan Alexander Cowan, to film them. He is a former Olympic-level ice dancer. He was a skater first, and then he fell in love with cinematography, and then he thought, “Oh, nobody does this. I could do this.”
He skates backward, silently, carrying a 70-pound gimbal camera rig. And so, he records the sync sound of their skates, and he shoots them in these beautiful oners as they’re skating and talking. And honestly, nobody’s ever done this in a feature film, so it was such an exciting part of the filmmaking process for me. Then NBC found him after I found him, and he shot the Winter Olympics.
There’s an old show business saying that you should never perform with children or animals. Tell me about taking on that challenge.
CM: First of all, the dogs. I love the dogs, but I picked a basset hound, which is a very difficult animal to train for film because they were bred to be scent dogs, and all they care about is what their nose smells. If there’s a guy in a grip truck three blocks away who has a chicken nugget, I have a problem. They just want to follow their nose.
But they are extraordinarily beautiful, and they are also deeply loyal, really affectionate dogs. And same with the corgis.
We cast two pairs of identical three-year-old boys to play fraternal twins, so we could constantly switch them out. At that age, they don’t really understand what we’re doing. I saw one of them like Cindy Lou Who, pulling on Dennis Quaid’s pant legs, saying “Gwampa, Gwampa!” I said, “Dennis, he thinks you’re his grandpa.” Dennis was great with them because he has twins of his own.
A lot happens in this movie, including serious illness, intense job stress, some comedy, and two sweet romances. How do you keep the tone consistent?
CM: When I look at really good Christmas movies, “It’s a Wonderful Life” is the gold standard for me, and it has so many different tones. There’s comedy, there are big set pieces, and physical comedy, and romance, and tragedy, and a guy who’s considering suicide, and a druggist who beats a child so badly that he loses hearing in one ear. That is a very broad spectrum of tones in one movie, and I think it works because it comes together at the end with a very simple message.
In that movie, it’s that it’s a wonderful life, and that all the people that you know are connected, and that matters. And in this movie, it’s what Dennis says: “We’re going to stick together as a family because that’s what families do.” Perfection is the enemy of good enough. You should find the joy in where you are.
That even goes back to our original film in this series, “A Dog’s Purpose,” where the dog said very simply, “Be here now.” It’s a resonant theme in all of Bruce’s books because that’s what dogs do best. They’re great at being in the moment and finding joy in it, and that’s the message I wanted to get across with this film version of Bruce’s book.
WBC: A dog necessarily has a very simple view of the world and is pretty much unaware of ramifications and the importance of some events versus the lack of importance of others. So I need to mix it up and make these people’s lives feel real, and you can argue that the plot of “A Dog’s Perfect Christmas” is that nothing is really threatening. It’s a very simple human-and-dog story set at Christmas.
What’s in peril is the family relationships, how they come together and how they eventually find their way back together as a family. I love stories where the drama isn’t a threat to the entire human species, but rather something very small, such as: with the mom gone, how do we put on Christmas?
Humans bred dogs to serve us. We bred them to respond to our commands and emotions, and to be partners in our lives. So, to tell a story from a dog’s point of view, a lot has to be going on with the people because that is the dog’s life. They respond to what’s happening to us.
In the film, two characters bond over their love for Joni Mitchell. Where did that come from?
MC: I am the primary Joni Mitchell fan. I met her after I wrote about her in my memoir. On the soundtrack of this film, Brooke and I sang together on “River,” a Joni Mitchell cover. I thought, “It’s great that one voice is older, and the one voice is younger, because what’s happening in Ello’s mind as she’s missing her mom, that maternal quality.”
The Goss family is under a lot of stress in this film, and at one point the grandfather recommends denial as a coping mechanism.
CM: I made a movie called “Cook-Off,” and my character says denial is just a really negative word for positive thinking, which I think is a hilarious joke and kind of true.
WBC: In the book, there’s a conversation between Sandor and Ello, very similar to what’s in the movie. But in the book, Sandor has more time to explain that on the very worst day, the day he was told that his wife had terminal cancer, he got lost in a project in the garage and suddenly realized, “Oh my gosh, I’m not I’m not with my wife. What am I doing?” He runs in and finds his wife folding laundry and singing to herself. And he says, “Sometimes denial is the only way to get through these things.”
I really think that there are times when you need to give your brain and heart both a break and step back. And if you call it whatever you will. Pretend like it’s not happening for a while, because life is meant to be enjoyed.
When someone is going to insult you, the first thing they’ll say is, “Well, I have to be honest.” No, you don’t!
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