While Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston are the ostensible stars of the heartwarming film "Marley and Me," out Christmas Day, the dog truly steals the show.
But since this is movie magic and a story chronicling a dog's entire 14-year life, it's not just one dog. Rather, the film producers used 22 different yellow Labrador Retrievers. The dogs are shown in three time frames: puppy, lively adult and aging senior citizen.
The marketing staff brought one of the main "Marley" dogs to the Pink Pig at the Lenox Square Mall Macy's earlier this week for a goofy photo opportunity.
The Marley in question — a 75-pound, three-year-old Lab actually named Clyde — is very much like the dog in the film: happily rambunctious, lovable and prone to jumping on people. He walked around posing for pictures and placing his front paws on top of the plastic pig train ride.
Clyde's dog trainer Mathilde de Cagny has been training animals in TV and movies for more than 20 years. She handled Eddie, the sweet Jack Russell terrier on the show "Frasier," the terriers on "My Dog Skip" and the dogs in both "As Good As It Gets" and "Back to the Future."
But de Cagny especially enjoyed training many of the dogs on "Marley and Me" because she actually had to teach them bad habits. "I had a blast!" she said. "It's a lot more fun than what I usually do."
Clyde, who was in 80 percent of the scenes featuring the "adult" portion of Marley's life, had to learn how to "swallow" a necklace, gnaw the floor, and knock over Kathleen Turner, who plays a hard-nosed dog trainer.
To get him to chew up cushions, she bought a bunch of old sofas from Goodwill and taught him to gut them. But getting him to hump on command, she said, was the toughest challenge.
Naturally, Clyde loved the attention on the set. And both Aniston and Wilson, de Cagny said, "were fabulous with the dogs. They were total team players. Both are real dog lovers." (She said not every actor she's dealt with over the years would fit that category though she wouldn't spill names.)
NEW SUBJECT
Turner Classic Movies' annual "31 Days of Oscar" film festival takes a different twist in February, this time breaking the films down into 93 academic subjects, from economics to biology to music appreciation.
TCM host Robert Osborne, will play professor, presenting more than 350 films, all Oscar winners or nominated for an Oscar. Subjects include nuclear physics ("Dr. Strangelove"), military law ("The Caine Mutiny"), mass media ("The China Syndrome") and speech and language development ("My Fair Lady").
About 25 of the films will be new to TCM including Louis Malle's controversial "Pretty Baby," Mike Nichols' "Carnal Knowledge" and George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion."
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