STAR POWER
It's time for your closeup, Mr. Spencer

excerpt from The Ridgeback Register by Denise Flaim,
Spring Issue, April 2007

"Never work with animals or children," the great comedian W.C. Fields harrumphed.

Filmmaker Dan Margules didn't heed that crotchety advice, which was a good thing for Spencer (Ch. Oakhurst Mountain Maverick, SC, VCD1, CDX, RN, ET, VC): The 6-year-old Ridgeback is the canine star of Margules' inaugural short film, Begleiter.

"People always tell first-time filmmakers that dogs are hard to work with, but Spencer was very mellow," says Margules, whose canine inspiration for the 27-minute film was Oliver, his 11-year-old Australian shepherd/Lab mix.

While Oliver scored a cameo in the film, Margules didn't think he had the obedience chops for the lead role. He settled on Spencer for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that his trainer had another black-masked Ridgeback who could act as a stand-in. (Indeed, Spencer's understudy, a bitch named Kelly, makes a couple of brief appearances in the film.)

Though he never researched the breed and was blissfully unaware of the Ridgeback's reputation for less-than-stellar obedience (a stereotype that Spencer defied), Margules says he hears constant comments about how well Spencer emotes. "Everyone says that when they see the film - 'How did you get the dog to express himself that way?'"

Margules financed his film with the severance package from his software engineering job. A former jazz critic, he persuaded drummer and percussionist Alphonse Mouzon, one-time member of the jazz fusion band Weather Report, to compose the score.

That knack for improvisation surfaced at least once during filming, when - despite the careful choreography by four trainers and Spencer's owner, Maril - the canine cast members decided to rewrite the storyline.

"There's a kind of running theme that involves Happy sniffing things, and the smells kind of talk to us," Margules explains. But in the scene where Spencer meets a boxer on the beach and is supposed to greet him in the traditionally inquisitive canine way, the two dogs demurred. After all, they had worked together before, and were far beyond the formality of a careful butt-sniffing.
"We have some very funny outtakes where we put a piece of liver under their tails," Margules admits, noting that the dogs failed to appreciate the ingenuity. Either they chomped instead of sniffed, or prodigious tail-wagging rendered the bait projectile.

Begleiter will screen on Friday, May 18, at 9:30pm, at the Ohana Theatre at the Big Island Film Festival in Waikoloa, Hawaii.

The film is not available for sale at this time, but check for updates at www.happy-the-dog.com.