Friday Four - Movies With Real Animals as Actors

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm a fan of animals, you know, animals just in general.
And Peyton Highlke is with me. You like animals, right,
big animal guy. I got a doggo at home?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
What kind of dog? Silver lab? Oh?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Yeah, silver. How's it different than a black lab or a.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's a little bit more yellow lab. It's a little
bit more gray, you mean like the silver right, right? Yeah,
But it's hair fur is a little bit different. It's softer,
it's not so coarse and sort of oily that you
get from a normal lab. Has a little bit of alopecia.
Anxious dog. I think that might be a maybe a

(00:40):
side effect of the breeding of a silver lab. But regardless,
Bella a classic, maybe overused dog name. But yeah, I
love my dog.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
That's awesome. I'm glad to hear that you have such
affection for the dog. I got two greyhounds. You know,
they come from a tired racing background and they're great dogs.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
You got to meet them once I did. Yeah, the
cool dogs. We love them. We take them everywhere with us.
Very well mannered dogs too. Yeah, we bring them in
a lot of places.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
They're pretty conditioned to, you know, meeting new people and
being in odd new situations. So anyway, I love that.
Right now, I have heard about this movie called Good Boy,
and I've talked about it a few times because it's
quite an interesting concept. It's a horror movie that is

(01:36):
told from the perspective of a dog. And I'll be
honest with you, the first question I think we all
have is does the dog get harmed or die in
the movie? Because I think everyone is on the same
page that it would be bad and I'm not watching
a movie. I'm not sitting myself into a movie where
I know that the ending could like if this dog

(01:58):
has any sort of distress whatsoever in the entire movie, Like,
I'm not into it, right and obviously they wouldn't do
that to the real dog, but just like the way
they portray it that it's a suspension of DIT's belief
when you're like watching anything and then like an animal
or a dog even in like Finding Nemo, right like,
you feel that, well, the dog his name is Indy.

(02:21):
The real dog that played Indy in the movie is Indie.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Indy.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's his real name because his owner is the guy
who wrote and directed this movie.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
It is a short movie.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
It's barely over an hour long, and it's a PG
thirteen horror movie, which is not usual.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Usually, if there's like blood gore a lot of violence,
it's R rated or it's going straight to streaming with
a very mature audience rating on it.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
This is not that. This is a PG thirteen short.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Film, because you know nowadays you can get two two
and a half three hours. This is a dog that's
not an actual acting dog. This is the guy's dog.
It's just his dog. And it took him like three
years to make this because Indy can only really act
in ten minute sequences when he's interested in treats and
when he starts getting bored, like anybody like I trained

(03:12):
my dogs, When you get your dog kind of gets
to like okay, you can kind of tell they're over it.
They're not gonna do what you want them to do,
and you don't want to make them do stuff they
don't want to do, so it just he had to
be patient.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
He took a long time. They made this movie.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
It's being well reviewed for what it's worth. Now, I'm
still not real interested. I don't like horror movies. I
don't like jump scares or anything like that. I'm not
interested I've thought about maybe being interested, but I can't.
I just can't do it. Not a horror movie guy.
All the great horror movies everybody says they've seen, I've
certainly not seen any of them because I can't do it.
So I apologize. I'm not gonna see this movie. But

(03:48):
I am interested in Indie's story because he looks like
such a happy dog when he's on the red carpet
and he's wearing a little bow tie and stuff, and.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
It's going well for them.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
It's just very independent movie that has almost no budget,
and I shot it with his dog that he trained himself.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Well, Indy is disgruntled now and wrote a letter. I
say that in quotes, wrote a letter because he's not
happy about something. I'll read the letter to you now,
and I quote, dear esteemed members of the Academy. I

(04:24):
write this letter to request your consideration for inclusion in
this year's Academy Awards Best Acting Performance race. Despite my
critically acclaimed role in the recent film Good Boy, I
have been deemed ineligible for the Best Actor category. This
news feels as if someone has yanked my least short
as apparently I am not a good enough boy for you.

(04:45):
I understand you have rules to protect my human co stars,
but no such rules exist to recognize the rich and
complex contributions of our canine thespians. How many great performances
must go overlooked before the Academy throws us above. As
a young pup, I was forever changed by Jed the
Wolf Dog's stirring performance in White Fang. That was the

(05:07):
moment I first knew I wanted to chase my own
Hollywood dreams. From Free Willy to Babe the Birds to Warhorse,
animal actors have carried emotional arcs and in some cases
entires franchises, all while suffering this indifference in disregard from
the two legged actor community at large. To date, we
remain largely absent from your yearly accolades, unrecognized for our craft,

(05:31):
and left in my smaller but still adequate house by
the Academy at Large. So now I must quietly sit
beside the dinner table of the feasts of the Academy
Awards a waiting to compete amongst my fellow artists. We
ask that you stop lifting your leg on the contribution
of myself and the many great animal actors whose work
continues to go unrecognized. With heartfelt hope, deepest respect and

(05:56):
puppy dog eyes Indy and it is signed with his pawprint.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Get this gooddest boy a bone in a trophy in need?

Speaker 1 (06:06):
What a good letter. And he's like some sort of
duck dog or something like. He's a pretty unique breed
from Canada. So he just looks awesome if you look
up pictures of Indie the dog, he's just a great
looking dog. Obviously he didn't write this, his people wrote this,
but this if dogs could write, they would have said
this years ago. How many amazing films and television shows

(06:31):
have there been incredible performances by dogs that are trained
to act, or horses or orcas or goats or pigs
that have been in movies or shows and there's nothing
to recognize them or the people that have trained them.
It's a good point led me to think about a

(06:54):
good Friday for that we could do your favorite movies
or shows that are starring real life animals, not animated animals,
not cgied animals like the new version of The Lion
King that like they made them all live action doesn't count.
Real animals that are in these movies or TV shows.

(07:17):
Today's Friday four is movies or shows that star real
life animals. Movies or shows that star real life animals,
real animal stars that stole the show on screen. No cartoons,
no CGI, pure pause, hoofs and heart.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
I'm gonna go first this week. Let's hear what you got.
Number one's air Butt.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
I mean it's a movie that I wouldn't say it's
my favorite movie, but it's a movie I just keep
coming back to for a lot of different reasons. First
of all, it is a heartwarming story. The older I get,
the more appreciative I am of the way they tell
that story. Even if it isn't the greatest movie. The
premise is absolutely absurd. Some of the execution in the movie.
I mean, there are plot holes all over the place.
But you can laugh at it when you're a kid.

(08:03):
You can cry at it when you're an adult. It's
actually like a way better movie. And we'll see what
this reboot looks like. That they're making a new Airbud,
But Airbud, the dog that plays Airbud in that movie
is just absolutely incredible. I think that same dog is
the second Airbud two, an Airbud Golden Receiver, but eventually,
obviously they had to start using multiple dogs over the

(08:24):
many years they were making those movies.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Number two.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
For me, it's Free Willy, a movie I watched many
times growing up. Are you familiar with Free Willie?

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yes, that was one of those that I was thinking
about a little bit.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
So Free Willie for anybody who didn't watch or didn't
know early nineties, it's a movie. Michael Jackson actually made
the song that's like the theme for it, and that's
super nostalgic for me. I just get immediately transported back
to being four years old whenever I hear that song
or whenever I watch the movie. But it's about freeing
an orca from activity that is being basically exploited in

(09:03):
a young boy's kind of journey from kind of a rough,
bad behaved kid with a lot of adversity in life
to finding inspiration in training this orca. And it really
is a fantastic movie and I really love it. It's
in here Keiko, who is Willie in the movie, horrible

(09:23):
story for him. He was in captivity, bred in captivity.
He stars in all three of the Free Willies, Freely
two and Free Wily three or whatever, it's whatever, but
Free Willy one is awesome. The first Free Willie highly
recommend but spoiler alert, in real life, Keiko does get freed.
The activists decided they wanted to make themselves hurt and said, well,

(09:44):
you made this movie about freeing an orca, why don't
you actually free him? And so over the course of
several years, they basically had this plan to take him
from where he was living in Mexico in captivity, took
him to like Vancouver, Seattle or somewhere in the Pacific Northwest,
to a bigger tank, and and tried to continue to
train him to uh not rely on people so much.

(10:04):
And eventually they drop him into a pod in the
Atlantic Ocean so he can live out to his days
as a free orca. He died six months later looking
for humans and he can never get into a pod
like he's like the real the real life killer Whale
or Orca doesn't make it because like the movie, it's

(10:25):
different because he's separated from his family and he's in captivity.
They are not, and they show you in the movie
that they can actually see each other. But he just
can't get out. So he gets out and he's got
his family, they're waiting for him. He's able to survive.
That's not the story of Keiko, although the activists, the
pedas of the world will tell you, oh, it was
a success.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
We got this.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
We did a good thing by letting this orca starve
to death in the wild, because we decided that it
was more important to make us feel good than actually
give him a good life. Uh, that's the terrible epilogue
for what actually happens to that animal. And yeah, he
was maybe a little bit older and everything. He just
couldn't get into a social pod, which is what orces do.

(11:06):
But the movie itself is fantastic. Number three is Black Beauty.
Black Beauty is a movie from about the same timeframe,
so I am nostalgic for it still. But it's a
movie that it doesn't move super fast, but it really
is inspiring. And I love horses and the horses. They
use five different horses in this movie that look the
same and they are beautiful. I mean, just like, if

(11:28):
I had a horse like this, I would just I
would paint it. It is like the and that's why
it's called Black Beauty, right, And it's basically about this
horse that from its birth to you know, through its
entire life, about the different people that own it, the
kind people, the not so kind people. It's really a
story about humans through the eyes of a horse, which

(11:49):
basically is narrating its own life. And again, if you
have a heart for animals, it's one of those that
you will find yourself tearing up as you're watching it. Lastly,
I'm gonna go TV show Wishbone. I don't know if
you're familiar with Wishbone, but that was old public television
PBS when I was growing up. Old books like Charles
Dickens and you know, all those old kind of stories,

(12:13):
classic books and classic literature. Wishbone would like teleport into
those stories and tell those stories through his lens, through
his eyes, and it was a great way to kind
of learn about books while also looking at an awesome
Jack Russell terrier. So that's my four air Bud Free,
Willie Black, Beauty, and Wishbone.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
What you got. That's a good list, Emory. You know,
you do have a little bit of age on me
in that way where you can reel back a little
bit more and go a little bit deeper. First, one
that I remember watching as a kid, Marley and Me.
Was that CGI? No, it's not CGI. It's just like
the saddest movie of all time, I know, but it
was a great dog movie.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
It is a great dog movie. But I mean, anybody
who knows what happens to that movie, I mean, like
in arts and anybody's been through that.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
The loss of a dog hurts. It's devastating, but you
can applaud the vision of a director to be able
to pull that off in a film and make you.
I mean, it's a feeling that we all. Well, I
hope not everyone's felt it because it's terrible, but you know,
if you care about animals, you will have felt it.
And if you care about your animal, you should feel
that way when you lose your animal. But okay, yeah,

(13:17):
I mean it deserves to have consideration. I just it's
too heavy for me. I would not rewatch that movie.
But it's not a good rewatch one that I actually
did remember watching my Grandpa's House when I was younger.
Old yeller, what's wrong with you? You know what is
wrong with you? Mind you? There's not the second saddest

(13:39):
dog movie at all time. We don't have this just
catalog of a bunch of movies that I have real
animals in it, you know, like I could say Life
of Pie up here, which is cool and it's a
good movie, but mostly CGI, so it doesn't count, right,
But you pick the two saddest ones. I would rather
watch a sad movie than a horror movie. Okay, me too.

(14:01):
I still like, I'm gonna avoid sad movies too. But
you don't know that on your first watch through that
you're gonna end in tears.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
I think people knew about Old Yeller. But anyway, all right,
Old Yeller. It's another classic, but again the waterworks. What
do you got next?

Speaker 2 (14:18):
My next one is Max, Max, former military combat dog.
Than his handler dies and so it gets the dog
gets past his little brother. It's a belgianlinwah yeah, okay,
all right, all right. I think this is ringing a
bell and the brother is going through a really hard time.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
The dog's important to his growth. Yeah, it's a person
story with the dog is kind of the vehicle to
get there. Yeah, okay, now you're you're tracking the right way, now, okay, yes?

Speaker 2 (14:51):
And what you got for your yes? And I know
that there was a little bit of CG I used
in this one Charlotte's Web, but a lot of real
animals were also used.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
The pig is real in the little live action of that. Sure,
I think some people would probably go babe if they
wanted to go like the pig route. But Charlott's Webb
does take place on a farm with a bunch of
different animals, and it's also a very classic story, very classic.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Good list sad list.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Charlott's Web isn't super sad, but you know the first
two on your list, My goodness, get the get the
Kleenex out