There’s a reason why the majority of movies you see featuring mostly animal characters tend to be animated. Cute as the creatures may be on screen, their performances are notoriously challenging to evoke/control. Strays, however, is a new comedy that is wholly dependent on the work of canine actors, and even the film’s director is amazed by how much the dogs could really do and how little CGI was ultimately needed.
As captured in the video above, I had the pleasure of interviewing Strays director Josh Greenbaum earlier this week during the movie’s virtual press day, and we discussed both the limitations of animal performers and the amazing things that they can do. An important part of the production was determining what was safe for the dogs to do on screen, and he was impressed by how little needed to be fixed in the post-production process. Said the filmmaker,
There was definitely bits that we either thought were either not gonna be worth it or too difficult to get the dogs to do. Obviously anytime it was anywhere near unsafe, we of course resorted to a full CG dog, but that wound up only needing to be about 5% of the movie. The bulk of what you're watching is real dogs performances – which blew my mind, the level of certainly comedy, but also emotion. I mean, there's a lot of really emotional deliveries and moments and that's all captured right on camera.
Strays centers on Reggie, a Border Terrier voiced by Will Ferrell whose life mostly sucks thanks to Doug, his abusive owner (played by Will Forte). Hating Reggie, Doug makes regular attempts to abandon the dog – but this activity backfires when Reggie meets a fellow stray named Bug (Jamie Foxx) and realizes just how horribly Doug treats him. Vowing revenge, the little Terrier becomes determined to not only make it back home but to bite Doug’s penis off. You can watch the movie’s trailer below:
Reggie and Bug – a Boston Terrier – are joined on their adventure in Strays by a Great Dane (voiced by Randall Park) and an Australian Shepherd (voiced by Isla Fisher), and together they experience what life is like without having owners (which includes a whole lot of humping). Josh Greenbaum told me that there were a lot of ideas for the film that had to be left on the table because they couldn’t be feasibly executed with the animal cast, but he explained how the filmmakers went about getting the most out of the performers:
What was great was, first of all, once we did have the script, I got with my animal training team right away, and where I would normally take two weeks with my actors and really rehearse the movie and go through the script, I did a page-by-page with the training team and talked through every beat, everything I was expecting the dog to be able to do. 'Let me know if it can't do that or what we can't convey, both comedically, but also emotionally.'
As I write in my Strays review for CinemaBlend, it’s impressive just how much the movie is able to get the dogs to do. With a cast that also includes Brett Gelman, Rob Riggle, Jamie Demetriou, Sofia Vergara, Jimmy Tatro and more, the film is now playing in theaters everywhere.
