It is said that dog owners look like their dogs. A clich茅?
It's old, it's untrue, and ultimately uninteresting, which was why when I started to make "Best in Show" people said "Oh, are you gonna make them look alike?" and I said "No." There is something to be said for people picking breeds as to how they see themselves. You see men walking dogs and there are a couple of purposes. One is 'I'm walking this dog because I have a small penis'; another is 'the dog that I'm walking is a cute dog so I can meet women'. The same motives are true for women, I'm sure. That's more interesting than the simplistic 'let me get a dog that looks like me'.
I assume you spent a long time observing dog shows?
I did spend a year going to dog shows and reading. I looked at a ton of material about the way a dog show was shot for television. They have videos in the States of the big dog shows and I spent a long time with the cameraman looking at the stadia. The characters came from the actors, though. My character lived in North Carolina and they hunt for racoons there. They use hunter dogs. I looked at some 'coon hounds but they weren't quite right, so I ended up with a bloodhound.
You improvised a great deal of the film. How did that work in terms of shooting the movie?
I had a microphone to talk with the cameraman. It was all hand-held and I actually told him who to focus on, almost a live television technique. In the best world, the director of photography would light the set and I would operate the camera because only I would know where the camera had to be. I knew what was developing. I could hear a joke developing. It was exciting because it happened right then.
