The Dog Episode - with SQuire and Louise DuArt Rushnell

Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy and today I am joined by Squire Rushnell and Louise Duarte Rushnell who are friends of our Centre and are just about to have a film that they have been collaborating on with Netflix released in the middle of March and this is a film about a very special dog so in their honour and while we talk about filmmaking we're going to have a general theme about dogs in fiction and dogs in real life so first of all Squire and Louise perhaps you'd like to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to make this film. Well that's wonderful Julia so wonderful to be with you. Well the our backgrounds are in the entertainment business all of our lives and I was at ABC for 20 years and 15 of those were in children's television so I did a lot of fantasy work and a lot of dogs that talk you know so it is not unusual for us to be in the door movie making business. What we have done is we have been producing a series of books about Godwinks which are those little coincidences that we say are not coincidence and so what does that got to do with dogs? Well we decided that we would do a book about Godwink stories, all true stories about amazing situations, always with a dog at the centre of the story and that's a dog wink and so when we presented this to Netflix they started crying and we started telling them about more of the true stories that we have in our dog wink book and when we got to Ruby they said let's do that and so that's how that all kind of evolved. I'm going to build the suspense here because you know that's one of the good rules the storytelling if you don't tell everybody up front exactly how great Ruby is you've got to carry on. Yeah so again to reach the wonderful Ruby in a minute but I think just the theme of dogs taught me thinking about how we write about dogs we all know that thanks to the pandemic a lot of people went out and got themselves pets didn't they and if they didn't have a dog before many more people do now I'm a dog owner I've got two if you got dogs we had dogs we don't have a dog at the moment but then you have the experience of what the thing about a dog unlike a cat which is always feels as though you're it's servant a dog is definitely you know all the cliches about a man's best friend or woman's best friend are true about them they are characters in the house and very much part of a family as much as a dog can be so when you turn to looking at dogs in fiction I think some of those qualities carry across don't don't they so when you were growing up what were the main sort of fictional products about dogs that you were watching or reading or how they appeared in your story so far well when Squire was at ABC he did develop a show called Scooby-Doo which was one of those wonderful fantasy dogs and Scooby-Doo come on everybody that was worth tuning in for just to hear that sniffing I did not know that you mentioned Scooby-Doo when we were chatting before but I now need to take my hat off to you because it's definitely probably my favorite cartoon dog right there so tell us more about Scooby well I think that along the line of where you were going that that in fantasy dogs that come alive when you you start thinking about well what would a certain dog sound like what would dog say what would a dog think about and so on and so forth and so in our jobs in building fantasy cartoon characters you know a dog like Scooby is it's it's building the character and so every wonderful story has rich characters you you kind of know what those characters are all about right from the beginning and hopefully you fall in love with them and so Scooby is just an oversized dog who's afraid of his own shadow and he happens to be working with a group of kids who happen to be on ghost hunts all the time so Scooby there's always afraid and I can remember one day when I was visiting a friend of mine Dr. Joe Barbera who Hannah Barbera were the cartoon makers who who created Scooby and and I said Joe I think we ought to have a new character to Scooby do and so we were paddling around his pool and Palm Springs in big yogi bear kind of inner tubes paddling along and there were all of these big shrubs around us and we could just imagine that the little old ladies next door on either side were listening into this conversation of two grown men as we were talking about creating a new character and I said you know the character I always loved was the Tasmanian devil and so he was very small but he was afraid of nothing and so Joe because that would be the offset to Scooby so Joe says yeah I've been thinking about that we'll have a nephew by the name of scrappy scrappy do yeah yeah yeah and so here we are having this conversation well what would he how would he reactable well Scooby would be in a place where he's frightened and he's jumped up into the chandelier and the chandelier is moving in at shaking and incomes little scrappy do hello Uncle Scoob good idea you be up there so you can jump on the bad guy so Scooby always saw his uncle as a hero and never saw any faults whatsoever and so that is how the evolution of those little dogs came about I think one of the lovely things about Scooby Scooby do senior is the way I think he gives a child the child probably emotes or he relates most to him and Shaggy they're like fragments of part of what it's like to be a child so you can be scared as Scooby and I suppose maybe what scrappy do is it presents a possibility of the brave self doesn't it yeah psychology psychologist out there who's done it you know that the kids and scrappy and Scooby are probably the entire human psyche right there probably I should think so yeah I'm sure that's or it's a thesis somewhere so working in cartoon obviously you don't have the the problem of working with real animals because you can draw whatever you like he can be eating a huge sandwich or swinging from the chandelier no no problem at all but of course some of the fiction about dogs that I remember most are ones which involved real dogs in films and two that came to mind my thinking about that is of course we have to mention Lassie yeah little Jimmy's down the well I mean sassy warnings in the 70s seems to be Lassie time in my memory yeah and then more recently they're sort of stand out train dog appearing in a film I remember is the very interesting film called the artist about the golden age of cinema in the black and white and I think that was called Aggie and was almost not an Oscar for it I think so can you when you think back to watching television or films is there any other dogs that you can remember that sort of influence your relationship to how dogs up a trade on film where we always love Rin Tin Tin and of course all yellow all yellow was one of my favorites of course you know my we didn't like the ending and it's it's interesting because I have two sons that just love their dogs one of my youngest son actually has five dogs that he got from a shelter and he and his wife whenever they're looking at a dog movie they go online and make sure I think it's called did the dog die or and if the dog dies they don't let go bang they were wounded by old yellow they were wounded yeah but so and we don't like that either and and we'll talk about Ruby in a minute but there there was a point at the beginning of the film where it did not look promising they're Ruby yeah and so a lot of people say just please please tell me to does Ruby live yeah you need to get your listing on does the dog die correct or I feel it's a dog away yeah right yeah before we come to Ruby I told you I was building the suspense because she's such a wonderful story about her and there's a couple other honorable mentions that we need to happen now I think which I think gives Snoopy yeah yeah yeah and I think is an interesting one in that Snoopy isn't the sort of loveable family dog Snoopy is the ironic commentator yeah quite a cat-like presence I think in Snoopy yeah yeah but Snoopy you notice doesn't live in the house he has to stay outside in the dog house but but you always think that Charles shows the cartoonist that that Snoopy was a lot of his personality Charlie Brown obviously was a big part of his personality but Snoopy was was the wise voice very often and and it's isn't wonderful how we how we can take these animals and give them a wisdom that maybe we don't have and and give them an ability to observe things that we just don't think about now I think I remember you always talking about dogs when you and when you'd see them and you'd start because you always did voices for a living she did voices for cartoon characters and other characters and as an impressionist Oliver adult life so you would look at a dog and and start to wonder what would he would sound like yeah it depends yeah that every dog has their own personality and every animal actually has their own personality we would look at that you know there's a fascinating story and how animals can actually save someone's like fantasy animals like bugs bunny oh but this is the most fascinating story about bugs well can I tell you that story about bugs bunny yeah he's not specifically a dog but we'll allow bugs bunny to son of yeah yeah bugs bugs bunny is we're talking about the classics here now bugs bunny was the voice creation was was created the voice of bugs bunny was created by Mel blank and he did all of the Warner Brothers voice characters from forky pig to what suffer in the dog he did deputy dog to suffer in suck attack well you've got to do the boys all right thank you very much and so and so bugs bunny was probably the most famous character that that Mel blank ever did Mel blank was in a terrible terrible accident automobile accident every bone in his body with the exception of I think one arm or something like that was broken and he was in a in in this mummified kind of condition in a coma and the doctors were worried that if he didn't come out of this coma his we would have brain damage weeks had gone by and the doctors would would just plead with the family to just stay there and keep talking to to Mel blank one day the doctor came in and he was obviously worried weeks had gone by and he came into the room making his morning rounds and at the moment that he was about to take a look at Mel blank this stayed and rather a serious doctor notice that on the screen bugs bunny had just appeared on the TV in the room and so he's hearing beep beep beep all those cartoon noises and and so the doctor a little bit out of character says well good morning bugs how are you today and for the first time Mel blank spoke as bugs bunny and what's up doc you know and so wrecking a journey because he comes out of a coma that's yeah and and so it was later explained to me by neurologist that that different parts of the brain respond to different cues and Mel blank was always you know listening to cues from the director okay what about you bugs what about you porky what about you suffering or fight or any one of those and so that at that moment the doctor was like the director and even though even though Mel blank could not speak bugs bunny was in a part of the brain was in a little piece of his brain that did work and so the doctor then said well how are you porky are you in there and so porky pig started to talk and and that is how bugs bunny this fantasy character helped save Mel blank's life and bring him out of that coma it went on for the other 30 years of doing cartoon voices oh well I definitely that's a film in there as well as choir just you know if you're looking for a film another film project alright so I that's talking you know with voices and and Louise you know hats off to you now for doing all those different voices because that is a skill I definitely don't have I wish I did have but I've also thought there is quite a number of dogs who are very expressive but don't speak and the two that came to mind because we're in Europe over here is snowy from tintin who is obviously as intelligent as tintin they're they're the Sherlock and Watson of you know Belgium and also Wallace and grommet now that they're the arden animation variations I think you've probably seen some of those films but if you look at grommet it's just his eyebrows or the sort of even eyebrows it's just his eyes animate and that's is that's he doesn't need to say anything because he has such a range of very subtle commentary upon for all grommet so we definitely use dogs as a kind of reflection back on us don't we and a commentator on our society and what we're doing with it and got a mention Pluto messages and people saying you've forgot Pluto I haven't forgot oh yeah flew to lady in the tram we love lady in the tram too yes we do oh yeah yeah that's a classic but the I think everyone thinks first of the the scene where they're falling in love with yeah we could forget classic yeah I think I prefer lady in the tram to Pluto somehow I think that they've got more Pluto I think because he's for me he's lost within the ensemble you know Mickey Mouse everybody yeah no lady in the tram is definitely a very fondly remembered from my childhood so okay I'm now going to introduce a real hero we've been talking about fictional dogs so let's have a real hero and tell us about Ruby so you mentioned at the beginning that you came across her story and in a whole series of books about sort of the dog wing idea of these wonderful wonderful coincidences that happen yeah well you you came up with the idea well what happened was we were we do the godwink series of books so there's 12 books in the series and and one day I just had this thought that it was just such a strong feeling I said to score I think we should do a book about dogs and he said what what are we gonna do with the dog we did the godwink books and then square I so what if we did a book called dogwinks and we do godwinks but you know these supernatural occurrences that happen only with dogs in the center of the story so we that okay that's that's good but where are we gonna get these dog stories in the very next day on my Facebook here potwinkers and what pops up but a woman writes hey did you guys see this incredible story about a canine officer in Providence wrote island and the shelter dog name Ruby and it's in the Providence journal you should read it so we read it in squares and oh my gosh that's not only the first story for the book but that's a movie and so he went on then to call the principles of the story one thing led to another and then the NBC today show square was talking about it there and then that's how the whole Netflix thing evolved and next thing you know March 17th we have a movie called rescue by Ruby but it's every markable it really is a supernatural story and you know as there are 20 stories in the book dogwinks but as we were writing them I was feeling that we needed to have the dog's voice because here we are telling the story about people but what about the dog I mean the dog is the center of the story but we're not hearing the dog's voice and so as we went through each one of those 20 stories we put in thought like thought balloons in the book thoughts of the dog what they might be thinking at that particular moment what their point of view was at that particular moment so that we were representing them even though they were laying under the table at the time they certainly had an observation and they could see things that helped move the story along and and so I think that that was part of the evolution of Ruby in terms of the joy of seeing that character evolve Ruby is a just in a nutshell it is a story about a Rhode Island state police officer who grew up with ADHD you know he was he had deficit disorders and hyper activity and so forth and so he always had to work harder in school he had to try harder to be in sports in that police academy he had to work 10 times harder than anybody else and so he always thought in the back of his mind that if he could if he could be like a dog they have a supernatural power of being able to smell and being able to they had an ability to to pick up sense that was a kind of a superhero power and he thought that if he could be associated with a dog that that would take care of his deficits and his deficiencies and so that's why he always wanted to be in the in the canine core but because he was ADD he he just couldn't get through and the meantime he finally was about to get the chance to be in the canine core and the budget was cut because they buy these dogs from the Ukraine that cost 10 or 15 thousand dollars that are bred for police work and so he is then through incredible godwinks dogwinks he is connected in real life with a rescue dog who is also ADD and that's the dog name Ruby Ruby has been rejected by five families about to be euthanized because nipping was on the on the record just just before they had to make that decision with the help of the lawyers of course and so when officer Dan is paired with Ruby at the last minute and that is the the nucleus of their relationship it is a long path of six months trying to train Ruby but Ruby rises to the occasion eventually and becomes the number one dog in the canine unit and then I'm not going to tell you the end of the movie because there is an amazing godwink at the end that will just blow everybody's mind and it's a hundred percent true this movie really captures the true story everything about it is true except for one character and we'll let you guess who that is to when you see it on Netflix now I happen to have had a little bit of what the twist might be and I just want to say to the people out there that it is one of those twists which if you're on writer script writer you would think up for fiction yeah and you know that thing about fact is stranger than fiction that is definitely the true here so yeah definitely watch that and find out can I just ask not not because I have a dog who doesn't always come back when called would I also pick up training tips whilst watching this oh yeah oh absolutely yeah as a matter of fact our writer in the beginning had too much training in it way too much training and so we kept saying parrot back parrot back we don't want to go to school you know I mean this is not a college degree and how to train your dog but it is now the perfect balance of training and people will learn a lot of things about training their dogs by watching rescued by Ruby starting March 17th on Netflix I've got that in the calendar I've watched that I've put a link to the trailer in the show notes as well so people can can watch it so that's a true story which is phenomenal in itself but there's another layer of story here isn't there yeah is about working with real animals I was actually at this weekend just reading it and I think it was in the Times newspaper over here that because there's a lot of content being made over in the UK at the moment people who supply animals for television and film are completely inundated requests for dogs and owls and I know cats any anything that appears in your favorite show and quite often that is a dog so huge demand for star dogs and stunt dogs and so on how did you find your Ruby because the Ruby in the film isn't the real Ruby presumably because real Ruby is either up you know in the farmup state or no Ruby's still working and Ruby is Australian Shepherd border collie mix which both of them are very very smart both of them are highly active and but that's that's one of the secrets as to Ruby's finding her purpose in life but but Ruby you know as with any Hollywood film usually when they portray a real character the actor actress is a lot more shall we say a little prettier maybe yes yes yes so so the the dog that plays Ruby is beautiful and the dog really looks like Lassie but here's here's the story it was so parallel this dog named bear was found on the streets in Oklahoma very much like Ruby they brought it to a shelter and the days look like they were numbered for bear and our trainers who we had asked them we said could you possibly get a shelter dog to play a shelter dog and they said well that's not gonna be easy but you know we'll look and they found this dog bear at a shelter with basically the same kind of ending that Ruby would have had if Ruby wasn't saved and that's a whole another thing that we won't talk about because that's part of the surprise at the end but what happened was they took a bear and then as they were leaving with bear the shelter said you have to take Shiloh this is bear's best friend they've been together in the shelter and they'll just be heartbroken if you don't take Shiloh too so they did now Shiloh is the stand-in basically for bear so when the movie so they did a whole makeover on Shiloh to look just like Ruby which is bear and Shiloh does a lot of the jumping and the leaping and the running and so it's just in its amazing story how this dog was saved just like Ruby was yeah it's just it's just getting better and better and I never knew this well bear is a male name bear is a male dog who plays Ruby which is a girl dog and I never knew that lassie was played by a male dog oh no it's all my illusion but shattered always all the lassies because they were more than there's more than one all the lassies were played by male dogs yeah yeah amazing yeah so anyway we just we we had so much fun making this film and everyone loved these dogs so much I would I want to be that dog I want to be Ruby I really because Ruby gets treated great so is bear still working as a a film dog now as it is this big on a career or is bear now living with the trainer having living with the trainer yeah I'm sure I'm sure bear will have more screen appearances I think they get really an amazing yeah I think I think bear almost had to live with the trainers because the trainers had to teach bear to be very naughty had to tear up couches you know and oh no sorts of things and dig holes and lawns and everything so so I can't imagine you wonder if that is psychologically damaging to bear you know we saw the the movie that is out now called dog yes which we're not raving about because we're happy happy dog happy movie people you know and that that's a bit on the dark side for us but it's a war dog and you think about dogs that are used for for police work and war I mean they're doing their job but they they become psychologically you know damaged because of their work I wonder yeah but I think they they know how to undo it all I think the trainers do yeah because we would they would be so funny because we would see some of the scenes and you don't hear the trainers but they'd say dig it dig it dig it dig it dig it dig it you know and you know the dog is digging up a wall you see the dog digging up them all good good dog dig it dig it dig it so I wouldn't think that would be how do you undo that I don't know this this is the next film isn't it and that's where all the dog that's why all dog owners will be tuning in and how to undo bad habits I would have thought that they probably work really hard on cues which don't you know don't exist in ordinary life or else the trainer would be professionally living in a house that is you know wrecked so it can't be acceptable so rescued by Ruby's a most fantastic story and and I'm sure I'll really enjoy meeting this incredible dog and I'm actually even more impressed to find that Ruby could not be pulled away from her day job to become a film star I think that has added an extra layer for me and pleasure thinking that she's out there working as we speak and we always have is a tradition on these podcasts to pick where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to be something or you know where's the best river where's the best in that kind of thing and in your honor in the honor of Ruby and Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo we will have to choose where is the best place to be a dog now just to give you the sort of life of the land you can choose any sort of fantasy world it can be the worlds of myths and legends so you know it could be Cerberus at the gates of hey you know Hades or one of the you know one of those mythic dogs or it could be McCartoon it really doesn't matter the choice is yours what are you going to choose well you know I would want to be one of Queen Elizabeth's dogs one of the Gorkies I would love that to live in the palace and to go and she's she's always taken the dogs for walkie you know I'd love to I'd love to know that's real life so you have to you have to choose a fictional version of that there's 20 fictional versions of the Queen you can choose so in the crown it's a fantasy well I think after watching Ruby and the the the big attraction for Ruby was raw hot dogs so I would say the best place is in a hot dog factory I don't think there's any question about that that's where Ruby would want to be very not good for her her health they we have a lot of people who listen to this who are Tolkien fans and I should just do an honorable mention to one of Tolkien has two talking dogs that I could remember one is a dog called Juan or H-U-A-N who appears in the Silmarillion and he plays a wonderful part in the story of Baron and Lothian which is one of the central love stories Tolkien made up but he does have a heroic but tragic end so I wouldn't recommend being a dog in in the first stage of Tolkien's Middle-earth and then his other dog is one in his story called The Farmer Giles of Ham where it's a farmer's dog and that story involves the arrival of a dragon into the area it's like a comic story of a medieval setting so that dog gets quite a good deal as well but actually you know what I think the best place to be a dog is them is right under our noses it's Scooby-Doo you get your hot dogs squire and Scooby-Sex and you get to ride around with your friends in a mystery machine oh that's round yeah so to be honest like you know and and Ruby Ruby didn't have to have much didn't have to learn much language you know I mean what else did you have to know about Scooby anybody can talk like Scooby so I think that that is the best fantasy world the world of Scooby thank you so much for joining us to talk about dogs in fantasy and in real life I think you know it's even more exciting when you find something that feels like fantasy but actually turns out to be true and we wish you all the best with your film when it comes out in March the 17th thank you very much thank you so much morning the following zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words when you're hiring 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