Typically on movie sets, only big stars get those fancy, oversized trailers for dressing rooms. But on “The Friend” an unknown was a really big star. Even bigger than his fellow actor Naomi Watts.
Quite literally: The newcomer, Bing, is the Harlequin Great Dane at the center of “The Friend,” the new film based on Sigrid Nunez’s National Book Award-winning novel. At around 150 pounds, he needed the substantial accommodations between scenes so he could rest and move his pony-like frame without overstimulation. His trailer request was approved.
“The Friend” tells the story of a writer named Iris (Watts) who is grieving the death by suicide of her mentor, Walter (Bill Murray). The difficult process of mourning is compounded when she learns that Walter has asked that she look after his dog, the huge Apollo (Bing), who is mired in sorrow himself. Apollo initially is resistant to Iris’s affections, longing for his dead master and taking over her small New York City apartment. Eventually they heal together.
When Watts got the script, she was skeptical that the movie would even work.
“In the film industry we know the old adages: More time, more money if you add animals and children, and this was a small budget in New York City,” she said in a video interview. “What was being presented on the page, it just seemed like, ‘How will we be able to achieve this?’”
But the film’s directors, Scott McGehee and David Siegel, were undeterred and set about finding the perfect pup for the part. For that, they went to the veteran animal trainer William Berloni, who also had his doubts. He thought it would be impossible to find a dog that fit the requirements of the role: A black-and-white spotted Dane with his testicles still intact who had a movie-star quality.
After a cross-country search that lasted about five months between late 2019 and early 2020, Berloni reached out to Bev Klingensmith, a breeder in Newton, Iowa. Klingensmith thought the email was spam. Even when she realized it wasn’t, she didn’t think it would be realistic. “I thought, ‘neat, but not for me,’” she said. Klingensmith also works a tech job in the financial sector. After reconsidering, she decided she would just help the production find a dog that wasn’t her own. But Bing, who at the time was 18 months old, ended up being the ideal candidate, and he and Klingensmith eventually ended up spending three months in New York for preparation and shooting.
“It was so obvious when we met Bing that he had star quality,” McGehee said.
Klingensmith, who has owned four generations of Bing’s line, always knew Bing was special. “He’s one of those dogs that you can kind of speak in English to, basic sentences, and he’s like, I got you, I know what you need and I’ll do it,” Klingensmith said on a video call as Bing lounged behind her on a cavernous dog bed. At one point she shifted her camera to show him on his back, giant legs splayed in the air.
But, despite his natural responsiveness, Bing still had to prepare for the shoot, which wound up being delayed because of the pandemic and entertainment industry strikes. In the interim, Klingensmith worked on a skill that was difficult for Bing: Getting him to hold something in his mouth for a scene in which he has to grab Walter’s old T-shirt, cuddling it like a comfort toy.
“He’s not a retriever; that does not come easily to him,” Klingensmith said.
Weeks before shooting, Berloni and Klingensmith started getting Watts acquainted with Bing. The actress considers herself an animal lover and isn’t afraid of a little slobber. At first she thought the lengthy training sessions were excessive, but once she met Bing, who measures 34 inches at the withers, she realized how his size would affect what they needed to do together onscreen.
“He’s very strong,” she said. “He weighs a lot more than me and we’re going to be out on the streets of New York where there’s all kinds of interference.” They had to be prepared to encounter cars, onlookers and other dogs, some of whom might not be as docile as Bing.
Early on in filming, she said, she felt “overwhelmed” having to cross Seventh Avenue with Bing as traffic headed their way.
There were strict rules on set to keep Bing as calm as possible and solidify the bond between him and Watts. No one other than Watts, Berloni and Klingensmith was allowed to interact with him between takes. (McGehee said he observed that rule more than Siegel did.)
While Berloni said that Bing’s biggest reward was Klingensmith’s praise, he also got treats of chicken and steak. Each night, the trainers would retire to a house on Staten Island where Bing and his canine understudy stayed and the humans took turns cooking the next day’s rewards: two pounds of meat. (In the end, the understudy wasn’t used.)
Bing, it should be said, is a very good boy. But sometimes being such a good boy was actually not what the script required, which posed a challenge for the filmmakers.
Watts recalled one scene in which a character played by Constance Wu tells Apollo to get off her fancy couch.
“This is a dog that’s well trained and doesn’t want to make mistakes, and so he would immediately get off, but he was supposed to stay because he’s supposed to be a bad dog at this moment,” Watts said. “But what happened to him after being told, ‘No, no, get off,” was he went into a little bit of a funk. He felt down, he was disappointed because of the confusion. So we had to rethink and reorganize on how to do that.”
The trainers also employed some tricks to get Bing to convey the right emotions for scenes without upsetting him too much. “The Friend” is contingent on Bing appearing sad, a trait he performs incredibly well. Some of that is his naturally drooping eyes and large jowls, but Berloni and Klingensmith also trained some movements that would approximate despondency. In other cases, Berloni would tell Klingensmith to leave the studio.
“He would sort of look around and pine for her,” Berloni said.
And like many dogs, Bing would react to the actions of the humans around him. If Watts, as Iris, was crying, he recognized something was wrong.
“I think it kind of bothered him that she was upset,” Klingensmith said. “And I don’t know if dogs always know exactly how to express that other than just being there, right? They are a comfort and I think that comes through.”
Even with the challenges, did Bing like being an actor? He seemed to, at least according to Klingensmith.
“He really did,” Klingensmith said. “And he learned what ‘cut’ meant too. When they yelled, ‘cut,’ he did, and he would be like, ‘All right cool.’”
Camera operation by Tim Schutsky.