I’m busy?

Take four: I load Marley into the back of the van

with the boy and shut the door. Before Gosse calls

“Action!” he breaks for a few minutes to confer

with his assistants. Finally, the scene rolls. The van

pulls to the curb. The door slides open. The daugh-

ter steps out. The boy steps out, but with a bewil-

dered look on his face. He peers directly into the

camera and holds up his hand. Dangling from it is

half the leash, its end jagged and wet with saliva.

“Cut! Cut! Cut!”

The boy explained that as he waited in the van,

Marley began gnawing on the leash and wouldn’t

stop. The crew and cast were staring at the severed

leash in disbelief, a mix of awe and horror on their

faces as though they had just witnessed some great

and mysterious force of nature. I, on the other

hand, was not surprised in the least. Marley had

sent more leashes and ropes to their graves than I

could count; he even managed to chew his way

through a rubber-coated steel cable that was adver-

tised “as used in the airline industry.” Shortly after

Conor was born, Jenny came home with a new

product, a doggie travel harness that allowed her to

buckle Marley into a car seat belt so he couldn’t

wander around the moving vehicle. In the first

ninety seconds using the new device, he managed

Marley & Me

to chew through not only the heavy harness itself

but the shoulder strap of our brand-new minivan.

“Okay, everybody, let’s take a break!” Gosse

called out. Turning to me, he asked—in an amaz-

ingly calm voice—“How quickly can you find a

new leash?” He didn’t have to tell me how much

each lost minute cost him as his union-scale actors

and crew sat idle.

“There’s a pet store a half mile from here,” I

said. “I can be back in fifteen minutes.”

“And this time get something he can’t chew

through,” he said.

I returned with a heavy chain leash that looked

like something a lion trainer might use, and the

filming continued, take after failed take. Each

scene was worse than the one before. At one point,

Danielle the teenage actress let out a desperate

shriek midscene and screamed with true horror in

her voice, “Oh my God! His thing is out!”

“Cut!”

In another scene, Marley was panting so loudly

at Danielle’s feet as she spoke on the telephone to

her love interest that the sound engineer flipped

off his headphones in disgust and complained

loudly, “I can’t hear a word she’s saying. All I hear

is heavy breathing. It sounds like a porn flick.”

“Cut!”

So went day 1 of shooting. Marley was a disas-

John Grogan

ter, unmitigated and without redemption. Part of

me was defensive— Well, what did they expect

for free? Benji? —and part was mortified. I self-

consciously stole glances at the cast and crew and

could see it plainly on their faces: Where did this

Дата добавления: 2014-12-24