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Dog run

Threat advisory: Severe - Severe risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Dog run is about the friendship of two rebellious young men, one running from life, the other searching for it.

Eddie (Brian Marc) and Miles (Craig Duplessis) are teen runaways who meet and become friends in New Orleans. They hook up with a local drug dealer, who sends them to New York city for a drug deal, with the promise of easy money and a place to live. When the deal falls through, they find themselves penniless on the Lower East Side. They encounter other runaway kids who have taken up residence in an abandoned tenement building; the friends are quickly drawn into this unique subculture dominated by "squatters," "gutter punks" and "crusties," they discover a vast underworld of "squats" (abandoned buildings) where the kids live, and the night clubs, bars and parks where they hang out.

It's a world run by sex, drugs and survival.

Eddie adapts quickly to his now environment, taking up with a fellow resident named Tara (Lisa Ristorucci) and getting hooked on heroin. However, Miles soon tires of his marginal existence and attempts to escape it through a romance with Rachel (Elizabeth Horsburgh), an NYU student who helps him get a job and lets him move in with her. As their paths diverge, Miles and Eddie suddenly find their friendship tested by their different outlooks on how to survive in the city.

Persons of interest

Brian Marc .... Eddie
Craig DuPlessis .... Miles
Lisa Ristorucci .... Tara
Elizabeth Horsburgh .... Rachel
Gary Cunningham .... Lee
Lisa Cork-Twiss .... Roberta
Michele Santopietro .... Stephanie
Michelle Fierro .... Angela
Brian Marc .... Screenwriter
D Ze'ev Gilad .... Screenwriter
D Ze'ev Gilad .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Interview with Craig Duplessis
Production notes
FYI: A dog run is a place where dogs are allowed to get out of their cramped urban apartments and stretch their legs in the fresh air
Studios and distributors

21st Century Pictures

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Down and out in New Orleans and New York.

If you're too busy being relaxed and comfortable to look out the window of your Volvo at the silent figures sleeping in the doorways of local shops then you'll have no appreciation for Dog run. It's just one of those things. If, however, you've ever queued for free food at the local Hare Krishna's or stood in an endless line of unemployed people at Centrelink or picked up 10 cents from the footpath or run screaming from the depths of suburbia not caring where you end up as long as it isn't home... you'll empathise. You don't have to live on the street to understand Dog run but it wouldn't hurt.

There's a big documentary element to the film, brought about by the way parts of it were made: guerilla style. The scenes with street kids are scenes with street kids, shot in situ. The only acting is coming from Brian, Craig, Lisa and Rachael. While not 100% ethical it does give an added roughness to the whole thing, supplying extra grit and grime gratis. The sets were cinema verité, too, which doesn't hurt at all. Having this kind of thematic integrity is a bonus to the actors who can bounce off their surroundings much more easily than being on a set, surrounded by bored, underpaid and underappreciated extras.

Where Dog run falls down is that it's shot digitally, resulting in an indie quality that undermines the value of its message. Of course, this sort of film is always going to have budgetary concerns but I have to work within the arena of possibilities, not realities. Having top-quality film stock would release the mind from technical concerns, freeing it to peruse actions and events.

But that's only a small stumble, not a tumble over the edge of a cliff. Dog run is - and will always be - about content, not packaging. The shoot-outs, the big drug deals, the philosophical gangster and the swinging clubs are absent in favour of people leading lives. Eddie and Miles orbit each other like electrons, then physics takes over and they slingshot out in search of the nearest proton. (That was a bit esoteric, wasn't it?) If you like your life real, then watch this film.

Report from D Ze'ev Gilad

Dog run was not shot digitally! It was shot on super-16 and blown up to 35 mm, with very little grain - if you had the opportunity to see it on the big screen, you would see all the rich detail in the film. Unfortunately, there is no theatrical release scheduled for Australia as far as I know - what you saw was a film-to-tape, which was dubbed a few times, then converted from NTSC to PAL, then dubbed again a few times - so I don't feel it's fair for you to make any judgements on how the film really "looks" - come over to LA in February and see it in all its glory.

Theatrical report

He's absolutely right! Image degradation was due to the multiple generations required to produce the preview tape I saw. You should ignore the paragraph about Dog run being shot digitally but keep the information in mind for when you make your own feature film.

Intelligence analyst

Secret Agent Acid Thunder

Theatrical report

Wow.

Have you ever seen Kids? Dog run is the next step. What Kids lost out on was the cinematography: it was unable to reproduce the required level of realism. I wanted to feel that I was in the room, or in the pool with Tully and his mates. Dog run brings real life from the streets and onto your TV.

You don't need to know the details of the film, there's enough in the Propaganda to let you know what it's about, but I will say that while watching this film I sometimes felt as though I was there, trapped in the pain and depression and shit as they experience. Not since seeing High art has your spud watched a more compelling real life film. See it now!

Security censorship classification

R 18+ (Drug use)

Surveillance time

103 minutes (1:43 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

VHS rental: 8 November 2000

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Production notes

The idea for the project came when Brian Marc began thinking about the runaway street kids he saw on a daily basis in his East Village neighbourhood. He noticed that people's initial reaction to these dirty, punked-out panhandlers tended to be "get a job." Brian began to wonder if there was more to this situation, especially after seeing an unbathed 11-year-old panhandling with his teenage sister. When he talked to some local street kids and did some research, it became clear that there was a compelling story that needed to be told.

After writing out an initial story, Brian contacted his friend D Ze'ev gilad and described his idea of making a film shot in a realistic style, which would combine real life runaways with actors. Ze'ev was instantly drawn to the topic, story and style. Together they set out to make a film that would seamlessly interlink reality and fiction, and through the characters of Eddie and Miles would tell the story of a friendship challenged by life on the streets,

As Brian continued developing the "narrative" element of the film, Ze'ev went out into the streets with a portable video camera and hung out with the squatters of the East Village, documenting their daily routines, conducting individual interviews and even taping activities inside an actual squat.

Brian and Ze'ev completed the screenplay in late 1994. Rejecting the idea of using "name" actors because their recognisability would conflict with the realistic style of the film, they decided to raise the money themselves. Within a few months, a considerable portion of the financing was secured. Looking for an experienced producer, they met Jeffrey Feldman, who joined the team and helped raise the remainder of the funds needed to begin production.

The four main leads were cast: Brian would play Eddie, and for the roles of Miles and Rachel they looked to an ensemble of actors with whom they had worked in the past, casting Craig Duplessis and Elizabeth Horsburgh. Several days of open calls led them to actress Lisa Ristorucci for the part of Tara. In order to maintain the realism and spontaneity which the project required, most secondary roles were filled by actual runaways and non-actors.

Sticking to the concept of ultra-realism - no sets, no studios with New York's Lower East Side and Tompkins Square Park as the backdrop - the production scouted out cafes, underground clubs, bars and real squats for locations,

The actors playing Eddie, Miles and Tara underwent a transformation. Their hair was dyed, shaved and dreadlocked. Body parts were pierced. they were put in grungy, dirty clothes and for about a month they hung out on the streets, immersing themselves in the lifestyle of street runaways, learning the ropes, meeting squatters and the various denizens of the streets.

Shooting began in March 1995. The first week of production focused on shooting the actors and real life runaways together. Keeping the fictional story in mind, the crew was kept portable and followed Eddie and Miles as they interacted with the street kids, shooting day-to-day incidents and provoking situations and conversations which would interweave with the scripted "fictional" material.

Then the "fictional" scenes were shot in three weeks, using actors as well as real life squatters and non-actors. The last week of production was shot on location in New Orleans.

The entire film was shot in a realistic, documentary style, employing hand-held cameras and naturalistic lighting.

Patrick Panzarella and Michael Chambers came aboard as executive producers, and supplied finishing funds through their company C&P Capital.

The music for the film includes original songs as well as pre-released tunes, many of which were supplied by matador records who, after viewing a rough cut, offered the filmmakers full access to their extensive music catalogue.

[ Back ]

Interview with Craig Duplessis

craig: Hi Craig, this is craig.

Craig: Hey, craig, how are ya?

craig: Good. You're sounding very American.

Craig: Sorry, hold on... give me 2 seconds and I'll straighten out. I've been here too long.

craig: How long?

Craig: Ah, gosh... 88 I came. Are you calling from Sydney?

craig: Yeah.

Craig: I appreciate you guys calling, it's great. If something can happen with the movie that'd be fantastic. It's been sitting around in limbo since 96.

craig: Yeah, it takes a lot of pushing to get people to actually think about something which isn't...

Craig: On their minds. A part of it is that we're banking on the novelty value of the fact that the movie's about the dark side of American culture. Have you seen it?

craig: Yeah. I do a lot of American bashing - or Hollywood bashing - when I write reviews...

Craig: Good!

craig: .... mostly because they deserve it but a lot of the stuff they produce is... "Hollywood," but I did notice that Dog run wasn't "Hollywood."

Craig: We shot it in the beginning of 95 and then there was all kinds of time in editing and putting it together. I'd been in New York for seven years. The beginning of the film is shot in New Orleans but we did it at the end, so I after that was done I stayed down there: I was fed up with New York. I stayed in New Orleans for a year and then I went home to Australia. Then they called me and said that it was going to première at the Los Angeles Film Festival and that I should come back because there was going to be some hype about it. It actually was received really well when it opened... I saw a review from Variety and it was very flattering that they liked the film a lot.

We'd all studied and worked together in New York. It was really Brian's brainchild and because we were all in this circle of friends we all worked on it to try and launch our careers. Rather than go the Hollywood route we'd do it ourselves.

craig: Well, it worked for Matt (Damon) and Ben (Affleck).

Craig: It sure did. It also worked for those guys that did The Blair witch project. Those were the germs of the film. Brian and I were friends. We studied acting together at hp studio in New York. I went there because I was in Australia, aged about 20 or 21 and studying acting and decided to get right into it. I hooked up with Kerry Armstrong and she'd studied in New York years ago with Herbert Bergoff and Uta HaGeneral You may not know the names but the school has a huge reputation; it's been around since the 40s and all kinds of people have been through there: Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Matthew Broderick, Denzel washington...

We were lucky enough to study with Herbert just before he died. That was a really fertile time for us as there were a lot of good actors there. No-one that I know has broken through yet but there was a really good vibe there. Herbert was in his 80s and a very eccentric gentleman from Austria who would frequently reduce people to tears.

After we'd done studying with him, we were battling it out, and Brian was living down near the lower east side - actually we were both were in that area - but we were frequently seeing kids, squatters hanging out and he got the inspiration for the story there. Ze'ev wanted to direct so they got together and worked their asses off and came up with a good screenplay. I guess that I wasn't that committed to it at that stage but they wanted me and...

craig: When was the last time an actor said no?

Craig: Yeah, exactly. We came from that whole school experience. Herbert was a very principled, opinionated teacher. The school was set up so that it was $4 a class and then it went up to $6 - and this was the 90s. It wasn't about churning people out to make films, it was about reaching into their guts and being good actors.

We came from that. That whole experience had a lasting effect on us and Brian wanted to make the film in the same vein. When he got the script together and we decided that we wanted to do it - the whole film is scripted. I know it doesn't look like it - but when we finally got down to work we decided to hang out with the kids for a month before production and really immerse ourselves in their culture.

That was one of the reasons why I was done with New York by the end of it because it was just so hard for me. After seven years there I'd reached the end of my cycle, seeing that side of the city was just too tough.

craig: Was that up to and including sleeping rough?

Craig: Yeah, yeah, including that. We basically figured out a plan where we told the kids Ze'ev was a director and he met us down in New Orleans and he was filming us, documentary-style; we completely became kids hanging out. We were really discrete about slipping away; we didn't stay on the street all the time, we lived near by, and for me, I was doing the filming and trying to get away when I could. It was really hard for me because I'd have to try to escape the whole experience.

I don't know if you could quite imagine, but if you're hanging out like that all the time, and if you're a passionate person in the least, to live that way...

So I don't think it was an ordinary film in sense any sense of the matter; we were involved in the whole experience. For me it was really, really exhausting.

craig: That commitment really shows through in the whole film.

Craig: I never saw any of the rushes, any footage or anything. I never saw the film until I came back here for the première (at the LA Film Fest 96) and I thought that they put it together really well.

craig: So are you LA-based now?

Craig: Yeah, I've been hanging out in LA. I'm a trumpet player as well. For now I'm really concerning myself with playing and with the jazz jobs, just continuing to struggle on. When the film first came out here there were a bunch of agents who were pretty interested in us but they weren't ready to sign either of us and I just didn't have the energy to push the acting. So I've laid out of it, that was after three, four years at school in New York.

My girlfriend and I are getting ready to come home to Australia - she's from Sweden and she's been here for the same amount of time - we're just getting fed up. If you're bashing Hollywood it'd be a useful experience to hang out here. Actually, from what I've seen the myth isn't that far from the truth.

craig: I know a few people who've lived there and worked there and the general consensus is that what you see is actually what you're getting.

Craig: This whole town is very interesting because it's very superficial as it's built up on the film industry, it's built up on the image: image is everything. It permeates everyone's attitude. I've been here for four years now - time's gone fast - and I'm getting ready to get out.

craig: So what'll you be doing when you get back to Australia?

Craig: We're both going to relax. We've both been working really hard. I work in a music store to survive, and play jazz as well, and we're just going to go back home and relax. My parents are in Brisbane so we'll hang out with them for a bit and then we'll do some travelling. I'll see if I can bring my motorcycle over there and show Caritha around. Then I hope to go to Europe because she wants to go home to her family.

I understand that the film was a big hit in Europe, too, probably for the same reason that we were talking about earlier: the American bashing.

craig: Popular everywhere!

Craig: Yeah, they actually liked it there, they liked it a lot, so I'd like go there and explore. I'd also like to explore working, maybe acting back in Australia if it came up. I'd certainly like it if the film developed a following somehow. What's the situation with homeless kids in Sydney?

craig: Probably the same as in New York: there are thousands of them floating around. Some of them get help, some of them are just stuck there on the street.

Craig: New York nowadays, a lot of the squats - the abandoned buildings - have been developed, they've gentrified the whole area. That whole area that we were hanging out in - the park - is now like a big restaurant row. It's become a hip spot.

craig: That's like darlinghurst/paddington: ten years ago it was a dump and no-one wanted to live here, now you can't buy a three-bedroom terrace that's falling down for less than $500,000.

Craig: Oh my god!

(Later)

Craig: The Olympics in its purest form is absolutely incredible with the commitment that people make to compete but I can see already, especially with the NBC telecast here, the entertainment value that they're trying to extract out of it.

craig: I get the impression that these games have a greater sense of Australian-ness than say, Atlanta did with American-ness.

Craig: Yeah, definitely, but that most often seems to be at the expense of fairer journalism. We were watching the swimming the other day. Caritha had seen online that one of the Swedish girls had won a silver to a Dutch girl in one of the swimming events, the Americans were third. She was very proud so we stayed up to watch the race and they didn't mention the girl once. And then right at the end in passing we hear that she's got the silver. They never showed her on camera but they made a big fuss that the two Americans had tied for bronze.

A friend of mine over there said that the coverage seems to be very biased toward Australia.

craig: Channel Seven's like that; they sometimes get carried away...

Craig: It's a shame, I think; it's an American mentality it seems...

craig: "We're only interested if it's us."

Craig: You summed it up.

craig: From your perspective as an Australian in America, is there a lot of interest in non-mainstream film or films that are focussed on non-mainstream areas?

Craig: If there were more interest you'd probably know about the films, like our film for example, but you're always going to hear about non-mainstream films that break through. The catch is that they always become commercialised, like the films we talked about, like the Blair witch project. I think Good Will Hunting was never intended to be anything other than mainstream, but independent films here are very popular. There's a case in point: the Sundance Film Festival that Robert Redford set up to try and encourage independent film. Well, now that's the hippest place to showcase a film and it's become a mainstream venue. From the filmmaker's point of view it's a constant struggle to maintain integrity.

Craig: Is it possible to do that in America?

Craig: Of course it is. It may be difficult finding a market, though. Kerry once told me that if you were in acting and you didn't want to be a star then you were biting your bum. To make a film is a huge commitment. It costs money no matter how you slice it. You've got to beg, borrow, steal to make it, you have to put in incredible hours and combine that with everything else, the vision, the commitment from everyone who's involved - it's a huge team effort - you'd be lying to yourself if you didn't want that to pay off. Any independent filmmaker that makes a film - hopefully they are doing it for the right reasons, that they believe in their project - but they're certainly wanting it to hit big. And when it hits big it becomes the victim to all the forces that are involved in big money.

There's no reason why anyone can't do just about anything here - Australia's the same - you can say whatever you want, you can depict whatever you want in film or any other art form, but if someone gets behind it with a lot of money then they start to control it and of course it gets censored in some way. It would be nice if Dog run actually came out in the theatres.

craig: I think 21st Century Pictures only does video in Australia.

Craig: Yeah, the deal here is that it gets released in art-house cinemas and they're going to see how it does. That's why I play jazz, I guess, because jazz to me is the same kind of purity that small projects like that have; it's that the music speaks for itself and there's no bullshitting when you get up to play: you can either play or you can't. When you take the Hollywood equivalent you can gloss things over with fancy effects.