Good Boy - Intervista al regista Ben Leonberg - Video Dailymotion

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Film d'apertura di Alice nella Città 2025, Good Boy è la storia di Indy, un cane che farà di tutto per proteggere il suo padrone da una casa infestata. Abbiamo intervistato Ben Leonberg, regista del film, arrivato a Roma per presentare questa storia al pubblico di Alice.

Transcript

00:00In the director's note, you write that good movies are born from limitation.

00:08Can you explain, tell me something more about that?

00:30Make the film very slowly over a long period of time, which for just me and my wife, who

00:35were living in that house with our dog, was very affordable.

00:38We made the film kind of like a hobby.

00:41And I think even though that's very challenging, the thing that was challenging was also making

00:45the film, you know, it's its best, it's its best feature, it's its best quality.

00:49So I think embracing that we went all in, we're just going to have him as the point of view

00:53character, he's our dog, he works for food and love and attention.

00:57It made the film possible.

00:59And the movie is about a dog who lives in a haunted house with his owner, and I saw something

01:07else.

01:08I mean, for me, the movie was about a dog who sees the illness of his owner like a monster.

01:16He's scared by that because he can protect the human being who we love the most.

01:23It's a possible interpretation.

01:26It's, I love your interpretation.

01:28I mean, we deliberately wanted to play with that kind of ambiguity.

01:33Someone says this in the film, and it is also genuinely true, that dogs are used in medical

01:38settings to detect illnesses and ailments, everything from epilepsy to cancers to certain

01:44blood pressure conditions.

01:47What's the difference, from a dog's point of view, of an invisible necrotic force of something

01:51like cancer than a supernatural spirit?

01:55The film really is, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the thing that's hurting

01:58his person is.

02:00The film, from Indy's perspective, is a love story about him trying to save this person,

02:04who he would do anything for.

02:07So I love your interpretation.

02:08That's very much what we were trying to play with.

02:10Yeah, I think there's having a canine protagonist gives you a lot of opportunities for dramatic

02:16irony, moments where the audience understands more than the characters, and there can be

02:20a satisfaction or a tragedy to that.

02:23And in this case, I think it's obviously a bit more tragic or bittersweet that, you know,

02:28we understand as humans watching this movie that something more about what's going on with

02:34Todd that Indy can't understand.

02:36It doesn't matter, because Indy still loves Todd unconditionally, and is just as loyal and

02:41as pure and good at the start of the film as he is at the end.

02:45So the film is kind of a love letter, in addition to being a haunted house movie, to dogs.

02:51And the movie has very few lines, and so ambience, music, and sounds are very important.

03:01Yes.

03:02How did you work with the composer?

03:04Yeah, so we had a very small but very mighty post-sound team.

03:08And somewhat uniquely, we were working with the post-production sound, you know, folks

03:13who worked on the movie before we had finished filming.

03:17Brian Goodhart, who's a co-producer on the film, marshaled the whole sound team.

03:22He rebuilt all of the sounds to replace the, you know, it's a lot of dog conversation that's

03:26happening, where my wife and I are making silly noises to prompt Indy's, you know, performance

03:32or performance.

03:34So that's all being rebuilt in post.

03:36And then my composer, Sam Bose Miller, really embraced kind of the aesthetic that we were

03:41managed, that we could, you know, capture with Indy, which was very handmade, very minimalistic,

03:48and matched a sound with the soundscape, you know, this musical score that feels like, you

03:55know, a nightmare for a dog with very limited instruments and very practical, you know, practical

04:02instruments, some of which he made by hand.

04:05And what was it like to work with a dog, an actor who is your dog, and I think it's not

04:13a trained dog for film?

04:14No, he's definitely not a trained dog for film, I'm always thrilled when people say

04:18his performance is amazing, because the reality of what's happening on set is much more silly

04:23than that.

04:24If you were just to listen to the film with the recorded production audio, what was happening

04:28while we were filming, the movie would not be scary at all, it would be a very surreal

04:33comedy.

04:34To get him to look scared or surprised, my wife and I would be hiding behind the coats or somewhere

04:39just off camera, quacking at him like a duck or saying nonsense words to get him to look

04:45kind of curious and vexed.

04:47It's the sound effects and the music and the shot progression that creates his performance.

04:52The most important resource for making this film beyond the time we needed to capture everything

04:57was patience and just being willing to try things, experiment and, you know, problem solve

05:01as we were making the movie.

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Good Boy - Intervista al regista Ben Leonberg

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