If you’ve ever owned a pet, then you know the sinking fear in the pit of your stomach when your canine or feline companion stares off into the darkness as if they can see someone or something crouching in the shadows. You often shake it off as simply a far-off sound, but sometimes, you can’t help but wonder what they saw…
In his new film Good Boy, writer and director Ben Leonberg imagines a world where there IS something sinister in the shadows. But only the dog can see it. Told through the eyes of Leonberg’s own dog, Indy, Good Boy is a horror movie where the dog is our hero, and we see the world solely through his eyes, experiencing the terror of a haunted house through the perspective of a creature that can’t speak for himself.
We spoke with Leonberg, producer Kari Fischer, and Indy himself about the challenges of filming with a canine protagonist, crafting scares in the edit, and the fact that, to Indy, Good Boy is a love story.
Dread Central: Congratulations on Good Boy. I’m so excited for the world to see this incredible film. I used to work with dogs, so I’m very excited to talk to you about the annoying specifics of working with dogs.
Ben Leonberg: Speaking of, I thought Indy might want to make an appearance.
DC: Oh, there he is!
BL: Speaking of working with dogs, we’re bribing him. He’s getting some food. He has no idea he’s on camera.
DC: So, how did you approach trying to prepare to film him? Obviously, you’re his owner; you know what he loves. What was that like preparing for all the different scenarios of filming a dog as your main actor?
BL: One of the things, just right off the bat, is realizing that if you’re going to make a movie with a dog, certainly the way we did, time is the most important resource. He can only film for a very small number of hours a day. So the film’s going to have to stretch over a much longer period than a normal film would. We’re only filming one to three hours a day. We did it over three years, over 400 days.
Then, finding out how to actually get the performance was kind of a constant learning on our part. Certainly, he can do commands. But it’s also about getting what appears to be a performance, which is coming from him, but also coming from the audience and the filmmaking, because the audience projects their own feelings onto him.
Just finding out how to get neutral expressions out of him that the audience can create their own meaning with, or just how he will respond to different things. How he reacts to food versus a verbal command. If you have dogs, you can imagine if you say, “Come here, boy”, versus “Come here, boy!”, you’re going to get two different reactions. So there are a lot of things we were learning about the dials Indy has and how we can use them to get what looks like a performance
To be so clear, he has no idea he’s in the movie.
DC: Oh, absolutely. How much of the film was really shaped in the edit and crafting the scares in the edit versus what you were able to capture in camera in the moment?
BL: I mean, it’s almost all created in the edit. I think Indy’s superpower, if he has one, is that he has a very neutral and serious expression as a default. He’s also very smart, so he’s curious. So if we call him into a room and the cameras are rolling, he will come in with his head cocked, trying to figure out what’s going on.
Then, through the power of filmmaking and cinematic shot progression, you can show his point of view. He walks into a room, we add the sound of a floorboard creak, and then we show his point of view of an empty corner. Then, when we return to the objective shot of him, of his face, there’s a blank expression in reality, but the filmmaking and the audience say, “No, that dog is scared,” even though he’s not; you’re scared. You’re just projecting your own feelings onto him.
Kari Fischer: He’s going into professor mode right now. [Laughs]
DC: But I love it though! From a filmmaking perspective, it’s so fascinating that you have to think so differently. You really have to think about what the edit’s going to look like, so it’s kind of cool and challenging at the same time.
BL: Yeah. I mean, credit to you, Kari. So Kari is both the producer of the film and my wife. Indy is our dog, and this is your first film you’ve ever produced. You’re a scientist.
DC: This is so cool that you get to work on this. That’s so interesting.
KF: It was a really fun family project for a few years. It was definitely really cool to go from my workday working on different areas of research, and then in the evening, I was making a movie. It was exciting.
DC: So cool. This is filmed in your home, so how difficult was it to separate movie-making from personal life, since this is your home, your dog, and you’re in the movie?
BL: I think, depending on where we were filming, it was easier. And keep in mind how long things were taking. There’s an extended sequence in Good Boy that takes place outside during a dark and stormy night, where it’s not real rain, it’s rain machines. But for that, it was like for the eight months plus we were filming that finale. You put on rain gear, go outside, and Indy loves water, so that’s no hardship for him.
But then you come back inside, take the raincoat off, and inside is just normal life. So maybe that’s a good life movie balance. On the other hand, when we were filming in the room where we actually sleep, that made it a little harder, and it was more of an imposition on everyday life.
Kari, what do you think?
KF: I would say our lives are pretty interwoven for a few years, but it does help when you turn off the camera, you turn off the camera and move on.
DC: That’s true. It wasn’t a really big crew, right? It was mostly just the two of you?
BL: For the most part, it was the two of us and Indy for over 400 days. There were certainly people who made the movie work. When I say just the two of us, that was for physical productions during the actual filming, then as soon as we wrapped with Indy and even locked the edit, we filmed a pickup day with the person who plays grandpa.
We also have a small but enormously dedicated crew of people doing the entire soundscape, replacing what we were actually saying to Indy on set, which was nonsense and would turn the movie into a surreal comedy if left in the film. So yeah, the film was certainly made in the edit and with a lot of help, even though it was just the two of us, three of us counting Indy, for the majority of filming.
DC: Did you have to make a lot of those really obnoxious noises you had to make to get his attention?
BL: So it’s funny, he’s a very smart dog. He learned that the camera meant he was supposed to do something. So if the camera came out, the same way that some dogs, when they see a leash, will be like, “Oh, I’m about to go for a walk,” he knew that the camera meant, “My parents are going to ask something of me.”
One of the things we have in our arsenal, especially starting out, is that we can say nonsense words to him in the same way that you say “sit” or “stay”. If you say “neon sign”, he’ll be like, “Well, what does that mean?” And you get a reaction of that head tilt, which is great for horror filmmaking because that’s the classic expression of a dog looking into a corner.
But as the years go by, saying nonsense words to a dog, he just learns, “Well, those are nonsense words, the same way that the TV doesn’t mean anything. Some words that come out of my parents’ mouths are meaningless.” So we would have to do things that would generate those reactions. I would take off my shoes and put them on my head, and then he’d be like, “What’s that about?” [Laughs]
KF: Yeah, we really had to get creative.
DC: I was going to say flip the camera, and it becomes an absurdist comedy of just the owners slowly losing their minds trying to get their dog to look at the camera.
KF: Our sound designer listened to all of it. He had a very different experience of this movie
DC: Release the unedited audio track!
BL: We’ve talked about that in lieu of a director’s commentary! I don’t know if I would watch a whole movie that way, but I bet there’s a five-minute super cut that would be just very surreal.
DC: And I know you mentioned that you had to take a lot of breaks, and I know that filming with animals really can be difficult. Would he just walk away when he was like, “No, thank you, I’m done”?
BL: I don’t think so. Here’s a way that might make sense to many people. If you’re working with a little kid on a movie, at a certain point, you can tell their attention span is shot, and you’re just getting diminishing returns. So it’s more like on the third day of trying to get a close-up where his eye line is just perfect, as painful as it was to say, “Oh gosh, I really don’t want to do this for day four”, we could tell his attention for looking at the piece of food in my hand is just not what it was before.
There’s really nothing to do in that situation. You can’t tell him, “Hey man, can you rally for one more take?” You just have to come and try again the next day. So, time, I think I said before, time was our most important resource in the sense that we had to make the movie over such a long duration, but we also had to keep Indy on track. Managing how much attention he had was a big consideration every day.
KF: It was a lot of adapting, too. He had many a phone call with our co-writer, too, where sometimes it just wasn’t going to work the way that they had envisioned it. So they would have a lot of phone calls saying, “Hey, that one scene, it’s not going to work. It’s never going to happen.”
BL: “We need something new.”
KF: Yeah, I think you guys called it horror improv to try and come up with something new on the spot for how you could make it work.
DC: That was great for my next question because I was wondering how you go from a script to the finished production. What does that even look like on the page at first for a movie like this?
BL: It’s a great question, and it’s not an answer we arrived at very quickly. We took a long time to figure out what this script even looks like. Because, to be very literal about it, this is almost an action movie in the sense that there are no fight scenes and explosions, but the action and the point of view and the perspective are what tell the story. Most scripts, there’s dialogue, and we’re learning. That’s the main way you’re conveying information. Indy’s point of view is the thing that powers this story and his discoveries, and the audience is limited to that point of view. That’s how the narrative unfolds.
That was a long-winded preface to say that the script for Good Boy is much shorter than a traditional script. There’s no dialogue taking page after page to pad out the runtime. So it’s a description of action, what Indy sees, the juxtaposition of what he sees, and how he’s reacting to it. It still is a really helpful guide because in that circumstance I described of Indy walking into a room and he sees something, the filmmaking is what tells you how to feel. The script still works as a blueprint for that story and the kind of storytelling, but it’s just not how most scripts look, I would say.
DC: Yeah, okay. That is interesting. And I know you didn’t write dialogue for Indy, and you’re not anthropomorphizing him. I don’t know if this is a silly question, but what was it like getting into the mind of Indy? Because obviously you love him, you’ve had him since he was a puppy. Did it ever feel kind of like you were getting into his head and trying to think like him?
KF: A lot of people who own dogs kind of already inherently do this, right? Ben, you could speak to actually making that into a film, but you’re just kind of constantly looking at them and saying, “What are they thinking?” or filling in the blanks for them. It’s kind of a fun thing to do as a dog owner.
BL: Yeah, I mean, I think so much of the performance from Indy, what he’s actually doing is not what you see in the film. It’s the filmmaking, the shots, the sound design that is giving what appears to be a performance, and I’m thrilled that it works that way.
I think the few moments where I feel like, “Oh, Indy, the real Indy is in this movie,” are some of the scenes of the genuine affection and connection between Todd and Indy. Because I’m standing in for Todd’s body, and Indy cares for me and likes me, and I like him. So when I get out of bed in the morning, in reality and in the movie, Indy weaves in between my legs. So there are genuine moments of love and affection between those two characters, but Indie doesn’t see it that way.
I cannot say it enough, he does not know that he’s in a movie.
DC: I love dogs. They’re just so amazing and dumb and sweet. I love them.
BL: They’re like little angels in our lives. We don’t deserve them. And I think Good Boy is also a little bit about that. It is a love letter. To go back to my co-writer and me, we would say this is a horror movie, but from Indy’s perspective, it’s a love story. He loves this guy and would do anything to stop something bad from happening to him. Unfortunately for him, he’s in a horror movie.
So it’s just so easy to understand, and I think audiences can click into it so fast that they don’t have to understand. In most films with human characters, you have to be like, “Wait, why do these two people like one another?” You can skip those 20 minutes. It’s just like, there’s a dog, there’s this guy, they love one another, go.
DC: That’s great. Economical storytelling at its best. OK, I want to know how Larry Fessenden got involved. He is a godfather of indie horror. How did you get to collaborate with him?
KF: So we really lucked out. A good friend of ours, who—actually, I don’t know if you remember; there’s this amazing tapestry in Good Boy depicting a dog standing over a creature. So our friend is an artist who made that, and she also happens to be neighbors with Larry Fessenden.
DC: An amazing random coincidence!
BL: Just an amazing coincidence. A friend of a friend, she told him about Good Boy. He loved the idea and the concept and was willing to be in the film. I can say that after three years of making a movie with a dog who did not know he was in a movie and could not follow directions, Larry, who knows horror and just knows how a scene like his works, shows up and just does it. I was like, “Hey, Larry, can you do this?” And he’s like, “Yes, I can.” Then you film it, and it happens, and it’s so refreshing. [Laughs]
DC: He doesn’t need a treat over the lens or a squeaky toy.
BL: Here’s a contrast of a thing Larry doesn’t do that Indy does every day. No matter what, day after day, Indy’s nose, no matter what, made contact with the lens. Every single day. And that’s a process to address. Larry? Larry didn’t do that. Good job, Larry.
KF: No booping of the lens.
BL: Yeah, no running into the camera full speed.
DC: Oh, that’s good to hear that. [Laughs] Ben, do you want to stay in the realm of horror? Is this a genre that you want to continue to play in, maybe with more human actors than canine actors?
BL: I certainly am looking forward to my next film, having human actors and actors who agree on the reality of the premise that we are indeed making a movie.
Horror is the genre I probably consume and think about the most. There’s so much more I want to say about even haunted houses and ghost stories that just aren’t practical with a movie that stars and is focused on a dog. So yes, absolutely.
And I think the other part of that is that, as a filmmaker and a director, I find perspective really interesting. Not in the sense of, not necessarily even in the realm of character, but in the filmmaking itself. It was so exciting to figure out how to tell a story where the camera is 19 inches off the ground. Finding a way to use cinematic storytelling to make tension, excitement, and scares using perspective is something I’m really excited about.
DC: Yeah, I was going to say, you did the hardest thing I think any actor would or any director would have ever done by working with the dog for the entire movie. Kari, are you also a horror fan?
KF: Our Venn diagram is Jane Eyre, and that’s about it. I am not, not a horror person, but as Ben said, thankfully, making a horror movie is not quite as scary, so that worked out really well for me.
BL: She’s not a horror movie person, but she’s also a very good sport, and you’ve seen enough horror. At a certain point, I was like, “We have to watch Poltergeist together just to understand what we were making. We need to watch this movie.” So you’ve done your homework, or I’ve forced you to do your homework.
DC: Poltergeist was the inspiration for Good Boy, right, Ben? That movie was the launching point for you.
BL: Yeah, I mean, I diary on my film ideas, and in 2012, while watching Poltergeist for probably the millionth time, I thought somebody should make a story from the golden retriever’s perspective.
It’s a trope we see not just in haunted house horror movies. In almost every kind of horror movie, there’s a dog that won’t go into the basement or is barking at the creepy old neighbor. The dog serves as a kind of foreshadowing in Act One. People are so familiar with that, and I think it’s part of the reason it’s easy to click in with this story.
Good Boy is out now in theaters.
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