JOHN WAYNE EAT YOUR

JOHN WAYNE, EAT YOUR HEART OUT!


Last week my teacher called up to ask if I would mind going along to a casting.  They were looking for a long-haired sheepdog and I was the only one he knew, so, although I was the wrong colour (the specifications were honey-coloured), we went along to the preliminary meeting.  “Beautiful dog! Wrong colour, though.  They’ve never accepted a black and white dog before (I’m a slate but there’s no accounting for the ignorance of these two-legged creatures) but come along on Monday anyway.  The director will be here then and we’ll see what he says”.

On Monday we got into the car and drove about fifty kilometres to Jimena de la Frontera, the village where the advertisement was to be shot.  There was me, a German shepherd and a sweet little honey-coloured bitch from the pound who was terrified of men because she had been beaten in the past.  I just stayed in the car.  When the director arrived he rejected the German shepherd because that wasn’t the image they wanted to promote. He liked Mona, but the minute he stepped towards her she cowered away.  “No good”, he said.  “No more dogs?” “ Yes, she has one”, they said, pointing towards my mistress.  “Well, bring him out”.  I went bouncing out, kissing everyone in sight.  “That’s my dog”, said the director.  This man’s got taste, I thought to myself. “Can you make him sit and stay and will he come when you call him?”  Being her usual understated self, my mistress said, “Well, I can try”.  Did this mean she lacked confidence in my intelligence, my ability or just in my willingness to do as I was told, particularly so soon after my amorous experience?  Well, we did a couple of demonstration exercises right there in the steepest street you ever saw and that was that.  

Of course, as we had not had the slightest hope of being chosen, we had not taken along any clothes or food or anything else. So we had to rush home to pick up all the things we needed and then rush back again to Jimena.  When we got there, a slight problem arose.  The owner of the one star hostal where we were to stay (there are no hotels in the village) said that I would have to sleep in the patio or the garage.  I have to hand it to her, my mistress stands for no nonsense under these circumstances and in a trice she put him in his place.  Did he not know that I had travelled half way round the world and stayed at famous four and five star hotels?  No way was I coming to a two bit hostal in a God-forsaken village to sleep in a patio!  I might bark, he said.  Bark!  Bark! Whatever was he thinking of?  She was polite about it, but the message came across loud and clear.  The man realized he was fighting a losing battle, so that was the end of that little dispute and off we went to bed.  I made not a murmur throughout the night despite the comings and goings of the film crew getting up before dawn.

The first day we had to be on set by seven thirty which meant getting up at SIX a.m. I ask you!  As the human toilette proceeded, I just took myself off to the darkest corner I could find and tried to pretend nothing was happening.  But then it was my turn: up on to the table to be groomed before it was light, then out for a walk along the railway line and back to the restaurant for breakfast and to wait while the make-up lady got my shepherd ready for the day.  Oh, I forgot.  I still haven’t told you what the plot is.  

The story board - as we say in the film business - is that my shepherd and I leave home early in the morning, crossing the village greeting the few neighbours abroad at that early hour, set off for the hills where we wander through a cork-oak forest before having lunch (the cheese being promoted, naturally) seated on a dry-stone wall.  Then we continue on our way, resting in a field of chamomile and on a rock by the river before wending our way homewards as the sun sets.

The first shot in the village square had to be cancelled because the light conditions were wrong, so we went straight up to my “home”.  Here I had to sit behind a patio door and wait till my mistress called me.  Then I had to come running down a steep, narrow  alley with my shepherd coming down behind me.  Now, just how fast or how slow did my shepherd have to walk down? How long did he have to admire the scenery? We had to repeat the sequence about twenty times before the director was happy with the pacing and the result.  Then I had a rest while they filmed other sequences inside the patio where I didn’t have to take part and then interior kitchen shots with a girl model  who would display the cheese in the domestic ambiance as opposed to the rustic scenes we were shooting.

The following day we worked from sun-up to sundown.  The weather had changed and a sharp wind was blowing.  My call sheet showed that we had a number of locations for the morning: a long village street where we filmed our return (clever these film people, filming the evening scene with the morning sun in the evening position), the castle (that was windy!) and a little nook in the village where I had to sit at a gate while my shepherd talked to a village lady who then had to take in her washing.  “Reset.  Action! .......  Cut!” Again and again we had to shoot the same scenes because the extras, people from the village, either didn’t do what they were supposed to do on cue, or laughed out of turn, or stared straight into the camera lens or, when the extras got it right, then people would come barging out of their front doors right into the scene or stick their heads round the doorpost or children would come racing up. Is there is no limit to the incompetence of the human two-legged species?! Then “Checking the gate..... Gate clear”.  Yippee!!!

After a rest in my own car while my mistress had lunch, we headed off for the hills to shoot the scene where my shpeherd has lunch, eating the famous “Patros”  cheese.  We set up under a cork-oak.  My shepherd had to sit and I had to lie on a dry-stone wall with a howling gale blowing all around.  The sun kept being obscured behind the clouds so  the most repeated phrase of the afternoon was “Waiting for light” as John, the lighting man, strained looking through his little black lens.  “A minute and a half.   Thirty seconds.  Ten seconds........  Sorry, it’s gone.  No luck!”  As I lay there, about six bulls came charging past, then a silly man with horses and his dogs, then a herd of goats.....  I was itching to get off that wall and run after them, but my mistress was standing in front of me and, every time she saw a possible distraction, she said “STAY”.  No point in looking for trouble, so I just stayed put.  “Stand by!  Turn over! Speed!  ACTION!” It took more than two hours to shoot the scenes covering the three cheese presentations, but finally we got down from the wall and headed over to a different cork-oak to admire the countryside and the setting sun.  By the time the sun finally did sink over the horizon we were all well and truly frozen to the marrow.  After a quick walk, I had dinner and promptly sank into deep slumber until the human toilette forced me to seek a dark corner again the next day.


The third day was just as windy as the previous one and, if anything, it was more cloudy which made filming even more difficult.  After shooting the scene in the village square which we had been unable to shoot the first day, it was back up into the hills.  Shots of me coming over the horizon, walking through the hills as though hunting for a rabbit (I ask you!).  Fortunately my trainer appeared on the scene in time for that shot, so he hid in one place and my mistress in another and I went seeking them out one after the other.  That did the trick!  After lunch (and a rest in my car) we went back up into the hills to shoot in a field of chamomile flowers where the perfume was intoxicating.  I only had to sit facing into the wind while my shepherd perched in a tree trunk and carved a piece of cork but the precise spot chosen for me to park my posterior was covered in wicked thistles, so they had to be dug up to make room for my delicate behind.  They filmed that pretty quickly and we headed down to the river.

We were taken over to the far side of the river and my shepherd and I had to wait around a corner for the signal, whereupon I was to run ahead and find my mistress who was hidden among the bushes by the river bank.  On the way I would meet a man with two horses.  I got into a bit of a panic for a minute because I couldn’t see my mistress, so I thought I would check out where she was before we went any further.  I went down the bank before the spot where she was and nearly jumped into the river.  The director told me later that he nearly had a heart attack when he saw me heading down to the water. But you may remember that I learned my lesson about swift flowing currents in the Amazon so I was not about to make the same mistake again.  Once I knew where she was it wasn’t a problem and I did what they wanted me to do, despite the unsolicited presence of dogs and pigs and other four-legged intruders.  

The last shot was to be sitting on a rock which jutted out into the river.  In the dry season it is easy to get down there but after the rains the river was swollen and there was no way down except to be lowered from the remains of the Roman waterworks which once served the village.  My mistress climbed down and was hauled back up again, but she refused to contemplate the possibility of me jumping down or doing anything equally foolish.  The only solution was to find a ladder and have someone carry me down with her following.  In a trice a ladder appeared and I was handed to Alex who carried me down.  My mistress followed hanging on for dear life.  Once she had set me up just where they wanted me, she hid in a crevice under an oleander bush within earshot so she could give me instructions as required.  The camera trundled along on the dolly and, just as the sun was setting, the welcome words “It’s a wrap!” rang out. We were all hauled back up again and I got a piece of omelette sandwich followed by a piece of shortbread as a reward for my sterling performance.

I must say the experience was good for me.  I met lots of lovely people (There were fifty people between the film crew, production teams, props, catering, advertising agency representative and so on) who all became members of my fan club, taking pictures of me (particularly the stills men) and cuddling me and stroking me and offering me titbits of every kind.  I didn’t take many of these because I’m not used to eating between meals, but every now and again I had a little nibble just to keep them happy.  Duncan, the director, was very pleased with me.  He would come down and say “What’s the story, Simon?  You’re doing a great job!  Terrific dog!”.  

If I was tired, I can’t begin to tell you how tired my mistress was.  She ran up hill and down dale, at least twice as far as anyone else, because she had to position me and then run to her designated position out of camera-shot as fast as she could.  It was also a good experience for my mistress because she realized that I really DO know what I am supposed to be doing and can do it to perfection when required.  There’s only one drawback to this: never again will I be able to pretend that I don’t know what’s expected of me!  Oh well, fame bring its own sacrifices.

I think this is one occasion when I have to sign using my stage name, don’t you think?  They do say that names are important.  I have certainly done my best to live up to mine.

Willowmead Simply a Star

(Simon)