David Siegel and Scott McGehee, filmmaking partners for three decades, both read and loved the Sigrid Nunez novel "The Friend" when it was published, in 2018. They took Nunez out to coffee, then optioned the film rights to the story, wrote a script, and began making plans to produce it.
The novel, which won the National Book Award, is narrated by an unnamed writer in Manhattan whose friend and mentor, a more famous writer, has recently died by suicide. She inherits his dog, a Great Dane named Apollo. "The Friend" is about a lot of things-grief, memory, loneliness, goatish men, writing, teaching, kids today but it is, fundamentally, a love story between two bereaved creatures, writer and dog, seeking consolation and companionship in a treacherous world.
Siegel and McGehee had actors in mind for the narrator and the mentor, to whom they gave the names Iris and Walter, respectively. Now they needed their Apollo. In the fall of 2019, they reached out to the prominent trainer Bill Berloni, who has been supplying, hiring, and coaching animals for stage and screen for nearly fifty years. Berloni asked if it had to be a Great Dane. "Great Danes are big, dumb, and lazy," he told them. (Or, as he prefers to put it now, "They are sensitive, and not known for their obedience training.") "Can I talk you into another breed?"
The filmmakers insisted. The unwieldy size, the inconvenience, the majesty, the mournful bearing: these elements were essential. Plus, the cover of the novel had an illustration of a Great Dane on it-a Harlequin Dane, white with black spots, in a red collar. Film is a visual medium, and its practitioners are visual people. That image, as much as any description on the page, had captured their cinematographic imaginations.
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BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"
ANTI HEROES
\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.
NOW YOU SEE ME
John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.
PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO
Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.
WILD SIDE
Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?
GETTING A GRIP
Robots learn to use their hands.
WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE
In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.
DEADLINE EXTENSION
Old age, reborn.