MAN’S BEST FRIEND or (HOW TWO BEST FRIENDS MADE A MOVIE ABOUT MAN’S BEST FRIEND)
Ask Channing Tatum what Dog is about and he’ll tell you it’s about a road trip that a guy takes with a dog. But of course, it’s so much more than that. For Tatum, it’s his directorial debut — he co-directed with producing partner Reid Carolin, who wrote the script from a story developed with Brett Rodriguez. And Tatum stars in it as well. But more than all of that, it’s a movie about the uncanny ability of road trips to go awry in the craziest possible ways and how animals can be healing, even when relationships with them aren’t unconditionally effortless. So perhaps, it is that easy to describe it — a road trip that a guy takes with a dog — in the end, they rescue each other.
This dog in particular, an anxious, boisterous Belgian Malinois named Lulu, is a war hero, who worked with her handler Riley Rodriguez — who served in the Army Rangers with Jackson Briggs (Tatum) — for many years. Sadly, Rodriguez has passed, and it’s up to Briggs to pack this dog into his ’84 Bronco and drive her down the Pacific Coast to Rodriguez’s family in time for the funeral in Arizona. Briggs, however, has no interest in this trip — after a traumatic brain injury, his interest lies in getting back to active duty. The only way to make that happen? To do his C.O. a solid and get Lulu to the funeral on time.
Driving a dog to a destination? How hard can it be? Pretty difficult, it turns out. No road trip movie is fun without antics — have you ever taken a road trip with no antics? It’s impossible. But along the way Briggs and Lulu bond in an unexpected way, even through adventures with ornery pot growers, a car break-in, and a luxury hotel con. (Lulu needs a comfortable bed, so says a pet psychic they meet on the road.) Needless to say, Lulu and Briggs both bring a lot of emotional baggage on this trip.
Lulu also comes with an owner’s manual — an I Love Me Book, which is something most people in the military actually create. They can range from a simple book of all their military paperwork to a beautifully designed scrapbook, filled with mementos. For Lulu, this was a book full of
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letters written by Rodriguez to her and DVDs that calm her anxiety down. Though Briggs mocks it at first, he grows to embrace its highlights getting to know Lulu through Rodriguez’s eyes.
For Tatum and Carolin, the inspiration for this movie came from a very real place – a documentary the pair produced for HBO called War Dog: A Soldier’s Best Friend. They were fortunate to get to know many in the Army Rangers community who work in the Special Operations with their dogs. And while several movies about the military have focused on action and combat, they realized there were many more stories to tell.
“The Rangers do very specialized things, so they have these walls up, but a dog can come in to the room and turn hardened soldiers into these puppy dog sort of loving guys,” says Tatum, who during a particularly tough time in his life, lost his longtime best friend, his dog Lulu. “So, we went through a bunch of different machinations of how to tell that story: What is that bond between a human and a dog?”
For their directorial debut, the pair wanted to choose something that was particularly meaningful to both of them. On the heels of the documentary they produced, they decided to continue to exploring that connection. To move forward, Carolin says, they worked out how to bring it out of the military world and into this world of the road by thinking through all the epic road trips they had taken.
“When we connected all the dots of these experiences we’ve had in life, everything pointed us toward making a road movie. So, we decided to set this movie on that type of canvas in hopes of bringing people into this world of Special Operations soldiers and their dogs, that’s very insular,” Carolin says. “Road movies are our favorite kinds of movies. Mostly because they’re full of heart and humor. They make you feel something and expose you to new ideas and places and wild characters.”
