From Dogs and Cats to Rabbits and Rats, Animal Trainer Joel Norton trains animals to appear in major movies and TV Shows. We talk animal casting calls, the unique training animals need to work in Hollywood and working with exotic animals. Then, we unveil a new Candle of the Month and countdown the Top 5 Animals in Movies.
Joel Norton: 01:45
Pointless: 38:59
Top 5 Animals in Movies: 01:10:55
Interview with Hollywood Animal Agent/Trainer Joel Norton
Nick VinZant 0:11
Welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode animals and acting,
Joel Norton 0:19
sometimes they're very specific, you know, we want a Dalmatian, it has to be a Dalmatian. And sometimes they're extremely vague. We just want a dog, a lot of the behaviors that we train a dog to do to work on set, they don't really have any purpose in the real world. Very, very, very unique training that is required for an animal to work on that 20 years ago, this was a completely different industry. Before there was computers. Every animal was was a practical animal on set, there were tigers, there were elephants, there were bears.
Nick VinZant 0:50
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance to subscribe, leave us a rating or review, we really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So our first guest does something that I think is just endlessly fascinating. His job is to train animals to act, not just dogs and cats, but exotic animals like snakes, rats, rabbits. What I think is really interesting, though, isn't just the unique training that animals have to have in order to work in Hollywood, but the business behind it, and why producers pick certain animals. This is Hollywood animal agent, Joel Norton, how big of an industry is this? Are there a couple of people doing it? Or is this a lot bigger than I would think?
Joel Norton 1:51
I would say there's probably 20 Animal rental companies that exist in America.
Nick VinZant 1:59
How does it kind of work? The studio comes to you, hey, we've got this. What do you got?
Joel Norton 2:04
Yeah, exactly. The studio comes to us with a project, a lot of times they'll have a script or a board or a breakdown. And they'll say, hey, look, there's a dog in the scene. Here's the Scriptures what the dog needs to do. And here's kind of what we're looking for. Sometimes they're very specific, you know, we want a Dalmatian, it has to be Dalmatian, it's for fire by house, whatever. Sometimes they're extremely vague. We just want a dog. And they don't give any other notes. Other than that, here's the dogs that we have that fit the look that you want, whether it be that Dalmatian or a family dog, or whatever the look is, and then we send that off to them. And then they make their decision based on that email. If they liked the dogs, and they liked the numbers. Then they booked that dog and we take the dog on set and work it and if they don't like any of the dogs, and then they move on and look at the bird other company is it
Nick VinZant 2:55
is kind of like a casting process like an actor. I mean, are they actually like,
Joel Norton 3:00
not? Over pictures, it's all it's all pictures and email. It's not the days of like, we all show up in one area, and they all look at it. But that that doesn't exist really anymore. Rarely will they still do a showing for a big project where they really want to get a feel for it. But that is exceedingly rare. I haven't done one personally in over a decade. Everything's just done on the web. You know, if they want to see more details, they'll say, Hey, can we get a quick video of of phyto? So we can kind of see how it works? Or can we see a project it's already done a finished product? And I'll send them a YouTube clip. And that's it. Why did
Nick VinZant 3:37
it kind of get like that? Was it just because like there's so many animals involved now that like we just gotta we gotta own this out?
Joel Norton 3:44
No, no, it's just convenience. It costs money and time and energy to load up dogs from from all the different companies and wherever they're located and drive to a central location and do that. And we would charge for that it costs money for us to drive and the load of animals there the and so as soon as email became a common thing that was gonna start fading itself out, almost immediately. Act even actors, I think do a lot of self tapes now where they record themselves sensitive, they don't go to a room when there's a little camera there. So everything has changed with technology
Nick VinZant 4:18
is now like for most of the projects, are we talking about like, Hey, we're shooting a commercial for blah, blah, blah, or are we talking about like, it's a new movie like Air Bud or something like
Joel Norton 4:29
yeah, it's all done the same? Really, you know, if it is a big big thing with air but and they really care about you know, actor chemistry or something like that. Those are the times that yeah, we might we'll still narrow though we'll still originally send you know, the pictures and the videos and all those other things and then they'll make their maybe final two. And then from there, they will Okay, well, we'll actually see these dogs in person and get a feel for which one we like best or whatever, and someone will make that decision but honestly Even for big projects, big TV shows big movies, it's all done over the web over the internet.
Nick VinZant 5:05
What are they generally kind of looking for?
Joel Norton 5:08
That's a good question. I don't know, oftentimes, I don't know exactly what they're looking for, I don't even think they know a lot of times what they're looking for, they just know they want a dog in the scene. And they have an idea of a look, you know, if it's, if it's a family scene, and it's a, you know, vacuum commercial or whatever, then they'll obviously want a dog would longer for or if it's a dog that's just blended with a family, they're going to pick up what most people would think of as a family looking dog. So, you know, when you see a German Shepherd, you don't think of a family dog, you think of a police dog, when you see you know, whatever, you know, that that is kind of what their main objective is, is to fill whatever look that they want. But as far as, you know, all the dogs come trained, all that kind of stuff. So it really just whenever that particular director of producer, art department, whatever they want, is what they, you know, I've had dogs hired because the director had that breed when he was a kid. And he just wanted to see it again, in person on set. And that was the sole reason that that breed was, I guess
Nick VinZant 6:09
I thought it would be more complicated than that. I thought that there would be somebody like, oh, no, no, this golden retrievers coat isn't quite what we really wanted. Can you get us right?
Joel Norton 6:18
Now that I mean, that do those that do those times exist? Sure, you know, there's always, but again, 99% of the time it is it is not that complicated. Honestly, over 95% of the time, a single picture is all that they they go off of a single picture. I mean, I'm attaching 25 pictures to an email. But from there, they will nail it down to the dog that they want based on a picture.
Nick VinZant 6:46
How does it kind of the business side of it unnecessarily work? I know you guys are a rental company, do you own? Who owns the dog?
Joel Norton 6:55
So are they great questions case? Yeah, so our company is is unique, our company Hollywood paws is is sort of one of a kind in that the vast majority of our working dogs, the dogs that we take on set, they are owned by people, their private party dogs, the other studio rental companies, they all own their own animal. So they have large ranches, and kennels and places, you know, in the high desert and stuff. And all those animals are housed and owned by them. And they will take the animals out on set and work them. But our company does things a little bit differently, we we keep the dogs with the pet owners. Sometimes we call the green agency for that for that reason. But you know, it just means that the dogs stay with an owner and then we pick them up from the owner, we take the dog on set, and then the owner gets the money rather than the money staying within the company. What we are sort of responsible for is making sure that that pet owner keeps up the very, very, very unique training that is required for an animal to work on. That's
Nick VinZant 7:55
how Okay, so a company that operates in a different way when they own it, like they'll own five, five animals are we how many?
Joel Norton 8:04
A lot, a lot more than a lot more than five, you know, the you because you have to have variety, you have to have the goal for sort of every rental company has to have like one of every look. And so I would say an average of that is like maybe 15 to 20 Minimum dogs. You know, we never know what job calls are going to come in tomorrow. We never know what looks are going to be requested. So a company wants to have a couple of small dogs, a couple of medium sized dogs, a couple of big dogs, they want to have a bunch of family dogs, they want to have some more aggressive looking dogs if they get you know, dogs but the garter junkyard you got to have a Rottweiler you know, you want to have a variety, otherwise you're not going to book anything.
Nick VinZant 8:43
You talked a little bit about like the training aspect of it. What kind of training would an animal that's going to work in Hollywood need?
Joel Norton 8:50
That's probably the most unique thing that people don't understand is studio work has a set of very unique challenges. So the easiest thing to compare it to is agility. Most people are familiar with agility. They've seen the dogs do the weave poles and the Kia totters and all those obstacles. A lot of the behaviors that we train a dog to do to work on set, they don't really have any purpose in the real world. So not many people know how to train them and don't train them because it's it's sort of pointless the same way that teaching your dog we fold if you're not going to compete and agility nobody teaches their dog how to do we fold because what's the point? We train, there's like 30 behaviors I would say that are required for us to be able to call a dog a studio dog there's, you know, all these different types of marks. There's like four different marks General Mark, come, Mark, go mark. There's these things called aim sticks, you know, back up and feed up some more common things that people are familiar with, on your side and head up and head down. And then things that most people would never even have heard of like a work away or a go to and a go with or an aim stick. And those are all behaviors. that aren't necessarily that hard or complicated to teach, although some of them can be. But they are just very unique. And they're their sole purpose is to overcome the challenges that we face on set, we face a lot of challenges on that, as far as having to work from really far away. You know, obviously, we as the trainer, we can't be in the shot, the dog is we're in the middle of a scene. And most people don't train their dogs like that most people don't put their dog in a position, move 20 feet away, and then start to train. But that's what we do, because we can't be in the shot. And so dog has to get used to not creeping forward and staying in one spot. If the production is running sound, let's say you know, and the actors talking, I can't be in the thing going, speak sets, say Good day, while the actor is talking, you know, I have to make the dog do everything silently. Otherwise, my dialog is going to step all over the actress dialog. So we teach our dogs do everything just on hand signals. A lot of times the dog can't see us on set. So the line of sight isn't very clear. So we teach dogs to, to do what's called a Workaway, where they look at something else. They look at the actor, they look at a property look at a green screen, but they are still listening to us, even though the dog can't see it. But there's all of these behaviors that we teach that are they're all geared to overcome, again, the challenges that we face on set, because there there's a lot of them on set as long days repetitive actions, they'll do the same thing. 20 times and the dog has to do it the exact same way on take one as on tick 20. Otherwise, it's not going to match.
Nick VinZant 11:41
That is interesting, right? Because I think like I have a dog, and I've taught him how to sit and how to rollover, but if I'm not within like a foot of her, she's not doing it.
Joel Norton 11:50
Right. Yeah, exactly. Because you haven't practiced and you haven't trained that, and you haven't made that a priority. And that's, that's most dogs. And so that's where like I was saying earlier, our challenge comes in is because we work with pet dogs, we work with dogs that are owned by people like yourself. But the challenge is, is what we do. And what the the owners that choose to do this do is they have to keep up on that training, they have to put in the work. A studio dog is is is really hired for its training ability. It can be the best looking dog, and it can match the dog they have in the script and all this other stuff. But if it can't do what's required on set, it's not going to work.
Nick VinZant 12:28
Have you seen instances where like, man, we hired this dog? And it's just, oh, we got to work in
Joel Norton 12:35
every rarely? Yes. And it's one of those things where I have been hired. They originally like, I hear about it when I'm hired to do reshoots, because, you know, some producer was like, Well, I've got a dog or you know, someone I've got a dog will save money. I don't want to pay 1000s of dollars to have a professional dog hear my dog can sit. And then. So they try it with their own dog or whatever the case, and the dog just can't do it. You know? It the dog literally just completely bombed and doesn't do it. And then they have to turn around. And I mean, it costs them. I can't even imagine how much it cost to do it. But then they learned their lesson the hard way. And then never again, will they ever not hire a professional one.
Nick VinZant 13:15
How much money are we generally talking about? And obviously, I know depends on the project. But like in terms of okay, the animal is going to get paid this much for like a commercial, major movie, small movie.
Joel Norton 13:28
Sure. So right there. That's another real common misconception is the price is the same. Whether it's a commercial or a feature film or students. None of the prices doesn't don't don't change. Right, so they're all the same. So nobody, no one makes any more back a lot of times. If there's a buyout or something like that, like we agreed, we agreed to hire your dog for the whole season. The price goes down, not up. But the dancer your question. Jog rental is about 500 bucks today. They're rented on a 24 hour period. Trainers, we have you know union rates and things like that that we go out on. And then we have transportation fees. Any job that is unique or special or something like that, we oftentimes will charge prep fees. So it can range from 1500 bucks a day. For a real basic simple shoe. What if there's multiple trainers on set, you know, the dog has to be released from a room and enter another room and then look up in the corner that takes two trainers one to release the dog one to pull the eye contact to make it look like they're looking up in the corner at an actor or whatever it is. And now your price goes up because now you have two trainers. So all these little factors will will affect the price. But I would say like a baseline minimum doesn't get really cheaper than is around 1500 bucks for the day.
Nick VinZant 14:47
It didn't doesn't depend on like if this is the next James Cameron or if this is a commercial for Bob's used cars.
Joel Norton 14:55
Nope, it does not but well one because we have we're a union animal trainers are in Union so Our rate doesn't really go up or down very much because that so that set transportation is based on mileage and gas prices. So that's that. And dog rental is sort of set by the industry.
Nick VinZant 15:11
That makes sense, right? And ultimately, you make your money by days booked? Not necessarily.
Joel Norton 15:16
Exactly, exactly. And the other thing is that, you know, there's a lot of dogs out there. I mean, there's kind of a famous story, but a lot of people know the dog that was in Modern Family. It was a different dog. They switched dogs halfway through the series, you can Google it, have fun with that. But yeah, it's a different dog. Because dogs are replaceable. You didn't notice. And it's a completely different dog. So if I was to, again, have this dog and say, Oh, my golden retriever has a prettier coat, it's gonna cost you 5000 a day, they'll just find another golden retriever.
Nick VinZant 15:48
How much will like Okay, so like, let's say a dog that's making, like it's working regularly. That dog would be in how many things a year
Joel Norton 15:58
that they're for, that totally varies, it totally depends on the dog. We have dogs that work one day a year, and we have dogs that work once a month minimum. And that's why you want to have a variety. We don't have one superhero dog that you know, because no watch TV, you don't see a golden retriever. In three out of five commercials, you just see dogs, you know, there's a huge variety of the dogs. So none of them are are, quote unquote, superstars or, you know, crazy, you know, insane. You know, this is our moneymaker. Because you that's not how productions work. In fact, if a dog becomes too famous, they're not going to choose it. They won't want a dog that you recognize from another commercial, because you'll be thinking about that other commercial.
Nick VinZant 16:43
Oh, that's true, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's true. So how did you find yourself in this?
Joel Norton 16:51
So I, that's a good question. I went to I studied animal science and regular four year college. And then I went to a school called Edom, which stands for exotic animal training and management. That's a two year school that kids go to adults go to, that teaches you how to work with animals in the animal industry. So it's everything from zoo keeping, to SeaWorld, I mean, any and literally almost anything in the animal field that school prepares you for, because it gives you have two years of hands on experience, which is what people really want. a four year degree was great, but I had zero experience, and nobody wanted to hire me. So and I was, again, out of my class of about 50 Kids, a handful of us went on to do studio work, because some people really like training, training, and it can be fun. But it can be challenging. And some people absolutely do not like to be trainers. And if you love animals, but don't want to train, a lot of times, you'll go to a zoo or to a rescue or to a rehab or do outreach, where you don't really have to train very much you're just caring for and working with the animal. But I really enjoyed training. When I was doing it, I just found I love the challenge, I got a great feeling after knowing that this scene, an animal, and I trained rats and birds and all kinds of different animals and in training the dogs Believe it or not when I was in school, but there was something very satisfying about taking an animal that couldn't do anything, right. It was just an animal. And after I put in time and energy, all of a sudden, I had an animal that was able to do things because of me. And that was a great feeling. I really enjoyed that.
Nick VinZant 18:28
Are there? Is it a pretty competitive industry in the sense that like, man, you're one of if you're applying for a new trainer job there, you're one of how many people going for this? Or is like, well, we can't find people?
Joel Norton 18:40
Yeah, I think you know, I don't know exactly what the industry is like right now. I don't I know it is, it's fairly competitive. Because this is an industry that that can be pretty financially rewarding. A lot of animal stuff tend to be pretty low pay. So you keeping animal care, they tend to not pay very much because so many people want to do the job. However, I think the industry as a whole can only support so much. There's only so many productions that have animals in them. And so that really limits the amount of trainers that can be hired by companies in a work at any given time. Especially, you know, 20 years ago, this was a completely different industry. Before there was computers. Every animal was was a practical animal on set. There were tigers, there were elephants, there were bears. There were things and now, aside from dogs, almost all exotics are computer generated in some way because you just have so it's a lot cheaper and you have a tremendous more amount of flexibility in what you can do. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 19:50
that I mean, that makes especially with some exotic animals, like quite frankly, I don't want a tiger. Right, like, let's ugi that.
Joel Norton 19:58
Right? I mean and that's the way it's gone. And CGI has gotten so good now that I can I can tell, I can tell as a trainer most of the time just by the action because oh no, there is no way that a real animal would have done that. Or that they would allow a real animal to do that thing. So what they'll do a lot now too, instead of firing an exotic for the entire production, they'll hire the exotic and do like some some in studio green screen work. And so motion capture work. And then they'll translate that and, you know, turn it into a whole film.
Nick VinZant 20:33
Do you guys work a lot with exotic exotic animals or our dogs cats?
Joel Norton 20:38
know our company, our company, Hollywood paws, we only do domestic animals. Just domestic, so no exotics. Our bread and butter is just dogs, we don't do cat. We do small animals and some other stuff as those jobs come up. Rabbits and birds and some stuff like that. But our bread and butter by far is dogs. They're the most used and watch, watch TV, watch movies, watch commercials, you'll see. You know, you'll see 10 Dogs before you see one snake or one mouse or one rat, they're just, you know, they're the most used domestic animals. So it's where you want to work. That's the animal you should have.
Nick VinZant 21:15
Yeah, I would think that dogs are probably the easiest to use.
Joel Norton 21:19
They are because they're the they're the ones that like to work. Right. All the other exotic animals don't work because their food motivated, though work because of their training everything else. Dogs want to please. You know, cats? Not not so much. You know? Yeah,
Nick VinZant 21:34
I guess how do the animals generally handle it? Right? Can you tell? Looking at it like this dog is all about it? And this dog is just Yeah, it's not half.
Joel Norton 21:43
So absolutely. So. So there are some definite prerequisites that that we tell people who are considering getting into this. The the main ones that we go to our competence and food drive, those those are the two absolute most important. Competence is pretty obvious and straightforward. Working on set, you're working with strangers and loud noises and new people in new environments. And if you've ever gone up to a dog, and you've gone to pet it, and it kind of pulls away, you know, does that shy thing? Nope, not a good not a good candidate at all. Because we never want to put a dog in a position where they're unhappy, where they're, they're scared where they're nervous, and that nothing you ever want to do. So confidence is number one. Second one is food drive. Everything that a dog does on set is voluntary. So if you picture a scene, you picture a dog, you picture freight the dog from Frasier, Eddie, that dog is in the middle of a scene, sitting in a chair. You know, being asked to do things by a trainer, there's nobody there to make that dog do anything. You know, that dog is supposed to bark at a certain line and then lay down and then go pick up a toy and get back in the chair. Whatever the action is. No one's there making that dog do that that dog is doing that on its own because it wants to and and dogs like to work but they they need something to make sure they're motivated and that
Nick VinZant 23:08
food. I feel like that's us too, though, when you get right down to it.
Joel Norton 23:12
Oh, yeah, exactly. Substitute food for a paycheck which equals food. Yeah, same. Same thing you're not going to dig a ditch for for $1 an hour in the hot sun. And a dog is not going to work on set for 12 hours for a tennis ball.
Nick VinZant 23:27
Has the industry changed in a way like what kind of protections are in place for the animals to make sure that people aren't
Joel Norton 23:35
the there are several productions, I like to think of first and foremost is us the trainers. It is not in our best interest or anyone's best interest to push a dog on set to a point where they no longer want to work because that doesn't benefit anybody. Right? Once a dog is scared or pushed to the point where it doesn't want to work anymore, nobody benefits from that we now have a dog that's not going to want to work on set. So that burns us for all future jobs for that dog. And our production it day is over with the dogs. Oh, we still have more scenes, well, it's too bad the dog doesn't want won't do it anymore. And like I said earlier, it's voluntary. So we can't make the dog do it. As far as other safeguards, there are companies like American Humane and math, which stands for moving animals protected. And their sole purpose is again to just be there on set. And to help us as trainers mediate any, any issues we may have or any any things that we may have may have not noticed or things that they can just help us with things like you know, making sure the asphalt isn't too hot and helping us you know, say okay, you know, we can only do this scene one more time because the you know, the sun is just getting too hot or, or whatever, there's not enough shade in this thing. And so they're there to help us. Make sure that no animals are harmed and everything else but again, it starts with the trainer. It starts with us And again, it's a no one's best interest to make a dog be scared or be hurt or beat, you know, it doesn't help anybody. I've never understood why people like think that working on set is, is some sort of an abusive industry because it's literally the opposite. It's one of the few industries that is all voluntary. You know, there's no leashes there's, you know, the dog does what it wants what it wants, and if it doesn't want it, it doesn't do it. It's as simple as that.
Nick VinZant 25:28
Has that always been the case? Or do you feel like that's kind of changed over the last whatever amount of time?
Joel Norton 25:34
As far as like exotic animals and some of those other ones? I think that there were probably some unfortunate things that were done earlier on. And I'm sure if people google it, they'll find things. But with domestic dogs, it's not really the case. And and with exotics again, it's just not that way anymore.
Nick VinZant 25:55
Boy, if you get that PR hit, somebody finds out that oh, yeah, she that'll crash and fast.
Joel Norton 26:01
Absolutely. And it happened with whatever movie that was a dog purpose, or a dog's life, whatever that was. And there was, there was some video that that was edited to look like the dog was, was really struggling to swim. And that was enough to absolutely dismantle that whole, you know, killed everything about that production. So again, it's in no one's best interest to even do things that are perceived.
Nick VinZant 26:28
Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Absolutely. most in demand dog,
Joel Norton 26:34
family dogs. That that's the general set, golden lab, terrier mixes sort of that the generic dog that you can't really tell what it is. Those are by far the most in demand, by far, least least is a variety least right off the bat. solid black dog. If you've ever tried to dig up a cell phone video or picture of a solid black dog, what happens? Same thing happens with black shirt. You can't see anything. It all blends together. There's no definition there's no you can't see it. So solid black dogs and darker dogs are almost never picked. You can't ever say Never say never because there is a black dog in a movie but I mean, overall, very rarely pick. The other one is sort of the the white fluffy dogs. I'm sure you've seen lots of little white fluffy dogs in your life. For some reason they're almost never picked for studio work. I don't know why.
Nick VinZant 27:31
I would think that they would be picked it seems like the kind of like I feel like there's always I think of Jennifer Coolidge seems like you
Joel Norton 27:40
Yeah, I mean but watch TV and movies and we we have they have not they just typically are not picked you think maybe they would be but they are not I mean so same thing was like there are a purse dog we called purse dog or whatever productions out there where you know we we did like the African the advertising for illegally brought up Legally Blonde on Broadway and so we we brought Chihuahuas and things like that because that was a dog but that sort of an exception. You know those those dogs are not really highly sought after this because they they they portray a look that just for whatever reason I get I don't know why I'm not the one who picks the dogs or or decides what goes in what they just don't work very much.
Nick VinZant 28:25
Yeah, that's one of those things that even thinking about is like, Well, why wouldn't that dog work?
Joel Norton 28:29
Yeah, yeah, your guess is good might be John freeze A's and multis, mixes and all those things. We see them all the time people contact all the time, but they just don't work.
Nick VinZant 28:41
Most unique commands you've ever had to teach in a dog or an animal.
Joel Norton 28:47
That is a good grant a great question to come to mind. Our company was contacted by a reality show about it was called Guinness World Records unleashed. There was a TV show about people breaking Guinness World Records. And spoiler alert reality shows are often not real. Sorry, if I'm breaking hearts out there. It's it's more scripted than you would ever believe it is. And so we were hired as a as a studio company to train animals to break records. One of them was removing socks and shoes and so one of our trainers, Brianna Messerschmitt, she has two Guinness World Records and she was a trainer on the job for most Sox removed by a dog and 62nd and most shoes removed by dog and 60 seconds. And she was on the Katie Couric show and promoted it and everything else and it was but the thing we she was hired to do it and paid as a as a studio trainer to do it. So that's fairly unique.
Nick VinZant 29:47
How many? How many socks and shoes was it? Like I would be impressed to To be honest, right?
Joel Norton 29:52
Yeah, it was. It was a lot and it was we she ran out of people. I want to say it was like they were it was like 30 Teen People so, so 13 times two sets of socks and shoes, and she had at least 15 seconds left. But since there weren't any more people on there, she broke the record with that amount. They they set it up. So she broke the record, not that she set a new record. So once she broke the record with those 13 people on the Katie Couric show back when she used to have a talk show, that was that was it?
Nick VinZant 30:23
I can't believe reality TV.
Joel Norton 30:25
It just sorry, Bachelor nation.
Nick VinZant 30:31
Actor that seems to get along best with animals.
Joel Norton 30:35
Oh, most most of them almost because who doesn't love dogs? You know what I mean? Like when you show up on set, and you have an animal, you're you're the I'm oftentimes the, you know, the best person that people like to see on set purely because I have the dog that's there. So the only time that I've ever had an issue was we put, like I said earlier, we provide other animals and we have provided snakes and things like that. And that's where people start to, not like when we show up. And so I did an episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine with Julie was Dreyfus that show, Wanda Sykes was on that show. And she wanted abs. If I was in the studio, she did not want to be in the studio. And I tried not to take it personally. But it was because she was just absolutely terrified of snakes.
Nick VinZant 31:23
Yeah, everybody does, like dogs. Yeah. Especially when they're nice, right? Yeah. And
Joel Norton 31:28
we don't right. And we don't bring not nice dogs, anyone did dogs are supposed to look mean, or they're not really mean, you know, it's all it's all training, you know, like the barking and growling and snarling, or, you know, being afraid or whatever. That's not none of that's real. It's all it's all we it's all things we do to make it look real thing. They added sound, we use little devices and things like that. You know, some of the friendliest dogs, you know, can look really scary on set if you get them to bark just right.
Nick VinZant 31:56
Most famous TV dog, our most famous, I guess, who would you say is kind of like that was the most famous dog?
Joel Norton 32:03
Oh, it may have been because I already mentioned it, but the dog from Modern Family, despite there being two dogs, and then Eddie from Frasier, I think are the most two well known TV dogs. Because they, they did so many seasons, you know, season after season, and the dog was just sort of always in the background and reminded you was there. You know, and there's been other dogs and TV shows, but I think purely for the runtime of those series. Those dogs really stood out.
Nick VinZant 32:36
The one that jumps out to me, right, it's like a robot, right? Because they made a ton of them. Will that be the same animal the whole time?
Joel Norton 32:43
No. So for for movies like Air Bud will oftentimes will get doubles for things like that, like that. The classic case is like Marley and Me, you know, during the movie Marlene me with, you know, Owen Wilson, I think yeah, they were famously 22. yellow lab in that in that movie. So that's, that's a lot, you know. And it's because there was so many different actions that those dogs are doing the dog was mellow. The dog was old, the dog was young, the dog was destructive that I was pulling on leash, the dog was asleep. And it can be so difficult to get a dog that is just crazy energy to pretend to be asleep all the time, that they just got a bunch of they got a bunch of backup, they got a bunch of doubles. And yellow labs are easy because all yellow labs kind of look like if it was a button in that thing. That would have been impossible because you can't find that many that can double each other and you can be able to tell
Nick VinZant 33:41
and then how would they do that then they would just like anytime they really showed the face they would just like this is the face dog.
Joel Norton 33:48
It's more show more. So the action. This is the this is this is the hyper dog. This is the crazy high energy ball drive dog and this is the very low energy mellow fleets. You know the all the scenes where the dog is not doing things they use that dog and all the scenes where the dog is dragging Owen Wilson down the street and ripping up the sofa. That's the hyperdocs
Nick VinZant 34:14
Who would you say like could you say like, who's like the best acting? Dog like oh, man, that dog did the best job of like, yeah, cutting
Joel Norton 34:24
the dogs are all the dogs are doing is what the trainers have taught them to do. Right? So that's that's what the dogs are doing. They're not there's no. So in other words, we get a lot of times where the script will say the dog is sad or the dog is this dog is scared. We don't ever make a dog be scared on set. We don't actually make a dog scared on set. We do things like teach your dog to lower their head and back up. And on camera. All of a sudden that looks like a scared dog. That's Oh, that dog enter the room lowered its head made a whimper inside out and back out slowly. To me, that looks like a scared dog. You know, but that's not, that's not really what happened, there wasn't any fear involved at all, there was very, very specific training, that dog was probably loving every second of that. And a lot of times, we have to work to get the dog's tail to stop wagging. Because it's like, it's supposed to be scared, but the dog is so happy to be to work and to be on set and to be around people that has tails wagging. And so we have to work and make sure that tails like not wagging actively in the seat. So again, there's, there isn't any, you know, acting emotion that the dog is, is displaying, it's all, it's all training. And, and there, there are more, you know, examples of great trained dogs and I that I could even list you know, the the dogs that are in that, that that TV show the old man, here's a couple Rottweilers on that show, he's got those, those dogs are fantastic, you know, very well trained, they looked aggressive, they look scary. But at the same time, they also looked amazingly sweet there, Jeff Bridges, personal dogs that are loving and cuddling and doing all these things. So I think that's amazing acting, you know, those dogs are actively believably looking like they're ripping people to shreds. And then the next thing they're actively cuddling with, with actors.
Nick VinZant 36:15
This one might be out of the realm necessarily, but maybe you know the answer. Is there ever been an animal that was cast? And I think they probably mean an exotic animal who's like, we want this. But yeah, we just couldn't do it. The thing that would come to my mind, like, we want to make this movie with a koala bear, but just couldn't do it
Joel Norton 36:34
yourself. I don't know anyone who has a working panda. Nobody owns one, you know, companies can't get one. So if that was something that somebody wanted to do in a, in a writers room, hey, we want to show and we're gonna build it around this panda as a main character. I mean, it might be able to be done at someone who's willing to commit to it, but it's not something that a company has that we can then train and you know, it's just not really feasible. So, there may be a situation like that that's existed. But I don't know, because I probably stopped dead in its tracks. You know, somebody went, Oh, no, that's prohibitively expensive, just make it a make it a chinchilla, rather than a koala, and we'll go from there, and we never heard about it.
Nick VinZant 37:13
That's pretty much all the questions I got, man, is there anything else you think that we missed? Or, you know, how can people learn more about you about the company?
Joel Norton 37:21
Sure, I mean, I can do blurb about ourselves. So our company is Hollywood paws, you can go on our website, if people have a dog that they think would be a good fit, you know, it fits the criteria that I talked about, it's confidence, who driven it's got a look, that you know, as a family dog, or a terrier, make it look like something that, that you have seen on TV or you know, fit to look like you, you know, people can reach out, and we will be happy to give them honest feedback as far as their dogs potential and, and it's, you know, it's not required that anyone take our training or anything else, all that we require to be able to represent a dog and take them on set is that they just have to be studio trained. Where they get the training really doesn't matter to us, we have programs that we can help them because it is so unique, and most people don't know how to do it. But all they have to do is be trained, and we will happily take them on set and work them and the the owner will get the money that we charged for for the studio annual rental. So it's a great way to make money. And it's a really fun, fun way to to bond with your dog and do some unique training. And so, you know, to all the people who love agility and love doing all these extracurriculars. If you're looking for something that was fun to do, studio trading can be fun, regardless of whether your dog works or not. Because it's it's very unique stuff that's done in a unique way. That is unlike any other type of training that's out there.