Monday, March 1, 2010

Not All Dogs Go To Heaven

Apparently, in 1982, Samuel Fuller (The Big Red One, I Shot Jesse James) wrote and directed a film called White Dog in which someone teaches a dog to hate black people. Dave Chappelle's "Racist Dolphin" sketch, anyone? My friend Greg introduced me to this fan-made trailer earlier today and I had to snag it. Controvery surrounded the production as people weren't quick to understand that this wasn't a racist film but rather an attempt at discussing racial intolerance of the time using a dog as a vehicle. Kind of like how Beethoven's 4th serves an analogy for psuedo-patriotism amidst post-9/11 tensions. Right? Beethoven's 4th?

Anyway, Kristy McNichol, of Two Moon Junction fame, stars in this outdated movie. Highlight of her career, I'd say. Ultimately, the film was shelved and never released in theaters. In 2008, Criterion released White Dog on DVD where it was met with little criticism because nobody cared. But now this trailer's making the rounds and causing all sorts of ruckus on the internets. Comments on IMDB and YouTube (as they usually do) vividly illustrate that ignorance and all-around dumbassery is alive and well.

What are you opinions on this movie? Have you seen it? Have any interest in seeing it? Now that you've seen this, are there any other Hollywood dogs that you think may have been trained to be racist? Haha, I'm so bad.

4 comments:

simoncolumb said...

That is so offensive. But incredibly intreiging. I don't know what to make of it - but I do know that when i was watching the trailer on my lunch break I had to pause it when anyone else walked in just in case I looked like a racist.

elgringo said...

Haha, definitely. I wrote this post at work and I kept thinking "I hope nobody can hear this in the other room."

brian said...

i've seen white dog and loved it. for so many reasons. obviously sam fuller is one of the best ever. then you have that white dog always watching war movies on tv. then they go to noah's ark -- a facility that trains animals to act in movies. then there are all these jokes about how r2-d2 is ruining hoolywood for animal actors (and you can only imagine how this has gotten worse since instead of animal puppets, you can now just have cgi-animals).

elgringo said...

Brian - I'm going to watch this based on your recommendation.