Strays Director Explains the Film’s Funniest Cameos, and His Caution Over Puppy Peril

The post Strays Director Explains the Film’s Funniest Cameos, and His Caution Over Puppy Peril appeared first on Consequence.

[Editor’s note: The following contains mild spoilers for Strays. For more, check out our spoiler-free interview with Josh Greenbaum about the making of the film.]

After production wrapped on Strays, director Josh Greenbaum adopted Will Ferrell. Okay, not exactly. He did, however, adopt one of the many, many dogs featured in the new R-rated comedy — specifically the puppy version of Ferrell’s character. “He needed a home at the end,” Greenbaum tells Consequence. “So I called my wife and my daughters and they of course started screaming, ‘Bring him home!’ Now I have Will Ferrell living in my house. And hopefully he doesn’t get any ideas from the film.”

Greenbaum might be right to be worried about that, as part of the joy of Strays is watching its canine cast walk on the wild side, as the recently abandoned Reggie (voiced by Ferrell) sets out on a quest for revenge, with some help from fellow pups Bug (Jamie Foxx), Maggie (Isla Fisher), and Hunter (Randall Park).

It’s an aggressively un-saccharine take on the talking dog genre, and what ended up being a huge question for Greenbaum while making the film was how to handle the very real peril that Reggie and his friends experience — especially when confronting Doug (Will Forte), Reggie’s abusive owner. As a lover of dogs, Greenbaum knows how many other dog lovers out there will automatically stop watching a project if any real harm comes to a pupper, and so calibrating the right level of danger was “a huge, huge part of the film for me.”

Key to that was working with Forte: “Will sort of knew when he first called me — he said, ‘Josh, I think I have to be pretty mean, right?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I think you do.’ We have to want this guy to get his comeuppance, and the journey of Reggie has to feel validated, like, oh, he wants to go get back at this guy who was so mean to him. But I certainly didn’t want him to be so mean that it’s just unpleasant to watch. And [Forte’s] so good at that. He’s so good at kind of playing the jerk who you also love to watch, and he doesn’t feel too threatening.”

Thus it became a balancing act, and Greenbaum was sure to get enough footage to give him options in editing. “On set, I shot levels — so I would say, ‘Let’s do that line or that moment or that performance at a 10, like pretty intense, and then let’s do it at like a seven.’ So I could feel it out when I ultimately showed it to audiences.”

Greenbaum knows that there are a few moments that are a bit difficult, “but that can be a good thing, so long as it’s handled well. I don’t mind that an audience is feeling anxious. That’s part of my job as a filmmaker, is to take you on the emotional ride of the story. So I hope we struck the balance. I feel like we did. And huge kudos to Will Forte, because a lot was on his shoulders.”

Will Forte and Josh Greenbaum behind the scenes of Strays, courtesy of Universal

Strays is overall a relatively straightforward narrative, but there are a few moments which dip into parodying other past examples of talking dog movies — far more earnest ones. Says Greenbaum, “I did like the Homeward Bound of my childhood, and Milo and Otis. We all did. We can admit it.”

However, both he and writer Dan Perrault wanted to make sure they hit on a tone that celebrated the genre while still poking fun at it. “Because maybe we don’t need this many dog movies,” he laughs.

This comes out in force with the introduction of a “narrator dog,” voiced by Josh Gad — who previously provided the voice of the narrating dog in A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey. “When we reached out to Josh Gad, I was like, he’s either going to be very upset and offended that we’ve asked him, or he’s gonna totally get it and go for it. And of course he’s brilliant and so funny, and he was like, ‘Oh, please let me do that,'” Greenbaum says.

Also appearing in the film (very briefly) is Dennis Quaid, who starred with Gad in the Dog’s Purpose series. Quaid’s involvement came about after Greenbaum and Perrault added the role of a random birdwatcher to the script, to punctuate a sequence in which an eagle swoops down and captures Bug, with Reggie leaping to Bug’s aid. “It just seemed funny to cut to somebody who then spots an eagle carrying two dogs,” Greenbaum says. “And when we thought about casting it, it was like, well, who would be right?”

It was both a combination of Quaid’s role in the Dog’s Journey films as well as his performance in 1979’s Breaking Away (a reference point Greenbaum used for Strays) that inspired the idea of casting him. And luckily enough, Quaid was into the idea, and happened to be in Atlanta, where Strays was shooting. “It was like, oh my God, this was meant to be.”

Greenbaum says “we had a few different jokes for him. The idea for him to reference himself, I think I have to give credit to Ellen — Ellen [DeGeneres] used to do this thing on her show where she would put an earbud in a celebrity’s ear and they’d have to go into like a Starbucks and say whatever she told them to say. And she made him go, ‘Dennis Quaid is here!’ when he walked in, and keep referring to himself as Dennis Quaid. Like, ‘Dennis Quaid would like a coffee.’ That made me laugh — I think subconsciously that’s why we did that. It just seemed funny. It just seemed very funny for him to say, ‘Dennis Quaid has seen a lot of shit.'”

Not quite a cameo, but still an important contribution, was the Snoop Dogg track “Gz and Hustlas,” which plays over the closing credits — something Greenbaum says he knew he wanted early on. “I love Snoop — of course I wanted to get him in there,” he says. “I’m sure it’s not novel, but I’m of the era where, like, that was my music. Old-school hip-hop was all I listened to for much of my life. And it conveyed the vibe of the movie. That specific Snoop track, I just love. It’s not a deep, deep cut, but it’s not in, like, his top five most played. It’s just got such a good beat and hook to it.”

The narrating dog in Strays is the closest the film gets to outright parody, because the reason Greenbaum wanted to make the film was that “it wasn’t just spoofing dog movies. I wanted to have a few of those jokes, absolutely. But what I loved about the script, and what I am excited about, about the film, is that it really holds up on its own as its own story about toxic relationships. It’s about toxic relationships and how your friends help you through those types of breakups that you need to make, and then how you find your own sense of self-worth.”

Continues Greenbaum, “I hope the film functions as really more of a human story — the same way Toy Story was not about toys.”

Strays is in theaters now.

Strays Director Explains the Film’s Funniest Cameos, and His Caution Over Puppy Peril
Liz Shannon Miller

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