When deciding to use animals in your film, you aren’t just going to have one animal for the whole shoot. In the case of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” three different dogs were used for the character of Brandy, the faithful companion to Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth, and each of them had a different speciality for what they’d do on camera. But there’s always going to be the one dog considered the principal, and for “John Wick: Chapter 4,” that was a dog named Britta. Speaking with The Ringer, director Chad Stahelski explained how Britta’s action instincts dictated her scenes:
“Our lead dog — her name’s Britta — for whatever reason, she was a crotch biter … We had all these other gags planned, and she’s like, ‘Nope. Right for the crotch.’ We’re like, ‘OK, I guess that’s our character; we’re doing crotch biting.'”
Dogs biting crotches is always a good gag. The aforementioned Tarantino film does it, too. There’s a pain in that move that so many people in the audience can understand. The mentality of harnessing that feeling made its way over to the film’s lead star Keanu Reeves as well, when he improvised a crotch hit with nunchucks in the Osaka action set piece. “I’m like, ‘OK, I guess we’re groin hitters today with the nunchucks.’ It’s always interesting,” Stahelski says of the gag.
Yes, it’s a cheap shot, but its cheapness never quashes its effectiveness. Without exception, someone in the audience is going to let out an involuntary audible reaction to those hits and bites, even if you see it coming. And in the case of Britta the dog, watching her maul the crotch of the guy who was going to shoot her earlier in the film is immensely cathartic.
Source From: www.slashfilm.com
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