‘I didn’t want to choose between my wife and dog’
Surprising true story behind new pup movie
Controversy flared on the Internet this week over a video showing what seemed a terrified German shepherd being forced into water for the movie “A Dog’s Purpose.” PETA called for a boycott of the movie, and Saturday’s Los Angeles premiere was canceled. It was an ugly counterpoint to a love story that began as author W. Bruce Cameron’s way of coaxing his girlfriend, heartsick over the loss of her dog, to open her heart to another pet.
“A Dog’s Purpose” became a bestselling book before it was a movie: Opening Friday, it follows a canine, voiced by Josh Gad, who, after multiple deaths and rebirths, finally reunites with the boy he loved decades ago, an aged and lonely Dennis Quaid.
Prepare to weep. Cameron did, as did his girlfriend (now wife), Cathryn Michon, who wrote the screenplay. And yes, they told The Post: She did agree to another dog, but it took nearly a decade before they found one.
The pitch that made it possible? That unfolded in two hours, on a drive up the California coast in 2003, soon after they started dating. Suddenly, Michon began to cry.
She’d started thinking about her dog, Ellie, an 8-year-old Doberman who died in her arms. Though the loss was months old, the pain felt fresh. “I can never go through that again,” she told Cameron. “I’m never having another dog!”
Cameron was stricken. He’d had dogs all his life, starting with a Labrador, Cammie, that he got at 9, the same age as the boy in the film. His most recent dog at the time was in Colorado with his ex-wife and kids, and he hoped one day to have another. “I didn’t want to choose between Cathryn and a dog,” he said. So he started telling her a story.
“It came to my head as an entire piece, as if I’d downloaded it off the Internet into my brain,” he said. “I had the characters, the scenes, the dialogue. When I finished, she had tears in her eyes and told me, ‘ This is your next book!’ ”
But they were busy LA writers with other projects, including Cameron’s “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter,” his book-turned-sitcom. “A Dog’s Purpose” came out in 2010, just as Cameron’s daughter Georgia called from Denver: She’d just rescued a litter left in a cardboard box and had the perfect puppy for them.
“No, thanks,” they told her. After all, they lived in a high-rise and traveled a lot.
“I’ll be there Wednesday,” she said. And as soon as she put a golden ball of fluff in their arms, Tucker was theirs. “Once we got him, I couldn’t understand why I’d ever want a moment without a dog,” Cameron said.
(After reviewing the controversial video, Cameron was initially “disturbed.” But he said that the edited video is taken out of context and “mischaracterizes what happened,” adding that the dog in the stunt “wasn’t in danger and wasn’t upset.”)
Unlike Bailey, the reincarnated canine of the film, Tucker, a 6-year-old “mixed-up mash of who knows what” isn’t an old soul. “I think this is Tucker’s first trip,” Cameron said. “He’s pretty silly. He chases squirrels and tries to climb up the tree after them.”
Yet Cameron said he had an encounter with one dog he felt he’d known before. Years ago, riding a mountain bike in Colorado, he saw a dog behind a chainlink fence. Something compelled him to stop and pet him.
“The way he looked at me and wagged [his] tail reminded me of Cammie,” he said. “And as I rode away, I couldn’t shake the sensation that I’d just interacted with my very first dog.”