The indie movie And They're Off… is mockumentary comedy set in the world of horse racing. You can catch it in select cities, including major racing communities like Kentucky. While they were filming at the Hollywood Park race track in Los Angeles, I got to visit the set and interview the actors. They shot some fake interviews while the horse pooped in mid-take.
Sean Astin stars as Dusty Sanders, a failed trainer who gets a new shot with a new horse. Astin reflected on the humor in his idiocy.
Sean Astin: "It’s funny because there are these universal human moments at each step along the way, any one of the things he’s supposed to do. Some of my favorite scenes are in the actual horse trainer’s office, which is just a box of a room in the stable. That’s how they all are, even these guys whose horses make millions of dollars. They have just a little cement four walls that they work in. Some of the best stuff is describing what’s going on to the documentary camera, just narrating. So you’ll see the events of whatever’s happening and then Dusty’s describing his take on it and it’s just stupid - funny and stupid."
Writer/producer Alan Grossbard knew the racing world and decided it was long overdo for a film comedy.
Alan Grossbard: "I got involved in the ownership side about 10 years ago. I started to buy 5% with this syndicate where we would each buy a little piece of a horse, so we had the thrill of it but the bills didn’t get to be insane. I love it. It’s just a lot of fun. I love the people that I’m hanging out with. I love watching the thoroughbreds. It’s just a wonderful world. Five years later, I was thinking to myself, this is really a funny world and a great world to do the mockumentary style in. Nobody had done it, so I thought I’ll give it a shot, I’ll write it, see how it comes out. Then I started giving it to people and the reaction was really great. Then when we started casting I was kind of blown away by the people that were coming in to read for it. I thought, 'Man, we’ve really got to do this.' Next thing I knew, I had Sean Astin, Cheri Oteri, Martin Mull and everyone else."
Astin himself grew up around horses, but the film was an education.
Sean Astin: "Well, there’s horses and then there’s thoroughbred racehorses. I grew up I wouldn’t say around horses. My mom bought a farm when I was 15-years-old and she had lots of horses and llamas and things on her farm. I’d ride them some of the time when I was up there. I felt like we always had access to horses. I felt very comfortable around them, but this is something entirely different. I’ve always wanted to know a little bit more, really a little bit more about thoroughbreds and how they are trained and how they’re kept and how they’re treated, basically. A lot of people are not comfortable with the way that [they’re treated.] My daughter for example saw it and she said, 'I don’t think the horses like that.' I said, 'Why do you say that?' She said, 'I don’t think they like it.' Well, I’ve been around the horse and I think the ones I’ve seen love it. It gives them a sense of [pride.] I don’t know, they just seem to swell with pride when they’re doing it. So getting to learn about all the little nuances and things, really fun."
Other race track comedies have focused on the people, so Grossbard wanted to make one about the horses.
Alan Grossbard: "All of those movies, even if you go back to A Day at the Races with the Marx Brothers, it’s always been about the gambling side or a guy who happens to be going to the track. It wasn’t specifically about the world of racing, the trainers, the jockeys, the ownership groups that are a collection of a variety of different people. I thought what hadn’t been done is just the inside version of this world, which is all of us are a bunch of dreamers. We’re all a little crazy in our own way. That’s what I thought was missing, that documentary style film."
House’s Peter Jacobson plays the investor who makes perhaps a foolish investment in Dusty. He shot the film in between seasons of the hit TV show.
Peter Jacobson: "It’s been nice. I haven’t had too many days. I live in New York so during the year when we’re shooting House I fly back and forth most of the time. I didn’t want to do anything that was too far away for too long, so this was nice. It was a nice little supporting role in a funny movie and it kind of worked out perfectly."
And he was happy to see the horse do its business while he worked.
Peter Jacobson: "That’s part of the fun. That’s actually one of the more interesting things. How often do you get to watch something take a poop? Honestly, what’s boring about that?"
Gigi Rice plays Jacobson’s wife, looking fabulous in revealing outfits at the track. I knew her from TV and movies, but she was happy to meet me personally.
Gigi Rice: "I’ll tell you a funny story about Fred, your name, because my dad was on the highway patrol and my mom’s name was Mimi. He used to work long shifts at night, so if he ever said, 'Hi, Mimi,' everybody would listen. So he would say, 'Hi, Fred.' So they called each other Fred so no one would listen to his conversations on patrol at nighttime. That’s what I thought of when I met you."
Glamming up is no de rigueur for Rice, even though it always seems to create more work for the continuity team.
Gigi Rice: "I think that’s how I got the part. I’m used to it though. I’m kind of used to it. You’d never pick me out in a crowd in my real life. I don’t look like this. There’s a lot of work that goes into this. It’s a couple hours in the makeup chair. I’ve got all kinds of special addings on. They push me up with chicken breasts. Mark Moses and Peter Jacobson, every time I talk about it they’re like, 'Stop talking about it because I like the illusion. I don’t want you to talk about how that’s all fake.' You can pull them in and pull them out. In fact when I worked on Night at the Roxbury, I’d just had a baby, my second son. He was 6-8 weeks old so I was still nursing him. I’m not kidding, they had a woman to make sure my breasts were matched, because if they got one part of the shot and I had to go and nurse and come back, then they wouldn’t match. Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan were so freaked out by me because they were young guys. They were not at all into listening to about how I had to go nurse my baby or pump."
She gets to be funny in And They’re Off… too.
Gigi Rice: "My funniest scene though is when they just finished injecting my lips and I run into Dusty. He thinks I’ve been in an accident or something. They put gauze in my mouth and he couldn’t really understand what I was saying. I was telling him that I just bought the horse and we want you to train him, and he couldn’t understand anything."
Even though his character is an idiot, Sean Astin is coming away from And They’re Off… with some insight into horse racing.
Sean Astin: "What’s really fun about it if it’s done properly with people is that it’s a way for people to interact. If you go to a baseball game, you always think of the classic father and son sitting there with the dad teaching the son how to keep score and what it means to them in their relationship. Horse racing is kind of a gambling thing a lot of times. That’s a lot of times what it’s known for, but if you sit and visit with people who are there for the afternoon with their family, particularly the guys who know a lot about it, it’s just fun. It’s just fun to say, 'Well, he ran on a dirt track last time and now he’s on a grass track. How’s he going to respond?' This is how they’re training. You can look at this one newspaper, it’ll say he trained at this speed on this day and that speed. What about the jockeys? Well, that jockey’s rode 10 horses that have won in the last two weeks, so that’s a hot jockey who the owners are trying to find and the agents are putting him on the best horses, so maybe you should go with the jockey."
"Then they’ve got the colors of the uniforms and then the pageantry of how they walk out, the trumpet and they do their little parade, the horses walk up and down for you to see them. A lot of the bettors are watching the horse on the track. It doesn’t matter what all this other stuff is. They’ll look and they’ll say, 'Sean’s Hat is feeling a little jittery. Is that an excited feeling so he’s ready for it or is he looking a little nervous, uncomfortable, he’s going to not come out of the gate strong?' As soon as the bell goes off, nothing else matters. You’ve got six to 20 or four to 20 1,100 pound creatures running at unbelievable speeds and you can’t believe it. They’re so fast. When most of the time they’re walking or a light gallop or trot. When they come out of this thing, boom, it’s fun to watch."
* * * *
And They're Off hit theaters on October 28, 2011 and is rated PG-13 for some crude and sexual references.
