Molly Shannon stars as a dog lover whose world is rocked when her beloved pet/best friend meets with an early demise in writer/director Mike White's latest film, Year of the Dog. It seems only appropriate that Shannon took the lead in Year of the Dog as one of her favorite sketches on Saturday Night Live was the recurring dog show segment with Will Ferrell. So is Year of the Dog her payoff for doing those sketches? “Yeah, it was the payoff. …No, they aren’t connected at all. Dog Show - Will Ferrell and I wrote together because I always wanted to do a sketch about dogs because I do love dogs. But, yeah, they don’t have anything to do with one another.”
Having a Script Written Just for Her: Mike White wrote the character with Molly Shannon in mind and Shannon talked about how that came about: “Mike and I did this TV series in 2003 called Cracking Up that got cancelled. It was so much fun working with Mike. I played the alcoholic, bipolar mother, but the network didn’t get behind the show and they were trying to Mike change it. It was just not a good experience for Mike. We shot 13 episodes and only two aired, so after that Mike was like, ‘Ugh.’ But we became really good friends and we’d have dinners and he’d say, ‘I’m going to write you a movie.’ And I’m like, ‘Really?’ [making a squealing noise]. When you have Mike White telling you he’s going to write you a movie, I mean it’s just…please. I can’t even tell you how excited I was. But I also didn’t want to ask him about it or bother him too much, because I know how hard he works.
I knew that the whole experience on Cracking Up was hard that I thought if he does this it should just be fun and creative and no pressure. [He] should just have fun writing, and it took a while. But he was going, ‘I’m still working on that movie.’ He wouldn’t tell me what it was about. Well, he told me a little. And then one day he just called me up after Christmas and said, ‘I have a script to send you.’ And it was like a dream come true, you know?
I opened it up and it said, Year of the Dog by Mike White. I went and got coffee at Starbucks and I was like, ‘Page one! Peg…’ [It was] so exciting. Because I think there is a misconception that people think there is so much to choose from. People go, ‘Why did you choose to do that?’ But it’s really not like there are so much choice of all these amazing female parts to chose from. I mean there are certainly for some people in that small percentage, but it’s not my situation. So I was just really, really grateful.”
Playing the Best Friend in Comedies: That’s been Shannon’s forte recently but with Year of the Dog, she takes the lead and gets dramatic. “Yeah, it was hard,” admitted Shannon. “It’s so different than comedy, because it’s a lot quieter and there were lots of scenes where it was like, ‘She cries. She breaks down. She sobs! She’s devastated! She’s beside herself with grief!’ And I’m like, ‘Omigod, what am I going to…?’ It’s like all over the script, so I just really wanted to do a good job for Mike. It’s also very technical because you have all the crew waiting around. They are like, ‘Take your time. When you’re ready let us know.’ Meaning, when you’re ready emotionally.
There are all these people around and you have to go to all these old parts in your head and you go, ‘I’m ready.’ You don’t want to keep people waiting because they are all standing around like, ‘Waiting! C’mon!’ Money and time. So, it’s so different than comedy. It’s so different. It’s so introverted and different, but I really enjoyed it though. It just felt like a challenge and I really, really enjoyed it. I loved it.”
A Difference of Opinion: Laura Dern believes Year of the Dog is a comedy, but Shannon didn’t necessarily interpret it that way. “Did she think of it as a comedy? (Laughing) Mike White describes it as a comedy that’s not that funny. I guess to me, because my scenes are serious, there are a lot of people who are having jokes off of me, but I didn’t feel like I did much comedy in the movie. To me, it felt more like a drama. Except for the supermarket scene where I wink at the guy. I felt like, ‘Ooh!’ That was a little joke for me when I was flirting with him and I look terrible. But, yeah, it’s a comedy that’s not that funny that gets kind of dark.”
Working with Brad Pitt as a Producer: Shannon says Pitt was on the set occasionally but he didn’t give her notes or insert himself into the process. “He wasn’t like that hands-on a producer, but I was eating lunch one day with my kids and I had this Irish nanny who was helping me with my kids that day. We were sitting there eating with one of the producer’s who runs Brad Pitt’s company and he came down and sat down at our table. All of a sudden I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ And I looked at my Irish nanny and he suddenly realized its Brad Pitt!
It’s kind of funny to watch a superstar like that because, you know, we are in the tent eating lunch and you feel like a wave of like…people start to get in a flurry and act like they aren’t noticing. But he really handles it really well. He’s really nice and as normal as he can be, considering he creates like a tornado wherever he walks. It’s like a raucous of people getting their feathers ruffled. I felt really distracted because it was the day I had to do the scene with Peter [Sarsgaard] on the bench. I was doing the scene and it’s this really dramatic scene and I was like, ‘That’s Brad Pitt walking over there!’ (Laughing) Do you know what I mean? It’s very distracting. I mean, I find it so distracting. He was there for a while and I was like (laughing), ‘Get out of here!’”
