When Hungarian writer/director Kornél Mundruczó wanted to make a cinematic parable in which stray dogs stand in for humanity’s social undesirables, he knew he’d need a skilled animal coordinator/trainer to pull it off. The story of White God involves hundreds of canine actors performing an extraordinary variety of actions. Enter Teresa Miller, who has trained animals for film, particularly dogs, for almost 30 years. The result of their efforts will soon be available for all to see, as White God hits theaters stateside on March 27. Back in January during the Sundance Film Festival, we sat down with Mundruczó and Miller to talk about the logistics of dog cinema. Dog actor Body (pronounced BO-dee), one of two dogs who play the role of Hagen, the main character in the film, was also present. He did not have much to say, but he is most assuredly a good boy. Yes, he is. Yes, he is.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
It’s been well-publicized that all of the dogs featured in the film came from real animal shelters. Where did you find them?
TERESA MILLER
The shelter dogs were all from the Budapest area. We also worked with Arpad Halas, a coordinator in Hungary who works in dog sports. He has clients with special obedience training, or who are active in different sport groups. He put together a beautiful team of dogs. The dogs in the film are a combination of his clientele and the shelter dogs.
KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ
And when production was finished, we ran an adoption program—so all of those shelter dogs are with families now. And that’s really meaningful for us. It’s a huge problem in Hungary. I mean, the movie is really about our society, but hopefully it also helps with this issue.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
So stray dogs are a significant social issue in Hungary?
KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ
Yeah. It’s because we’re centrally located in Europe. Stray dogs come here from all over, especially from the east, where there are no dog pounds. They don’t care, so the dogs all run loose and leave. But we have dog pounds, and they’re all full, and it’s so sad. And the law is very strict. If an owner can’t find their lost dog in two months, or even less time, the dog gets put down. Of course, there are amazing people working at these shelters. They try to be with the dogs for as long as they can, and they run lots of programs for them. But at one point or another, a pound will get overloaded, so they must kill some of them.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
And where did you find Body? What’s his story?
TERESA MILLER
Body’s from a poor family in Arizona—a potential shelter dog. They had an accidental litter of five large dogs in this very small house—they couldn’t afford to keep him. They had advertised to find him a good home.
We’d been searching for about two months for a dog who would stand out in a pack of 280. And look at him! He’s part shar pei, part lab, part hound, and several other breeds—a true “Heinz 57,” as they say. He’s so unique and doesn’t look like anybody else…and yet he has a “twin” [Luke], another dog who looks just like him! And that made him perfect for the amount of things that he had to do in the movie.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
How did you come onboard the project in the first place?
TERESA MILLER
I’d worked in Europe for about 15 years on a TV series. A colleague of mine had worked with Kornél on another film, and when he learned of this script, he recommended that we talk. And it was an amazing, ambitious project that I really wanted to be a part of. It was unlike anything else I’ve done, or that’s been done!
KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ
We started to work on the script together, just so that I could know what the dogs could and could not do. I didn’t want any kind of artificial things—no CGI—but at the same time, I didn’t want to make the dogs do anything that they can’t normally.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
This movie works hard to inject personality into its canine characters. How do you get a dog to “act”? What do you do to get the facial expressions you want from them?
KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ
A lot of it comes from how Teresa deals with the dogs. I remember, for example, a scene where Hagen is watching his owner leave him. Teresa started to cry, and then Body reacted with this “What’s with her?” look. That was the kind of emotion that we were looking for, and it was unplanned. There are lots of those small, unplanned details in the movie. The editor played a big role in creating the performances from the dogs’ actions.
TERESA MILLER
Yeah, the editor is magic. Everything to do with turning Body into this character—his actions come from me literally pouring my soul into him. He reacts off my sadness when I play it down, and acts happy when I play it up. It’s exhausting at times, because you just put so much emotion into training.
KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ
Yeah. So you are a good actress, huh?
TERESA MILLER
I’m a horrible actress! You don’t see me in front of the camera very often.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
There are some incredible shots of these hundreds of dogs running through the streets. Shooting that kind of action is complex enough without having to deal with animals. What went into putting those scenes together?
KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ
That idea of a dog horde was one of the most persistent images in my mind, one of the most important ones to realize. And it was difficult! We did a lot of rehearsals beforehand in the countryside. Then we blocked off a whole area of the city for one day. We had a starting point and a point “B,” which would be a collection area for the dogs. And we had to place the actors and crew members as well.
We could do it only three or so times, because it was a long run for the dogs. They were pounding over concrete, and you have to take care for their feet. So we’d use a lot of cameras for each run. We created a “camera car” out of a quad that would run with the animals. We built boards around it so there would be no running over dogs, or dogs running under it, and it was all safely monitored. But that’s how we captured all those shots from inside the running horde.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
Besides Body, his lookalike, Luke, also plays Hagen. Was each dog used for a particular kind of scene? Or did you just have two so as not to overtax one of them?
KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ
Hopefully you don’t recognize it, but we’d use both within the same scene! In one shot, Luke could be the one barking, and in the next, Body’s the one sleeping. And together, they create one character. Luke’s the aggressive one, while Body’s the calm one. Luke was a little bit more sensitive, and he’s always moving and jumping.
TERESA MILLER
They’re so close together. They mirror each other: They’ll sit together, they’ll look in the same direction together, they’ll lay down together. It’s amazing. They almost share a brain! Yet they are so different. If Luke was here right now, he’d be looking in the blinds and jumping on the furniture and have a pillow in his mouth. He’s hyperactive. Body is Mr. Manners—the observant one who’s really cool and calm and likes to meet people. They complement each other so well, and that made it possible to have Hagen’s character.
MOVIE MEZZANINE
So will they continue to have acting careers?
TERESA MILLER
They can absolutely will! We train our animals for films and commercials in the hope that they’ll get cast for more. Body and Luke actually just did a music video with Waka Flocka Flame.
