SUMMER SNEAKS ’94 : Less Fat: Popcorn or Milk Bones? : Take a seat next to Mr. Wegman’s Weimaraners for the return of ‘Lassie’ and a pack of other summer canine flicks

It’s the Year of the Dog, according to the Chinese calendar, so this summer filmgoers, hungry for family fare with boomer nostalgia appeal, will be treated to an especially large kennel-ful of Hollywood dogs.

Canine cinema slated for release this summer includes remakes of “Lassie,” and “The Little Rascals” as well as early fall’s “The Yellow Dog,” an original film centering on the exploits of a yellow Lab (but with decided echoes of “Old Yeller”). Other films feature a scene-stealing dog, including the recently released “Clean Slate” (whose Jack Russell terrier, Barkley, has the dubious distinction of playing the screen’s first visually challenged dog), “Mask” due in July, and “The Little Rascals,” due in August. And those are on top of the recent “Beethoven’s 2nd,” “Iron Will” and “White Fang 2.”

It should be no surprise, of course; Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ “The Hidden Life of Dogs” has been on bestseller lists for months. Television pooches--including Eddie, the scrappy terrier on “Frasier”; Murray on “Mad About You,” and Buck, the Bundys’ pet on “Married With Children”--have graced magazine covers and are big audience-pleasers. And baby boomers cherish fond memories of “Old Yeller,” “The Incredible Journey,” “Rin Tin Tin” and even “101 Dalmatians.”

The contemporary appeal for filmmakers, in fact, is at least partly because of the growing number of boomers who want quality entertainment for their kids. And animal-oriented films of the past several years have performed respectably to spectacularly at the box office; witness both “Beethovens,” “Milo and Otis,” “Homeward Bound” and “Free Willy.”

“People want to make a movie that’s simple and moving and full of adventure--the way you might have hoped to have a movie for yourself when you were 8 or 10,” said Philip Borsos, writer-director of “The Yellow Dog” for 20th Century Fox. “And dog movies really easily fall into that category. A dog is always emotional--and always funny.”

Borsos said his own two young children drove him to write such a movie: “I’d looked around to take my kids to a movie that I could actually enjoy myself and that has a little more depth to it. There was really nothing.”

Boomers who grew up with Lassie and Rin Tin Tin and other screen canines feel particularly comfortable accompanying their own children to movies starring dogs, say industry observers.

“If you’re looking for something you can take your kids to, you know if a dog is a prominent feature in the movie it’s not going to be inordinately violent or emotionally disturbing, so it’s a safe choice,” says UCLA film professor Howard Suber. “When film producers are looking for a way to span the generations, the kind of movie that both parents and children can go to together and enjoy, perhaps on different levels, they think of a cute little dog.”

For directors, cute might not be the first word that comes to mind.

“My worst moments by far were those scenes where I had all six dogs in one shot,” said Rod Daniels, director of “Beethoven’s 2nd,” in which the film’s namesake falls in love with another St. Bernard and sires four puppies.

“They’re supposed to go from point A to point B,” says Daniels. “That’s all they have to do. There would be six, seven trainers there, all with their buzzers and all with their little food and all with their commands. We’d roll camera and we’d all tense up. Then you would see six dogs scatter. There would just be this exodus and you’d yell ‘Cut!’ and you’d just do it over and over and over and over again.”

Daniels became resigned to the ordeal: “It was like they were saying ‘We’re puppies and we really don’t have to do this.’ It was like working with little babies.”

Borsos can laugh now--barely--as he recalls endless retakes with Dakota, star of “The Yellow Dog,” in which a 14-year-old boy and his dog are shipwrecked on a remote island during a family trip and must brave the wilderness and find a way to survive.

“The dog was supposed to be slipping off the edge of a cliff and was completely incapable of doing that. In fact he loved leaping, and leaped as if all four legs were wired to springs,” he recounted. “He was so proud of himself. We must have done 40 or 50 takes on that scene.”

But there are bright spots.

“The dogs are better than I thought they were going to be,” said “Little Rascals” director Penelope Spheeris, who also directed “Wayne’s World II” and “The Decline of Civilization” Parts 1 and 2, about the punk and heavy metal scenes.

“Dogs take direction much better than metalheads, and they don’t talk back like punks,” Spheeris says. “And they’re easier to work with than Mike Meyers.”

In fact, most directors agree that when it comes down to it, working with dogs is not that much different from working with human actors.

“My job is to be a storyteller and if it’s with dogs or robots, it doesn’t really matter as long as it moves an audience,” said Daniels. “Directing is communicating, and you have to know how to communicate with your actors. The trick is to look at the footage and create moments, not only when you shoot it but when you edit it, where you look at it and say, ‘Gee, isn’t that sweet? Look what he’s thinking about her.’ ”

Indeed, the editing room is where much of the magic really happens.

“I was recutting a scene where Lassie jumps out of a very, very high window,” said “Lassie” director Dan Petrie. “I wanted to make it more difficult, so we added a couple jumps, edited them into the scene. And it looks like the dog just does all this magically himself.”

For Daniels, it helped to imagine a human version of his St. Bernard star.

“We do anthropomorphize the animals,” Daniels said. “In this one Beethoven was a little like John Goodman--big, overeating a little bit, too much time in front of the television set, not enough exercise.”

With well-known dogs like Lassie, no human role model may be necessary, since the collie has become part of contemporary American culture.

“You deal with the dog in the same way you do with a person,” says Petrie. “Obviously, you can’t talk to the dog and say, ‘This is what’s going on in your head.’ You have to find a physical equivalent of that emotion.”

In this “Lassie” remake--due some 50 years after the original--the noble collie is involved in a truck wreck. Lassie’s master has been killed, but the dog has been thrown clear into the woods. Lassie--played as in the television show by a male dog--is seen looking back through the woods at the ambulances and the director must convey to the audience that the dog is struck with grief.

“His head is down low, very low, watching,” Petrie explains. “Then he raises his head up. He looks quizzical. Then he realizes, ‘Oh-oh. It’s bad news.’ Then he lowers his head down, defeated, and starts to move away because he knows the man is dead.”

The film director’s relationship with a dog’s trainer is critical to a smooth-running production. Part actor, part director, part interpreter, a trainer is a filmmaker’s conduit to the canine, the one who supplies the commands the dogs will actually obey.

“After a while you do feel like you did direct the dog, whereas the reality of it is you went to (Lassie’s trainer) Bob Weatherwax and you explained the scene to him and how you planned to shoot it,” says Petrie. “Then it’s up to him to translate that to actual movement and body language on the part of the dog that will convey those feelings.”

The set of “Beethoven’s 2nd” was often crawling with dog wranglers. Because St. Bernard puppies grow at a rate of a pound a day, the dogs would quickly become too big and new puppies--all between 4 and 8 weeks old--would have to be brought in. “The secret’s out now: There were a total of 260 puppies,” says a weary-sounding Daniels.

That may be extreme, but most animal films commonly employ several look-alike stars, because one dog might excel at one skill, another at something else.

In “Little Rascals,” for example, three dogs portray Petie, the American bulldog with a distinctive ring around his eye (courtesy of the makeup crew). “The Yellow Dog” was actually five retrievers.

“To make use of several dogs is completely necessary to show the full range of the character,” says Borsos. “One dog was better at standing and staring without flinching. Another loved to jump and swim. And Dakota, our star dog, was livelier and funnier than the others.”

One burning question does occur: can you teach a dog new tricks?

Treats are the stock in trade on any movie set and dogs are often bribed to jump, sit, roll over or--the easiest of directions--look hungry.

“There’s a scene in the movie where the dog is supposed to stare hungrily at a bit of food,” Borsos said of “The Yellow Dog.” “It was fairly simple: The dog’s trainer just didn’t feed him and made him sit there and watch. The dog is not acting.”

On some sets, praise and pats are enough motivation; on others, snacks help the creative process.

“When our two dogs had to nuzzle and kiss there would be just a little pablum on the collar or under the ear and you’d know where to put the camera,” “Beethoven’s” Daniels said. “It’s just like if you’re doing a stunt and a guy hits another guy. You know where to put the camera so that it looks like he really hit him.”

Sometimes tricks are invented on the spur of the moment, or inspired by exasperation.

“We had one scene where Lassie is supposed to be captured in a net by two unscrupulous men,” said Petrie. “But you can’t get a dog to run into a net. So we had two men hold the net down, about a foot off the ground. Then we asked the trainer to get behind those men and call the dog. We’d let the dog jump over the net.

“Then we rolled camera and this time they put up the net and capture him. It sounds mean--but you couldn’t possibly get the dog to do what you want him to do. Then later you apologize to him.” Next week: What really goes on when animals work on movie sets.