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Looking Out for Lassie : Hollywood loves animals (they work cheaper than actors), but the well-being of four-legged stars on the set is left almost entirely up to the trainers. Activists say that’s not nearly good enough

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<i> Michael Walker is a frequent contributor to Calendar</i>

During filming in Minnesota last year of Disney’s “Iron Will”--the story of a farm boy’s triumph in a 1917 dog-sledding race--a staged fight between two dogs resulted in one receiving a cut near the eyelid. The scene was shot in two takes, each lasting less than 10 seconds, under the supervision of the film’s animal coordinator and an officer from the American Humane Assn. Each dog was muzzled by use of a clear plastic-coated wire secured around its snout and the back of its head.

Despite these precautions, one dog’s canine tooth apparently slipped through the muzzle. “It was nothing serious or major,” says Ed Lish, the American Humane Assn. officer at the shoot. “We quit right there.” The injured dog was taken to a veterinarian and its wound sutured.

The incident on “Iron Will” serves as a reminder of the dangers that animals face when performing in movies and television even under carefully controlled conditions. With animal rights now a prominent emotional issue, Hollywood’s treatment of animal actors is coming under increased scrutiny.

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Notwithstanding the familiar disclaimer that appears at the end of movies, the welfare of animals used in Hollywood is left almost entirely to the professionalism of trainers, some of whom say their bids are increasingly undercut by competitors; to movie producers under pressure to control below-the-line costs, and to the American Humane Assn.’s ability to police productions.

Long cherished by studios because they are relatively cheap to produce, movies starring animals are especially popular now because they provide unambiguous “family entertainment” and can make tons of money on slender budgets. (Universal Pictures’ two “Beethoven” movies together have grossed more than $200 million.)

Meanwhile, the use of animals in all types of movies is growing. According to the AHA, only 10% of films produced in 1988 employed animals; this spring, more than 50% of productions include them.

Although the nonprofit AHA sets lengthy guidelines for the treatment of animals used in films, reviews scripts and sends its representatives to monitor film and television shoots, it is allowed on sets solely through a clause in the collective bargaining agreement between the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which states that the AHA must be sent a script when animals are used and that the AHA representatives may be present during shooting.

While film and television producers cannot bar the AHA’s representatives from sets, the association’s recommendations can, theoretically, be ignored.

Still, says Betty Denny Smith, director of the AHA’s Los Angeles office, “it’s very rare that you come across a production that will want to do something that we told them is against the guidelines. They can’t kick us off the set; they can’t fire us. We’re there to say: ‘No, you can’t do that.’ ”

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But should AHA representatives witness acts that violate laws regarding humane animal treatment--and the association says its guidelines exceed California’s strict anti-cruelty laws--their legal recourse is the same as an ordinary citizen’s.

“They can go to the local D.A. and swear out a complaint and bring criminal charges if they so choose,” says Ingrid Newkirk, chairwoman of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Washington-based animal-rights group. “How many do, I don’t know.”

“The American Humane Association has no power of enforcement,” says game-show host Bob Barker, an animal activist and outspoken critic of the AHA. “They are observers. They have no more power than a stagehand on a set.”

Smith maintains that the AHA’s work is primarily preventive; citing filmmakers for animal cruelty after the fact runs counter to its mission.

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The AHA screens movies featuring animals before they are released, then rates them Acceptable (the association supervised the production and found no cruelty); Believed Acceptable (the AHA wasn’t present but is satisfied the animal action complies with its guidelines); Questionable (the AHA wasn’t present, no information available on the film’s animal action), and Unacceptable (animal cruelty occurred during production). The ratings are published in the association’s magazine, the Advocate.

Barker says that the AHA “would have you believe that movie companies cringe with fear about being on the Unacceptable list” but charges that the average moviegoer does not know the list even exists.

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Smith says that “if anyone wants the list, they can have it” and that the AHA publicizes the ratings by sending them to other humane societies, which print them in their own publications. “It’s amazing how many people wait to see” the ratings before attending movies, she says.

Barker and Nancy Burnet, director of United Activists for Animal Rights, the grass-roots organization Barker is associated with, were sued for libel and slander by Smith and the AHA in 1989, partly over allegations made by Barker and the UAAR about the 1987 movie “Project X.” Barker had charged that chimpanzees were beaten and otherwise abused during the making of the film.

Prompted by evidence gathered by Barker and UAAR, the Los Angeles City Department of Animal Regulation conducted a three-month investigation and recommended that the district attorney’s office bring criminal charges against six animal trainers involved with the film. (The trainers and the AHA, whose representatives were present during filming, have denied that the chimps were abused.) No criminal charges were filed, because the statute of limitations for the charges had run out. Filing civil charges in the case was considered but dropped because of conflicting testimony and lack of “overwhelming evidence” of abuse.

Barker and other defendants finally settled the $120-million suit out of court last month for $315,000. Both sides promptly began attacking each other in full-page ads in the Hollywood trade papers. Barker says that he was eager for the case to go to court, that it was settled only because of his insurance company’s concern over the expense of a trial and that his attorneys will file a motion to have a protective order covering the case lifted.

“We have material obtained under discovery that we cannot reveal to the public because of the protective order,” he says.

Information from court documents obtained by the Hollywood Reporter showed that the AHA has received more than $100,000 in donations from the Motion Picture Assn. of America, as well as financial contributions from other organizations with close ties to the film business. The AHA and Smith denied that the donations represent any conflict of interest.

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Barker remains critical of the AHA’s methods. “I don’t feel animals are given adequate protection--I think the system has failed,” he says.

Typically, the AHA says, the association receives lists of upcoming productions from SAG, scripts are searched for animal action, and the AHA reviews those scenes with the producers and tries to ensure that they are shot in accordance with the association’s guidelines. The association also culls the Hollywood trade papers for productions that have not submitted scripts, requesting that they comply.

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The AHA’s Los Angeles office, Smith says, reviewed more than 700 scripts last year and was present on 340 productions. However, the L.A. office currently employs only six regular representatives and one training officer, although Smith says the association maintains nine part-time regional representatives and calls on local affiliates across the country to represent it.

“The AHA would admit that certainly they aren’t usually (on sets),” says PETA’s Newkirk. “It’s unrealistic and impossible, given all the films in which animals are used, for them to be present for even the tiniest percentage of them.”

Smith says, “I would say we are on almost every set,” but she acknowledges that on films with “simple animal action in an area where it would be too expensive to send someone,” they are not.

When the film industry is left to its own devices, its treatment of animals has sometimes bordered on the grotesque. The AHA first found its way onto movie sets in 1939 amid outrage over the filming of “Jesse James,” in which a stunt rider rode his horse off a 70-foot cliff into white water, breaking the horse’s back. Until 1966, the association was allowed to oversee productions under a clause in the old Hays Code. When the Hays office--and with it, the AHA’s official access--was dissolved, the AHA continued to try to attend shoots; in one instance it says it was barred, at gunpoint, from the set of “The Legend of the Lone Ranger.” After the association organized a boycott of “Heaven’s Gate” at about the same time, in 1980--during the filming of which, it says, several animals were injured or killed--the AHA’s entree on film productions was restored through the present SAG-AMPTP agreement.

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While Smith says that the treatment of animals in Hollywood is “a world above what used to go on, from everything I’ve been told about the old days,” others contend that animal abuse continues but goes unreported because whistle-blowers fear retribution.

“People who make waves are not popular in Hollywood,” says UAAR’s Burnet. “It’s a very closed industry. They know if they talk, they’ll be blackballed.”

There are stories of animals drugged (“I know it’s been done,” says a trainer). Of trainers who wildly underestimate jobs when bidding, then find themselves completely unprepared to do them once shooting has begun. Of the TV producer who, upon seeing a trainer shelter his dog with an umbrella after a rigorous take, sneered: “You’re kissing his ass--you’re making us all kiss his ass.” Of the animal film in which the star, according to reports PETA’s Newkirk received from a source on the set, “was confined all the time, was intimidated by its handler, was yelled at” and displayed “the classic fear position of its tail between the legs and urinating when spoken to.”

With the emergence of animal rights on the national agenda, philosophical schisms are emerging among trainers over acceptable techniques.

“Some of the old trainers think in the old ways, like the old circus people,” Newkirk says. “All that’s changed, and the old trainers haven’t changed with the times. In our dealings with animal trainers, we learned that many don’t know what the federal animal welfare act requires of them, and their feelings are that animals are no more than props that are quite expendable if the price is right.”

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There is no professional accreditation for TV and movie animal trainers; they are hired, like any big-name human star, on the basis of their past credits.

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“They may have done a big-name film, and all they’ve got to say is, ‘I did that,’ and the producers don’t check beyond that--that happens a lot ,” says an animal trainer who has worked in the film business for 20 years. Animals and trainers are sometimes contracted through a production’s prop department and paid accordingly.

“You can still get most animals cheaper than a piece of equipment,” says Clint Rowe, animal trainer on “Turner & Hooch” and “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.”

However, Gary Gero, owner of Birds & Animals Unlimited, one of the industry’s leading animal suppliers, says that although animals used in incidental scenes may be hired through prop departments, “if the animal is of any significance (to the production), it’s generally hired through the executive producer, the line producer or sometimes the studio head. They do extensive background checks before you’re called.”

With the increased use of animal actors, competition among trainers has become ferocious.

Gero says the competition has lifted the overall quality of the business. “The standards have been rising rapidly, the qualifications are becoming higher,” he says.

Other trainers say the opposite has occurred. “Each job is: ‘This is the way I need things done--I need 15 days,’ ” Rowe says. “But one of my competitors can say, ‘I can do it in five.’ ” Rather than compromise his standards, Rowe says, “I have to take the risk of losing that job.”

The upshot, trainers say, is “gimmicking” animal behaviors that normally take weeks or months to train.

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“You can gimmick any sequence you want. Of course, when you teach it, it becomes more expensive; therefore, you’ll lose a job if you’re not willing to gimmick,” says Doug Seus, a longtime animal trainer. “The professional isn’t going to do these things. To do the job humanely, you need more money and time.”

Says trainer Jim Colovin: “Whenever you place unreasonable time constraints and financial chokeholds on quality trainers, it forces (them) to compete with people who are more than willing to ‘do what it takes’ to get the job done.”

For example, rather than using a dog trained to limp, a trainer can wedge a marble in the paw of an untrained dog. Or a dog can be made to appear to growl by wearing a “snarl cup” prosthetic that pushes back its lips and exposes its canines.

Joe Camp, the animal coordinator on “Iron Will,” says the four-month preparation time for the film was “very comfortable.”

“Disney allowed us to show up (on location) eight weeks in advance to allow the dogs to get used to the climate,” he says. “Everything I asked for, they gave me, but everything I asked for, they checked to see if it was legitimate.”

Although the AHA guidelines stipulate that fight scenes between animals “shall be simulated,” there is no clear-cut definition of what, exactly, constitutes a simulated fight or where a real one begins. Some trainers argue that muzzling dogs--which the AHA permits--effectively allows them to actually fight, albeit without usually harming one another physically.

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Regarding the fight scene in “Iron Will,” in which both dogs were muzzled, Camp says the dogs were allowed to interact with each other until the more dominant of the pair began to assert himself over the other.

“We don’t fight dogs,” he says. “All we’re doing is letting a dog display some of that dominance. We’re not even going to the threshold of fighting. If it comes anywhere near that, you stop it.”

But there’s another technique for staging fights--so-called play fighting, which trainer Colovin says he developed 20 years ago. Dogs are trained to roughhouse with each other on command, much the way dogs raised together sometimes gambol unbidden. Although it looks ferocious, the dogs are not, according to Colovin, emotionally or physically fighting. The tip-off: During a play fight, the dogs wag their tails (which may be tied down to preserve the illusion of aggression). Colovin is convinced that play fighting is “far better for humane treatment as well as looking more realistic.” But it also can take more time and money to train and execute a play fight.

Clint Rowe, who has used both muzzled and play fights, says he has sworn off the former, even though, he says, “if they’re done properly, nobody gets hurt.” But, he adds, “my standard is not to do them. I don’t like them; they feel violent. And they look phony. I did simulated dog fights on ‘White Fang,’ and they look great.” Because the dogs realize they are playing, it’s unnecessary to muzzle them as they grapple and bare their fangs.

“The fact of the matter is you can teach a fight without a muzzle,” says trainer Seus.

Says Rowe: “We’re trainers and should be able to train that. I like to have control of what my animals do.”

Nevertheless, the whole notion of animals performing before cameras has been called into question.

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“Obviously, an animal in an acting situation doesn’t really know why he’s doing something over and over again,” says PETA’s Newkirk. “We ask: What’s the tangible suffering here? Mental stress is very real for many animals.”

PETA, Newkirk says, would “hold filmmakers to a higher standard by far” than the AHA does. “They are not opposed to a lot of things that we are, and they don’t go as far as we do.”

Says AHA’s Smith: “We believe animals can be and are used humanely, and that’s what we’re there to do.”

Trainers, meanwhile, aren’t eager for the more militant animal-rights groups to assert themselves in the film business for fear they would try to greatly curtail or even outlaw animal actors altogether.

“I want to see animals continue in movies, not only for my own livelihood but for the contribution they make,” says one trainer. “For some city people, the only time they see animals is in films.”

“The atmosphere in this industry and country is very pro-animal now,” says Gero of Birds & Animals Unlimited. “This industry is very humane. Without exception, the people on shows love the animals. It’s an insult to the industry even to intimate that a crew would let something bad happen.”

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“I have my problems with the industry,” says Rowe. “Everybody does. It’s a business, and (the studios’) business is to bring (a movie) in at low cost. As long the job gets done and the animals’ welfare is OK, then you’re OK.”

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