An Interview with Josh Hutcherson, star of “Firehouse Dog”
BY KEVIN CARR
Excepts from the interview follow. To hear the entire interview, click here.
7M: TELL US ABOUT FIREHOUSE DOG?
Firehouse Dog is about this dog who is a movie star. He can do all these cool, awesome stunts for these movies. One day, he gets lost doing a stunt, and he comes into my life and starts to cause all these problems, and through the movie we start to build a relationship together.
7M: DID THE DOG STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT?
He did steal the spotlight. Everybody wanted to love and pet the dog. He was great. There were actually four dogs that play the character of Rexxx. And each one of the dog had its own different attributes. One could jump really high, the other could run fast. One could look at marks, and one could speak.
7M: DID YOU DO THE TRICKS?
We had about a two week period before we started shooting where I had time to get used to being around the dogs and the trainers. There were a couple times during the movie that were too wide of a shot and the trainers couldn’t be too close to tell a dog what to do. So I had to tell it to sit or help it stay on a certain mark.
7M: DO YOU HAVE A DOG?
Yes, I do. I have a boxer named Diesel.
7M: DID YOU GET TRAINING TIPS?
The trainers helped a lot giving pointers about Diesel and how to train him better. Because Diesel was our first dog, and we really didn’t know how to train him. They helped quite a bit with that.
7M: WAS IT MOSTLY PRACTICAL OR CGI?
There were a couple times where they had to use special effects and computer generated stuff. Because the dog had to be flipping through the air or something like that, pretty unrealistic. Most of the stuff, it was really the dog. When he was skateboarding, it was the dog. When he jumped off the roof, it was the dog. He did quite a few of the amazing stunts.
7M: I HEARD YOU WANTED TO TRY ALL DIFFERENT GENRES OF MOVIES.
I do. I want to do not only films from every genre, but also a diverse range of films. It’s more fun, first of all, to play different characters and go through different scenarios of people’s lives, but also to show the audience that I can do a wide variety of movies.
7M: WHAT’S IT LIKE NOW TO BE THE HEADLINER OF A MOVIE?
It’s cool. It’s fun to know that I finally worked my way to that position. But I’m always open to not necessarily to do leading roles because I want to do roles that are the best, character role. And sometimes, it’s not going to be a leading role. It’s going to be a smaller, supporting role. So really, I’m open to doing anything.
7M: HOW ARE YOU LOOKING TO KEEP YOUR CAREER ALIVE INTO ADULTHOOD?
I have to choose the right movies right now. So many young actors as soon as they turn a teenager, they just fade away because they don’t make the transition correctly or they try to do kid roles too long. So me and my parents and my manager and my agency are all working to find the right film for me to do right now. And I think right now, it’s not doing younger movies. You do a younger movie every now and then to keep your fan base, but you also have to spread out there and do a wide variety of things.
7M: DO YOU WANT TO WORK WITH ANIMALS AGAIN?
Oh yeah, I love dogs. I love animals. So I’m definitely up to working with them again.