Movie For Dogs by Lois Duncan

Author:Lois Duncan [Duncan, Lois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-545-38885-6
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2010-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

MY ADVENTURES IN HOLLYWOOD — PART TWO

By Andrea Walker

Mr. Donovan’s studio was not what I’d always pictured when people said the word “Hollywood.” It was just a room with a chair and a couch and three cameras, one aimed at the chair and two at the couch. One man ran all the cameras.

Mr. Donovan told Bruce and me to sit on the couch with Red between us. The cameraman attached little microphones to the front of our shirts. Then Mr. Donovan asked the cameraman, “Where’s the gate?” The cameraman said, “I think they’re still putting the latch on it.”

He left the room and came back with a piece of plywood that had a fake gate in it. It was a facade.

Mr. Donovan sat down in the chair and told the cameraman, “Roll ‘em.” Then he smiled at one of the cameras and said, “In the studio with us today are Bruce Walker, producer of Bobby Strikes Back; his sister, Andrea; and the heroic Bobby. Bruce, please share with our viewers the story of your brave dog” — he gestured at Red, who was staring straight into the camera lens just like Mr. Donovan — “this courageous animal who was dognapped by a deranged woman and held captive in a toolshed.”

“Well,” Bruce began. I knew from the tone of his voice that he was going to say all the wrong things. “Bobby’s real name is Red Rover. The dognappers were two teenage boys, and they weren’t deranged, just evil. And the toolshed was really a chicken coop. But the rest of what you just said was right.”

“Do you mean Mrs. Rinkle was not the dognapper?” Mr. Donovan asked him.

At that point Bruce went blank. He had not been listening to Aunt Alice when she had dissembled to Mr. Merlin, so he’d missed out on a valuable demonstration.

I knew it was my job to save him.

“When I wrote the script, I had to make a few changes,” I said. “The real dognappers were juveniles, and I thought it might not be legal to expose them to the public. I didn’t want Star Burst Studios to be sued, so I combined them and made them Mrs. Rinkle.”

“But the dogs in your video were playing their own parts, were they not?” Mr. Donovan asked.

“Oh, yes,” I assured him. “Except for that beautiful dachshund, Bebe. She was an understudy, substituting for Bully Bernstein, who was having a birthday party. Bully’s the one who got dognapped, but it could just as well have been Bebe, because the Gordon boys were snatching every dog they could get their hands on.”

“We would have liked to use a chicken coop,” Bruce said. “But we didn’t have the wire mesh, so we couldn’t build one. The toolshed was just a facade, like that one over there that your cameraman just brought in.”

Mr. Donovan didn’t look as happy as he had in the beginning.

“But in the real event,” he said, “Bobby — or Red Rover or whatever this dog’s name is

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.