All-Star Dog Family... Meet 3 year-old Enzo, real-life son of Moose who plays "Eddie" on NBC's "Frasier." Enzo makes his film debut as Skip, and for a scene near the film's end depicting the aged Skip, Enzo was replaced with his real-life father Moose.

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The Dogs...

Animal trainer Matilde Decagney, whose experience includes the feature films "As Good As It Gets" and "Homeward Bound 2" as well as the NBC series "Frasier," cited two months of preparation and lots of pampering, including an air-conditioned trailer to fight the Southern heat, to keep the film's fuzzy co-stars focused. The main Skip, the three-year-old Enzo, was asked not only to display a range of moods, from sweet to protectively fierce, but to play baseball, football and drive a car!

"The tricks are not hard for him to do, as long as he's in good condition and not too hot," explains Decagney. While cast and crew were allowed to pet Enzo and the other dogs between takes, any food that might distract a canine nose was strictly prohibited.

"Skip never failed us. I wish I worked with actors who were as well prepared as Skip," admits Mark Johnson. "There was not a trick or a piece of business we asked the dog to do that he wasn't able to do; it was uncanny. The trainers were so good, they could stop him on a mark, he could lift his leg, he could do a somersault. I expected to see him reading the New York Times any day."

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The Story...

A funny, heartfelt coming-of-age story, "My Dog Skip" is based on award-winning author WILLIE MORRIS' best-selling memoir of his boyhood. Directed by JAY RUSSELL, the film is a humorous and moving testimony to a unique friendship.

The year is 1942. As the Allies unite overseas to keep the world safe for democracy, there are voices at home that are barely heard. One of them belongs to Willie Morris (FRANKIE MUNIZ), a shy and gawky eight-year-old whose childhood is even more quiet and isolated than his home town of Yazoo, Mississippi. An only child, ignored at school and uncomfortable with girls, Willie looks up to and confides in next-door neighbor Dink Jenkins (LUKE WILSON), the town's star athlete, who's preparing to ship out in the service of Uncle Sam.

Willie's father, Jack Morris (KEVIN BACON), a stern but good-hearted veteran who lost his leg in the Spanish Civil War, is chiefly responsible for Willie's overprotective upbringing. Pushing in the other direction is his mother, Ellen Morris (DIANE LANE), a capable woman who knows that what Willie needs most is some freedom-and a friend. Willie's ninth birthday gives her an opportunity to offer him both, in the form of a Jack Russell terrier puppy that the delighted Willie names Skip.

Skip's outgoing personality helps Willie to build a friendship with Rivers Applewhite (CAITLIN WACHS), the prettiest girl in school. Skip then further serves as matchmaker for Willie and Rivers at the movie theater, and lends a paw after Willie is challenged by Big Boy Wilkinson (BRADLEY CORYELL), Henjie Henick (DAYLAN HONEYCUTT) and Spit McGee (CODY LINLEY) to prove his worth in a football game. With Skip's canine help, Willie starts becoming "one of the boys."

Then unexpectedly, Dink returns to Yazoo. But the dark truth soon emerges: Dink, when confronted by the realities of war, went AWOL. In trying to reconcile his hero worship of the Dink he once knew with his disappointment in the disgraced soldier, Willie begins to contend with the complexities of war and human conduct. He reaches a new perspective on these matters through his father's eyes and his own.

Dink fails to show up at Willie's first baseball game, and the disappointed Willie takes it out on Skip, who runs away. The dog's disappearance and subsequent recovery teach Willie the strength of forgiveness, and give Dink a chance to embrace the power of redemption. Ultimately, it is a dog's love that teaches Willie Morris lifelong lessons of the human spirit.

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The Cast...

Heading up the adult cast members were veteran actors Kevin Bacon and Diane Lane as Willie Morris's parents. As Jack Morris, a man who lives with the tragedy of war, Bacon thrilled the filmmakers with a performance that captured his character's physical and psychological pain. Says director Jay Russell, "I've worked with Kevin once before and he's one of my favorite American actors. He brings something to a film that a lot of actors don't -- he really thinks about the character. Jack is a man who sees his little boy getting caught up in the romance of World War II and he is concerned by that."

Says Bacon, "Jack Morris is a fairly embittered man and incredibly protective of his little boy. He's afraid of giving him a dog because he feels he won't be able to handle the loss when the dog gets hit by a car or runs away. Willie's a sensitive boy, but Jack thinks he's fragile. My father also wouldn't let me have a dog. That's one thing I can relate to."

Diane Lane plays pragmatic Ellen Morris. "Diane brings a depth to all of her performances," says John Lee Hancock. "When you look at her entire career, she's played so many varied and wonderful characters. She's perfect in the role of Ellen, who loves her husband but wants to help her son grow into a confident young man."

Says Lane, "Ellen sees that her boy is ready for a change. She doesn't know how to handle it and the boy's father isn't prepared to deal with it, so a dog is the perfect answer. A boy and his dog -- it's a classic situation because they're both completely enthusiastic about discovering things."

In the role of young Willie Morris is Frankie Muniz, chosen from nearly 3,000 children for the critical part. "Whenever you do a film, there's always one part that's next to impossible to cast," recalls Mark Johnson. "If we didn't have a truly great kid to play Willie, the rest of us could do the best work of our careers and this movie still wouldn't work. It took us a long time to find Frankie and he did a spectacular job."

A theatrically trained young actor who starred opposite Matthew Modine in the CBS/Hallmark Hall of Fame telefilm "What the Deaf Man Heard," Muniz appreciated playing a boy who must learn friendship and courage. "In the beginning Willie's afraid to go outside because the other kids are so mean to him," says Muniz. "Skip helps him find the nerve to talk to Rivers. He teaches him how to play football. He helps Willie make friends, even with the mean kids. Basically, Skip changes Willie's life."

This particular tale of finding one's humanity owes more than a bone to its canine star. There are, however, two admissions: according to Willie Morris, the real Skip was actually an English fox terrier, not a Jack Russell; and there were actually two main dogs out of six Skips used during production (including three puppies and an older Skip).

About the Production...

Willie Morris' memoir, My Dog Skip, became an instant bestseller when it was published in 1995. For Morris, a Rhodes Scholar and former editor of Harper's magazine, the autobiographical recollection of his first and favorite dog represented a welcome change of pace.

"I wrote My Dog Skip because the previous book I had done, New York Days, was a terribly difficult book to write. My wife JoAnne locked me in my basement for four years and I wrote it," says Morris. "I decided the next one I wanted to do would be affectionate and tender, and what better approach than to write about the dog of my childhood."

The resulting book was indeed affectionate and tender, as Morris recalled his early life as a shy young child in the South and his special relationship with his dog, a friendship that helped young Willie face many of life's bigger challenges. Morris strove for a tone that reflected the innocence of a time gone by and respect for the freshness of a child's perceptions. The story was also moving to director Jay Russell. "As I shut the book, I first had to dry my eyes from crying and the second thing I did was call Willie Morris to inquire whether the rights were available," recalls Russell, who first worked with Morris as producer and director of the five-part PBS highway series "Great Drives."

Russell saw thematic parallels between My Dog Skip and other projects he had directed, including the independent film "End Of The Line." "Everything that I've done up to this point has somehow tied into the American experience." The project was also championed early on by Russell's friend, screenwriter/ filmmaker John Lee Hancock. "Soon after it came out, I read My Dog Skip, then called Jay one afternoon and discovered he'd already read it," recalls Hancock. "Our reaction was the same: this is a story that'll make a great movie."

After obtaining the rights, Russell and Hancock sought a screenwriter who they felt was intimate with the Southern experience and also capable of taking a book rife with stream-of-consciousness memories and turning it into a linear feature film. Hancock brought the project to Gail Gilchriest, a friend and former writer for The Houston Post, as well as the author of two books. Though her screenwriting experience was limited to only one previous project, the pair admired her writing and had confidence that she was right for the job.

The book had the same nostalgic effect on Gilchriest. "Though I grew up 30 years after him, I felt Willie Morris and I shared a very similar childhood: his in Yazoo, Mississippi, mine in Silsbee, Texas, a little town filled with old houses, water holes and good storytellers," says Gilchriest. With the completion of the screenplay came the need for "a really experienced producer who knows how to get tough movies made." My Dog Skip required a producer who understood the challenges of an intimate, personal film. Russell and Hancock turned to Academy Award-winning producer Mark Johnson.

"For a producer, sometimes the smaller independent movies are more challenging, and consequently more fun. You're asked to be more resourceful and more imaginative in solving problems because you don't have money to throw at that problem. And for me as a producer, I much prefer that," explains Johnson. Recognizing the power of Skip as a catalyst for young Willie Morris, Johnson also took from the story the message that being different is okay. "This is something that's really important, especially for kids. We're all different in one form or other. Here is a boy who could have become like all the other boys, but instead embraces his sensitivity and his love of reading and writing. That's what drove Willie to later become a Rhodes scholar. "There's a certain gentle sweetness to the tone of this story that was clearly expressed in Willie Morris' own language in the book, and we wanted to preserve that tone, to show that a certain kind of sentimentality can be a wonderful thing, in a boy and in a story."

For Willie Morris, time and place were essential elements to the tale. "It's important that audiences get a sense of the reality of those years, which were molded by the mission of World War II. I'm grateful that the producers paid zealous attention to the spirit of those years in making the details authentic," says Morris. "I always like to tell outsiders that Mississippi is America's Ireland -- the beautiful landscape, the poetic writing, a sense of loss, the proclivity for using the language and telling stories. Southern writers are deeply immersed in a feeling for place. This movie had to be shot in Mississippi."

Says Mark Johnson, "The background houses, the countryside, even the extras all give a sense of authenticity to the movie." Practicality, in part, drove the decision to shoot on location. "One of the key reasons we chose to film in Mississippi is that there are a lot of little towns that have been very well preserved," says director Jay Russell. "When I first visited the town of Canton, where we did most of our filming, I felt like I had stepped into a time warp. It has not changed a whole lot since 1942."

With the decision to film in Canton, 20 miles from Morris' home town of Yazoo City, came the opportunity to portray the state and its people in a positive light. Says producer John Lee Hancock, "Often Southern movies are critical of the South and sometimes paint caricatures of Southerners. This movie is very proud of its Mississippi heritage and I think that everybody in Mississippi will be proud of it as well." "The support of the local people has been nothing short of fantastic. A painter who created some wonderful advertising signs on the old baseball field didn't even charge a cent," says Jay Russell. "The state of Mississippi and the community were very involved in the production of this film, in part because Willie Morris is their favorite son and one of the great Southern writers."

Screenwriter Gail Gilchriest verified that perception during production one day when a group of teenage boys with oversized t-shirts and skateboards approached Morris and asked for his autograph "with a kind of reverence usually reserved for athletes."

The appreciation and support of local townfolk were felt even before the production rolled into town. When production scouts came looking for period furniture, Canton shopkeepers put notices in their windows and a radio station ran free ads. While residents scoured their attics for period clothes, automobile collectors Hardy and Kathryn Inman leased the production seven antique cars including a 1929 Model A, a 1940 Dodge and a 1941 Ford. Re-creating small-town Mississippi as it existed over a half-century ago fell to the director, as well as production designer David Bomba and director of photography James Carter. While Bomba ensured the authenticity of everything from houses to hat racks, the task of capturing these images went to Carter.

"This is not a fast-paced movie; it's a character study," says Carter, who made his camera and lighting decisions based on the nature of the film as well as its performers -- kids and dogs. While avoiding the surreal look of human memory, Carter tried to give the film a slight period feel through the use of warmer, tungsten light -- more yellow during the day, a mix of whites and blues at night. Wide lenses were utilized to further draw the audience into the experience, giving a broad sense of being "surrounded by the time and place."

As Carter affirmed, however, "My Dog Skip" finds its strength as a character study and, as such, required credible clothes for its lead characters. Costume designer Edi Giguere went to many places to find what she needed: Los Angeles and Jackson, Mississippi rental houses, vintage clothes and thrift shops, and the closets and attics of local Canton residents.

"We decided that since these people just came out of the Depression, we would use that era as a guidepost. Since people wore things completely out during that time, the challenge was finding the real McCoy, instead of making new costumes and aging them," explains Giguere. For Willie and his gang, she enjoyed transforming them into "dirty ragamuffins" in knickers, old t-shirts and suspenders. "It was next to impossible to find shoes from that period but, as our research revealed, a lot of children didn't wear shoes, even in school." With their male role models involved in the war, the children also sported the occasional flight helmet and, for Willie, a military jacket in which he trained Skip.