The idea for Best In Show was born during a trip writer/director Christopher Guest took six years ago to his local dog park to exercise his own two dogs. "There were people there with purebred dogs, with mutts and so on, and as I mingled with them I started thinking that this might be an interesting idea to explore in a movie," he recalls.
For this project, Guest teamed up with another acclaimed member of the comedic pantheon, Eugene Levy, with whom he collaborated on Waiting For Guffman. A cast-member of the seminal sketch comedy show, SCTV, and star of the recent hit, American Pie, Levy relished the opportunity to work on another film with Guest.
"It's hard to partner with somebody because writers have different rhythms, different chemistry," says Levy. "But Chris and I hit it off on Guffman from day one. We work very well together."
Veterans of the improvisational technique, Guest and Levy left much leeway for the actors to bring their own personalities to the fore. "Our outline gives a very solid blueprint to the actors so they know how to get from point A to point B, but how they do it is largely up to them," Levy says.
To further research the mindset which Guest first experienced at the dog park, he attended a number of dog shows, including the prestigious Westminster Show in New York, which became the model for the film's Mayflower Dog Show. Subsequently, he and Levy attended a number of regional dog shows.
The dog show milieu, according to Levy, provides ample opportunity for the creation of interesting characters. "It's a very unusual world," says Levy. "I had never been to a dog show before we started doing the research and was surprised at the intensity involved.
This a full-time thing for these people; they live and breathe dog shows and every weekend they're out there traveling. They've got their dogs in cages and crates, or packed in the van, and they drive hundreds of miles, spend several hours sitting with the dog before it goes on for its 60 seconds of fame. What is it that drives people to do this?"
As the writing process continued, Guest canvassed the alumni cast of Waiting For Guffman to find out their interest. The response was predictably enthusiastic and is probably best summed up by Bob Balaban. "Chris called me about being in the movie," he recalls, "and I said I'd be happy to be a dog -- I would do anything."
Michael McKean, who co-wrote with Christopher Guest several of the musical numbers from Waiting For Guffman, has a long association with him that goes back to their acclaimed collaboration, This Is Spinal Tap, and even earlier, when the two were roommates in the '60s.
"Chris told me what he and Eugene were cooking up," McKean recalls. "They wanted to do a film about the world of serious competitive dog showing. And if you have a chance to come in and work for Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, John Michael Higgins and this boatload of incredibly funny people -- it's one of those things you've got to clear time for. Whenever Christopher Guest calls, you have to answer. And it's not just because he's my friend and I like hanging out with him; it really is a call to battle, if I can be real pretentious. You know that you're going be in there and you're going to be pretty much naked, because there's no script. But it's okay as long as everybody else is naked too."
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