When director Lawrence Guterman and producers Chris deFaria and Andrew Lazar embarked upon "Cats & Dogs" they didn't set out to make a puppet movie or a CGI movie — that had already been done. They wanted to present living, breathing, flesh-and-fur dogs and cats, with all their unique charm and personality as individuals, and then just enable them to do impossible things like talk, fly airplanes, operate rocket sleds and engage in marital arts combat. And they wanted it to appear so perfectly real that moviegoers might go home and eye their own pets a little bit suspiciously afterwards, just in case.
"It's a story that any pet owner can relate to," says Lazar, recalling his initial reaction to the script. "I now know when I wake up to find my dogs have broken something it's only because they've been protecting me. Our clever writing team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa have finally managed to answer the age-old question of why dogs chase cats — they could be saving your life."
Initially, the project was considered as an animated feature until Jeff Robinov, an Executive Vice President of Production at Warner Bros. Pictures, asked deFaria if he knew of any other way to make the film. "The timing was perfect," recalls deFaria, "because we happened to be at a point in the development of certain critical special effects techniques where everything needed to make this movie work was almost ready.
"That's exactly where you want to be when you make a movie like this," deFaria continues, "on the cutting edge. I made some initial assumptions about what I thought could be done using puppets, live animals, full GCI, and face replacement on animals in a live-action setting."
It was already known that skilled trainers could get live animals to perform an amazing amount of what was required. especially under the tutelage of renowned trainer Boone Narr, whom the filmmakers wanted on board from the start. What they needed to find out was if animals, backed up by a combination of puppets and computer generated imagery (CGI), could create the kind of seamless performance they wanted for each of the characters.
To get their answer, the filmmakers needed a test case and this was provided by Guterman., who by then had already been developing the script with writers Requa and Ficarra.
"I worked on the tests combining computer images and live action for a piece we called 'kung fu cat' in the summer of 1999," says Guterman. "We wanted to show how much fun it could be and what the tone could be. We wanted a very heightened sense of action, almost like a live-action cartoon, pushing everything, exaggerating everything, but with absolute clarity. That way, you can suspend your disbelief when the cats and dogs talk, and from there, to when they do even more outrageous things."
I think anyone who ever had a pet will find this idea totally intriguing," Guterman continues, regarding the adversarial premise behind "Cats & Dogs." As for its execution, "I certainly couldn't resist the chance to get involved in showing the audience so much that has never been seen before."
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