Photo from a Hollywood website
Mark, Rock, and Anthony.
Anthony sure has the right stuff. :-)
It is still Wednesday, May 9th. Around 4 PM, it was time for Seven to work......... thank goodness we got there at 10:30 AM. Ha! I did not mind. I much preferred hanging around a movie set to sitting in my hotel room.
We rush over to the set. It is actually quite funny to veer off track to grab my bag or some treats and hear the panic in the crew's voice. "Jennifer, we need Seven over here." At least there was one guy that actually remembered our names. Otherwise, it was just "Tasty Reuben". "We need Tasty Reuben." Did I tell you that is her character's name? Well, it is.
We enter one of the stage rooms. It has two doorways and four walls so it is not very big. Yet, there are about 10 members of the crew huddled around Michael Rispoli lying in a pool of blood. Anyways, Michael Bay explains that Mark Wahlberg is going to circle around the room, squat down to look at the dead body. Seven will then trot into the room and lick blood off one of the weight plates that crushed "Frank Griga's" head."Daniel Lugo" then shoos her away. Bay did not want Seven to get into the pool of blood and I hoped we could make that happen.
Mark walks in and his back is to Seven and I. Bay gives him a few instructions and Mark begins to get into position. "Um, hey. Can you say hi to my dog and give her a treat?" And I really said that. Mark turned and said sure. He greeted and gave Seven a treat for about 3 seconds. I do not want to give the impression that Mark is rude. He never was, but he is just very serious and in character on set. He also would have maintained his attractiveness if he had been more of a dog lover like The Rock and Rispoli. Heck, even Michael Bay paid more attention to Seven. Oh well. My teenage heart throb was a bit of a disappointment.
Okay, so back to the scene. Once again, we have a fairly important scene. My dog is crucial to the story line. And no one thought it would be important to explain to the greyhound's trainer ahead of time what was going to be asked. We literally walked into this crowded room and it was expected that Seven would be performing her task in the next five minutes. And you know what? She did because Seven is freaking awesome.
Phil set her target and pointed it out to Seven. I simply released her at the right moment and she trotted straight in and licked the target. Kudos to Mark who gently scolded her and told her to go away. Phil had warned Bay that if he was too strong, she might not come back. We repeated the scene a couple of times. Eventually, Seven started to goof off a little. She stopped going to the target because the edible fake blood was not very high value and this strange guy was pushing her away. Luckily, I had overheard something about "licking" the day before so I had grabbed some peanut butter from the awesome hotel breakfast.
I offered the peanut butter idea and Bay was game. We showed Seven that the target had just become high value and her enthusiasm was renewed. I released her one more time and she licked her target as needed. But this time, she ignored Mark. She was not about to let him separate her from her bloody, peanutty goodness. He stepped in and picked up the weight plate she was licking. So in the end it gave Bay to nice variations of the scene to choose from.
After the scene, I walked by and tapped on Mark's chair. He is always head down with earphones on. Once I had his attention, I thanked him for not over scolding Seven in that scene. He said "No problem." That would be the last of my interactions with Mark.
