Pet Sematary II
| Get bit by this dog and you get your own TV show... | |
|---|---|
 Clancy Brown on his way to Earth 2 |
 Anthony Edwards - next stop, the E.R. |
You may recall the story of Pet Sematary took place in Maine, and the first Pet Sematary film was shot there. So how was it I spent two months in a little town called Senoia, Georgia shooting the sequel? Because we were shooting in the wintertime, and nobody wants to shoot in Maine in the wintertime. Therefore, Georgia stood in for Maine in Pet Sematary II.
Once again, I was working for Steve Johnson's XFX company. My job was mainly performing the "dog-from-hell" puppets, but the rest of the XFX crew did makeup and gore effects on the real dogs, as well as the actors.
One memorable shot involved Anthony Edwards getting attacked by Zowie, the undead dog, while sitting in the driver's seat of his van. I laid on the ground with the dog puppet - on "action", Anthony was to open the door and get jumped by the dog.
Unfortunately, on the first take I missed my mark a bit. I couldn't see what happened, but I certainly felt something - my dog-encased arm connecting with something solid. The next thing I knew, Anthony started screaming his head off and I realized I'd just punched him in the head with the dog puppet.
I immediately stopped moving the puppet, and began yelling to Anthony, apologizing and asking if he was all right. He kept right on screaming incoherently - I still couldn't see him, but apparently he was in tremendous pain. I was afraid maybe I'd killed him.
Finally, director Mary Lambert called "cut!" and Anthony immediately stopped screaming. It turned out I hadn't hit him that hard - he was fine - and the screaming was just him acting the scene. Unfortunately - because I had stopped moving the dog puppet during the take - he'd been fighting for his life with a completely lifeless dummy dog. Needless to say, that take didn't end up in the movie ... though it was good for a laugh at dailies the next morning.
One other interesting thing about Pet Sematary II - I ended up on screen in the opening scene of the movie. (Don't blink.)
Art imitates life - Trey Stokes, FX puppeteer...
...plays an FX puppeteer in Pet Sematary II
One more bit of extremely trivial Pet Sematary 2 info: The XFX crew shared a trailer with Jeanine Lobell, the show's makeup artist. We began to wonder why Anthony Edwards seemed to visit the trailer rather frequently - and not just when he was due to get made-up. (Sometimes he came to play Tetris on our Nintendo system, but not that often.)
Not long after shooting ended, Anthony and Jeanine got married. Maybe that explains it.
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