Dirty 'Dogs': Comedy airs dark side of the film industry

"Savage is he who saves himself."

- Leonardo da Vinci

The words above are taken from a tongue-in-cheek list of nine "quotes from the ancients about the film business" that appear on the opening page of Four Dogs and a Bone, a play by John Patrick Shanley.

A profane comedy about the film industry and its dark machinations, Four Dogs - which opens Wednesday at Wilmington's Red Barn Studio - is also about the deceptive lengths to which people will go to get what they want.

As Shanley reminds us by including the page of quotes from the likes of da Vinci and Virgil ("O accurst craving for gold!"), money-fueled ambition has existed for a lot longer than the film industry. But Wilmington is a film town, and chances are those in the biz will recognize some of their (less savory) co-workers here.

The four-character story centers on Bradley (Jon Stafford), a stressed-out producer trying to get a writer, Victor (Steve Bakunas), to drastically cut his script in order to bring it in under budget. Meanwhile, two actresses, the up-and-coming Brenda (Amy Tipton) and veteran stage actress Collette (Barbara Weetman), are working hard on both men in efforts to increase their own parts at the expense of the other.

Along the way, Shanley touches on firing an underling to cover up for your own mistake, the power of nepotism and the fearsomeness of the Teamsters as the play barrels toward a confrontational conclusion. There's also lots of very quick, and funny, back-and-forth dialogue.

"I try not to impose too much of what I believe, but this movie that they're making, it's going to be a bad movie," said the play's director, Mike O'Neil. "I hope the place we all get to is almost a screwball comedy without the physical aspect."

Last spring, O'Neil helmed another Shanley play, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Doubt, for Red Barn.

Shanley, known mainly as a playwright, is no stranger to the film industry, having won an Oscar for writing 1987's Moonstruck. He also wrote and directed Joe Versus the Volcano which, it's safe to say, was a much less successful film. As he's seen the high and low ends of the film business, it's hard not to believe that Shanley wrote Four Dogs from his view of the bottom.

"I don't think it's that bad," O'Neil said of the film industry. "But (in staging the play) you have to push the comedy element to the extreme."

True enough, the film industry must not be that bad (or the money must be pretty good), otherwise Shanley wouldn't have wound up back in the middle of it as the writer and director of Doubt. The film version of Doubt, which stars Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams, recently wrapped production and is scheduled for release late this year.

John Staton: 343-2343

john.staton@starnewsonline.com