Several years ago, when a film project I was to direct came crashing down around me one week before shooting, I found myself broke, without a job and devoid of inspiration. With lots of spare time on my hands, I would go for long walks with my two dogs through my neighborhood in Los Angeles, lamenting my future and indulging in a bit of old-fashioned self-pity. I kept asking myself the same question over and over, "What the hell do I even know about anyway?" And the answer that kept coming back to me was, "All I really know about is walking these goddamned dogs!" And just like that, The Dogwalker was born.

That germ of an idea eventually led to a film that was made on the same streets it was conceived on, incorporating elements of the neighborhood and the people who live there, and the experiences that shaped them. Living on the western edge of the L.A. riots, I saw first hand what racial and economic disunity could cause as well as what could happen when a "mixed" neighborhood such as ours —Black, white, Jewish, old, young, homeless, hipster, yuppie—came together. There was a certain crazy upside-down absurdity to the whole thing where we were on the fringes of the riot zone, with young white kids running around the streets yelling "Burn it down, burn it all down!" while gang members pitched in to put out fires. That contradictory experience—as well as the O.J. Simpson trial, which showed us that perhaps we are farther apart than we originally thought—helped form some of the initial basis for the underlying themes of the story.

The specifics though, I owe to my two dogs, who, over the course of our daily walks, introduced me to the people who would inspire many of the characters in the film—the octogenarian poker players across the street, the drug dealers in the alley, the panhandlers at the 7-11, the old lady on the corner forever losing her dog. It was their absolute lack of fear that made it easy for me to navigate the various social, economic, and cultural divides that still exist in Los Angeles and this country today. I got to know people that I might never have met, or talked to, or learned from.

And while the finished film is solely a product of rampant imagination, none of it would have been possible without the tenacity of a couple of terriers and what they taught me about taking risks and seeing life through a different set of eyes.

---Paul Duran, Writer-Director of THE DOGWALKER  

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I was negotiating to buy the building where I've lived for years, when Paul said, “Instead of saying we're trying to make a film, let's just do it. Let's make it here, let the backyard overgrow with weeds, shoot there, shoot upstairs, in our apartment, in the alley.” As simple as that, we stopped trying to get a “deal” and started making the movie. Well, it wasn't exactly simple. It all blurs together now, but the next few months went something like this:

July: Escrow does not close in 30 days. An old friend introduces us to Terry Myers and Stanton Kaye at Bouquet Multimedia, who commit to executive produce and provide equipment and post production. Now all we have to do is raise the money.

August: We maneuver a deal with a powerhouse casting company. Escrow threatens to never close, but we forge ahead. Our motto is “momentum is everything.”

September: Escrow closes 15 minutes before it is due to expire. Co-producers Stacy and Roderick are on the money trail. Money starts to trickle in. Trickle is the operative word.

October: The all-powerful Screen Actors' Guild demands a large cash bond, though we already posted payroll for the actors. Do other producers cook crew lunches during pre-production? Curiously, everything seems to be getting done. Then the plumber finds a cracked sewer line under the house, ready to blow at any time. “It'll be OK,” he says, “as long as nobody uses these toilets.” Ah, sure... just a film crew.

Day 1: Wow. We're shooting. We need what? More film stock. More money.  Somehow everything is simultaneously on-schedule and out-of-control.

Day 3: We shoot a scene with actors cleaning the yard, but the grass looks dead. Into the night, the art department paints the lawn green. Who's idea was it to shoot in our own house, anyway?

Sometime later: I'm cold, where's my bedspread? Oh, I forgot, it's a prop. Little checks keep coming. (How? From where?) Running to the bank, begging for instant credit. We have enough, we don't have enough, what if we can't get enough? The ever-present anxiety. 

And then, the other part: The entire crew has tears in their eyes watching a scene with John Randolph and Tony Todd. Suddenly all that matters is, we're making the movie.

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