Pop-Culturalist.com

Millions of people have seen the trailer for the upcoming film A Dog’s Purpose. That sure-to-be heartwarming film (we may have teared up watching the trailer) is based upon the New York Times bestselling book of the same name. W. Bruce Cameron is the author of that book in addition to being one of the film’s screenwriters. Bruce, though, is no stranger to having his work adapted for screen. One of his previous books, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, was adapted as an ABC sitcom that aired for several years. Additionally, he has written many humorous columns for newspapers across the country. Needless to say, Bruce has a lot of experience with writing in many formats.

So, we were happy to chat with Bruce about A Dog’s Purpose, writing processes, and what’s next for him.

PC: For our readers who may not be familiar with the book, A Dog’s Purpose, can you tell us a little bit about it?
Bruce: A Dog’s Purpose is the story of a dog who reincarnates and remembers each life and, in doing so, begins to conclude as it becomes wiser and wiser that there must be some reason, some purpose, for this to keep happening. Until it fulfills its purpose, it’s going to continue to be reborn.

PC: What was your inspiration for that story?
Bruce: I was in a car. I was driving up the coast of California with my then girlfriend—she’s now my wife. She had lost her dog. She had never had a dog as a child and had adopted a dog as an adult. The dog died young and unexpectedly, and it was so hard for her that she turned to me and said, “I’m never going to go through that again. I don’t want another dog.” I was starting to feature this girlfriend of mine more prominently in my future plans, but I had always had dogs, and I said I did not want to hear that because if things went as I was previously planning for things in our relationship, it would mean that I would never have another dog. So a lot of times when I am trying to make a point, I make up a story. So I made up this story about a dog that is magically reincarnated, goes on a spiritual quest to determine his purpose and along the way discovers that real love never dies and our true friends will always be there for us, if we just know where to look. I talked a lot. When I was done she was in tears, and she said “You gotta make that into your book. That’s going to be your next book,” and that was the birth of A Dog’s Purpose.

PC: Having written the book and adapted it for the film, how is the writing process different for each of those? Do you have a preference?
Bruce: Writing a book is a real luxury because if you’re at 70,000 words, you can still go another ten or twenty thousand words if you need to to make the story work; but, with the screenplay, if you’re on page 100 and you’re not wrapping it up, you might as well stop because no one’s going to read a screenplay that’s 120 pages long unless you’re one of the big filmmakers of our time. Tarantino can sell a two-and-a-half hour movie, but Bruce Cameron can’t. So, it’s all about what you’re going to cut out. As the author of a movie, to have to cut scenes and cut characters even, that’s really difficult to do.

PC: What were some of the hardest things you had to cut?
Bruce: Well, there’s a really important character named Todd. People who have read the book will instantly know who I’m talking about. In the movie, he’s pretty innocuous compared to the kind of deep disturbing character that he is in the book. It just so happens in the film, we didn’t have the time to fully explore Todd’s full character. Then, when Ellie is a police dog in A Dog’s Purpose, there’s a lot going on there, and we pretty much don’t see much of that on the screen. We don’t really understand the nature of the character Carlos (Jacob in the book). Why he is who he is is hinted at on screen, but really to understand what’s going on with Carlos, you have to read the book. I just think you’ll have a better experience if you know the backstory of some of these characters.

PC: What parts are you most excited to see on screen?
Bruce: What really resonates for me is the relationship between the boy Ethan and the dog Bailey. For one thing, it echoes something that happened to me in my own life. I was the same age as Ethan when he meets Bailey. That’s how old I was when I met my first dog, Candy. The instant friendship and the absolute way we bonded shows up really well on the screen.

PC: Being the screenwriter and author, does that make you more involved in the film process?
Bruce: Screenwriters are notoriously disenfranchised. We don’t have more power when it comes to what is on the screen, and there were other writers on the project. It wasn’t just solely from me. For example, the woman who sat next to me in the car when I told the story the first time…she liked the story so much she married me! She’s also a screenwriter and a movie director so we wound up working together on the first draft of the screenplay and then, of course, other writers took a crack at it. That’s just how movies are made nowadays.

PC: Do you like the process of writing by yourself or collaborating?
Bruce: I think when I’m writing, it depends on the project. Most of the time when I’m writing a book, all of it is coming out of my head, and I’m sitting there by myself. I’ll pitch a lot of ideas to other people, like “What do you think of this.” Someone who’s really helpful is Cathryn Michon, my wife, because she’s so good at writing and is so willing to tell me that my ideas are terrible which is really important to a writer. If you’ve got nothing but people singing your praises, you’re going to go off-track. A lot of times when I see movies and read books from very famous, powerful people, I think, “Oh, you have lost something very important. You’ve lost people willing to tell you no because you’ve become so powerful.” I don’t ever want to be that. I want to be in a position where I get honest response from people—that’s why it’s so valuable to have Cathryn in my life.

PC: What advice would you give to a writer? Did you get any piece of advice that has stuck with you through the years?
Bruce: I really think that the advice I always give is: “Don’t do what I did.” What I did was get a job and a whole career [in order] to have a house and a family, and then I wrote books on the side. The book was like my hobby. It was never the center of my life, and until you get in the position where you can make the book the center of your life and the next novel and the next novel, you’re never going to get to a point with your craft where you can reliably sell the novel you’re writing. I wrote nine unpublished novels before I sold my tenth one. It’s great that my tenth was a hit, but I spent most of my adult life failing at the one thing I wanted to do, and I think one of the reasons was that I just didn’t devote enough time to it.

PC: Do you have any future projects you’re working on that you can chat about?
Bruce: Yeah. In May I’ve got a book coming out called A Dog’s Way Home. I’m really excited for it because it’s about a dog that is banned from Denver due to breed-specific legislations and is taken hundreds of miles away. She decides that she just misses her family so she sets off through the Colorado wilderness to find her way back home. The people who liked A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey will love A Dog’s Way Home.

PC: Are you involved in shelters and adoption agencies?
Bruce: I’m on the board of an animal rescue called Life is Better. It’s mission is to rescue animals that are in kill shelters that can be rehabilitated. Usually it’s expensive. It’s usually because there is an injury or illness, and the shelter can’t afford the medical treatment. We‘ll pay for that. Or the dog or cat or horses or other animals have social issues; social issues that with enough one-on-one training can be solved rather than a shelter that would say, “It’s too timid” or, “It snaps at people”.

PC: If you were a type of dog, what would you be?
Bruce: I would probably be a Labrador because I am constantly focused on food! Or, I might be a Basset Hound because I just like to lie around all the time.

Pop Culturalist Speed Round

Guilty pleasure TV show
The Walking Dead…it drives me crazy because there are no dogs in it. I’m like “What happened to the dogs?!”.

Favorite movie
Inception

Guilty pleasure music
I’m a baby boomer [so] the music that I was listening to is the music that I’m listening to today…and I’m not going to apologize for that!

Favorite play or musical
The Black Version: It’s just solid improv, and it’s always hilarious. My favorite musical is Little Shop of Horrors.

If you could have dinner with 5 people
Wow, that is really tough. Herman Wouk, who taught me with his brilliant novel, The Caine Mutiny, how to be both meaningful, full of ideas, and suspenseful. He would be on the list. John Steinbeck who taught me how to put heart in a work of fiction without being preachy. Isaac Asimov because the man is a machine, and I want to ask him how in the world he was able to write a book, what seems like every nine hours and never has a single one ghostwritten, but he cranks them all out. Nelson DeMille who is in the position of writing thrillers because they make him so much money, but he’s written other stuff, and he’s really good. He never gets the accolades that he deserves. Agatha Christie who really refined and invented the modern police procedural mystery novel: The way that she figured out how to make the seemingly mundane aspect of police work and detecting and clue finding and have it come together in such a fashion to have a suspenseful and intriguing story. I would love to have dinner with her.

 

Make sure to follow Bruce on Twitter! A Dog’s Purpose will be out in theaters on January 27, 2017!

Photo Credit: Scott Garfield