|
|
 |
|
|
Hangin' With Archives
|
Piper Perabo and George Lopez: Chattin' Chihuahua!by Lynn Barker
We sat down with George and Piper recently and wanted to know from George, whose home is filled with several Chihuahuas, what it was like to play the voice of one and from Piper, what happens when a lot of your co-stars are dogs and you even have to bark like one in a film? Read on for a funny, warm-hearted exchange.... AGW: Do either of you have pets at home? Piper: I don’t have a pet. I don’t have enough time, with my traveling. So, as much as I would like one, I don’t really feel that it’s a responsible choice, at this point. AGW: George, you have Chihuahuas, right? George: I have three of them. AGW: What are your dogs' names? George: Chico is the black and white one, and then Trixie is the female and Monty, because he was born in Monterey, California. AGW: Are they from the pound or rescued? George: One was born naturally, from a result of the relationship between the mother and the father, and one was a rescue, and one we bought. AGW: Do you think it is cool that the dog playing Papi was rescued from the pound and he's now a doggie movie star? George: Yeah. There's a lot of compelling stories in Hollywood of how people make it against all odds, but to be one day from being put down and then the next day you're on every billboard and you're the star of a movie is unbelievable. And it's unfortunate that he's a canine and really won't ever understand what that means. AGW: Piper, since you are a human in the cast and not voicing a dog character, what was the biggest surprise for you, working with canine actors? Piper: I didn’t realize that there would be more than one, [playing] each dog. You think there’s going to be as many dogs as there are characters, but like with Angel, the dog that plays Chloe, she can’t do everything. So, there had to be the swimming Chloe and the jumping Chloe. There were five different Chloes, even though there was one main one. There were even more dogs than you’re seeing on screen, all there together. AGW: The Chihuahuas in the film have their own "No Mas" movement in protest of being accessory dogs. They aren't going to take it anymore. How did you like the "no mas" movement in the film? Piper: I agree. Obviously, everyone has a right to spend their money how they choose, and as long as you are intending to be loving, I can support it, although it wouldn’t be my choice for how to spend my money [buying a dog as an accessory]. AGW: Do you think these little dogs have been over-exploited in Hollywood? George: I enjoyed that "no mas/enough is enough" campaign. They're [used as] accessories. Paris Hilton and different actors and actresses carry them around. Yes, they're cute dogs. They're small but they think that they can take anyone on. I've seen my dogs at a dog park where I have to put them in the car because they were going to beat up everyone in the park [we laugh],. You're like, "Come on, what's going on?" You're carrying them under your arm, you're like, "Are you crazy, what's going on?" And it's like, "Let me back out there! Let me back out there!" AGW: I assume you don't dress up your dogs at all? George: I do not. But I've had dogs dressed up in my house. Our friends have a female brown Chihuahua and we have our youngest Chihuahua, which is a male. And my wife and the other dog's owner and the kids decided that it would be great if we had a Chihuahua wedding in the backyard. I come home and my smallest dog has a top hat on and a bow tie and a tuxedo shirt and he's like, "What the heck do I have on?" And then the other dog had a wedding dress on, and they were going to marry them. My daughter was doing the services. But in the middle of the wedding, the mother-in-law dogs got into a fight in the backyard and the bride lost her dress in the middle of the ceremony, and the father went missing and nobody could find him. And I thought, "I've been to this wedding!" [we laugh] AGW: Piper, how much did the dogs affect shooting? Were the days longer than you expected? Were there lots of delays to get them ready?
AGW: Was there any co-star envy, with the dogs being treated better than the human cast? Piper: Funny story. On movie sets, they bring in the huge tubes of air conditioning. Frank, the pug who’s the famous dog from Men in Black, would crawl inside the air conditioning tube [to cool off]l And, one day, Jamie Lee Curtis crawled inside with Frank. It was much more comfortable in there. AGW: Makes sense to me. Do you see any similarities between your character Rachel and the corresponding canine character Chloe? Piper: I think Rachel and Chloe are both very irresponsible and self-centered, and both need to be around people who are a little more caring about others. That’s what changes them. I think I always grow from being around people who are more generous than I am. AGW: So, you wouldn’t be a babysitter and then take the baby on a trip to Mexico like your character does? Piper: No! I don’t do a lot of babysitting these days, but if I were to baby-sit, I probably wouldn’t take the baby to Mexico. And, if I did, I definitely wouldn’t lose the baby to a dog fight. [Laughs] I can guarantee that, for anybody who is going to hire me to baby-sit. AGW: George, do you relate to Papi's strong romantic streak? Do you have a strong romantic streak? George: You know, I don't. It's funny because when I did the voice, Disney people would say, "God, he's so romantic. He's so great." And I'm like, "You know that's me, right?" And even when I saw the movie, I was like, "That is more romance than I thought I put in it." Just the vulnerability. I think all my years of rejection from women...I finally found an outlet to let it go because it wasn't me personally, but it was a dog. AGW: Did you learn anything from Papi's romantic streak to impress your wife with? George: I do it with jewelry. I say it best with jewelry. I say it with small boxes. I'm trained well. When they give you a kidney, there's not a lot of "no's" you have left. [He laughs. George had kidney disease and his wife gave him one of hers]. AGW: Is it true that Papi didn't have quite so big a part at first? George: When I recorded the first time, I recorded with Drew [Barrymore who does the voice of Chloe, Papi's "love"], I only was supposed to have one recording session. Just one hour, or one hour and a half, two hours, and that was it for me. But when her and I got together and I sang to [Chloe] and she rejected me, everybody was in there like, "Awww..." they were like, "Hey, we might have something here." So they started to see that so everywhere this dog has a camera on him, they tried to get me to put a line in there. And a lot of them work. It created a part. The dog was kind of invisible in the middle of the movie, and now he became the dog that runs through the whole film. AGW: Piper, were you surprised with some of the lines the dogs said in the movie? Was there anything you didn’t expect? Piper: Yeah! It’s so bizarre to do the movie without all those voices. I know the dogs’ real personalities. I know how Rusco [Papi] and Angel [Chloe] are. And then, when you see them and Drew Barrymore's voice is in the scene, it’s shocking! Not that it’s not good, it’s just surprising. AGW: George, did you get to interact with Rusco the dog playing Papi?
AGW: Piper, how was it to go to Puerto Vallarta and Mexico City for this? Piper: I had never been to Mexico before, so I had a lot of preconceived ideas about what it would be like. And, it was even more beautiful than I imagined, especially some of the areas that you don’t see so much. We were in the jungles and the Sonoran desert, and it was absolutely beautiful. It was really fun! AGW: How is it to go back to comedy, after all of the dramas you’ve been doing in recent years? Piper: Comedy makes me so nervous. It’s so difficult to do comedy on film. The timing is what’s the most important thing, and on film it’s harder to control the timing. Also, with dogs, it’s like working with kids. In the Cheaper By The Dozen movies, I got to watch pros do it. In this film you don’t know what [the dogs] are going to do, and so, you have to be really well-rehearsed, to be able to let the scene evolve, depending on what the animal decides to do in each take. In a lot of ways, drama is much easier. AGW: Did you have any suggestions for your character that you spoke to the director about? Piper: The character of Rachel could become insanely Paris Hilton-y, out-of-control, and Raja [the director] was really good at letting me, although she’s irresponsible, try to keep the character a real person. Honestly, she’s not bad or evil or malicious. She just is self-centered. To try to make that human, Raja was very good at letting me ground the character in a way that I felt made her believable, instead of just a caricature. AGW: Were there scenes or animals that you really loved after finally seeing the film? Piper: There were little moments in the movie, like the scene where you first see the dog fights and there’s the dog that’s praying. On a page, that doesn’t really ring out, but in a movie, somehow that works. I really loved the rat and the iguana too. It’s amazing how things come off the page and come to life. AGW: The trailer ads for the film have you barking into the phone like Chloe. How many takes did you have to bark like a dog? Piper: We did a lot of takes! I think that Raja just thought it was funny to watch me do it. [Laughs] I didn’t get the lines wrong, so I don’t know why we did so many takes, but we did a lot. AGW: Were there any scenes with the dogs that just took forever to get done? Piper: Getting Chloe to put the food in my shoes took a long time because Chihuahuas don’t pick things up with their mouth. You don’t throw balls to Chihuahuas because they don’t use their mouth to move things around. So, to get her to pick something up, carry it across the room and put it in the right place, took a very long time. AGW: George, how much improvisation did you do for the voice of Papi? George: I don't know about the other actors, but I, being a comedian, I would look at the thing and go, "I could do something better than this" and, in most cases, they used my [version]. Like that scene where they're in the police station and Papi's sitting in the chair. Piper walks by and the dog just kind of looks over to the side--as a dog would. So I said, "Hannah Montana at 3 o'clock!" And it was funny, you know? I put that joke in there and that kind of stuff was nice AGW: Do you know how long were they took training the dogs? Some of these were rescues with no previous experience. George: Well, I don't think it was a long time. But when you see these trainers, they do amazing things. I think they just know how to approach a dog. They used a lot of strays that they found in Mexico and then they gave them homes, which is great.
Pictures courtesy of and copyright Walt Disney Pictures, 2008 |
 
|
Angela
& Gina's Room |
Brigid
& Kayla's Room |
Christine
& Erika's Room |
Lauren
& Sarada's Room | Circle of Friends PenPal Club | Site Map |
|
Since 1996, your space on the web : written and edited by girls and teens from all over the world. Media Kit Feedback Newsletter Write FOR us Contact Us |
|
Copyright © 2006 A Girl's World Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|
In
the new comedy Beverly Hills Chihuahua, one of the little dogs,
resident of Beverly Hills Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore) is loved from
afar by the gardener/landscaper's Chihuahua-mix dog Papi (voiced by comedian
George Lopez). When Chloe's owner, a rich make-up line executive played
by Jamie Lee Curtis, goes on a business trip and leaves her beloved Chloe
in the hands of her self-centered relative Rachel (Piper Perabo), Rachel
takes the pooch with her to Mexico for a party-hearty vacation with her
BFFs. Of course little Chloe gets lost and it's up to Rachel, Papi and
his gardener owner Sam (played by handsome Latino actor Manolo Cardona)
to come to the rescue. 
Piper:
It’s not a delay to get them ready, as much as it is to be patient
to have the take come out good, when the dog gets it right but they were
very professional and very highly trained. 
George:
I didn't until last July. Three months ago, he and I were together for
the first time, and we did a couple of promos for Disney. He was very
good. I think he was a lot better than I was. He gave me a high-five on
command, and he was getting a manicure, so he had his paws in water, and
I was talking to him, and we were both sitting there with cucumbers over
our eyes. You know, just kind of relaxing with cucumbers. And after they
took the take, they were looking for the cucumber. He ate his cucumbers
while they were resetting the camera. [laughs]