Interview with Mathilde DeCagney
This article was first published in the American magazine US Weekly. Special thanks go to Val McCaffery who sent it in and spent her time typing it up!
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Is Moose, Who Plays Eddie On Frasier, The Best Actor In Hollywood Today?
"He is Lawrence Olivier in a hair shirt." -David Hyde Pierce
They are rehearsing the muffin scene for the premiere episode of Frasier's eighth season. Daphne (Jane Leeves) makes the muffin; Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) inquires into the muffin's properties; Martin (John Mahoney) masticates the muffin; and Eddie (Moose) - the master, the genius, the star, whose world-famous range as an actor has made Frasier the most sophisticated television show of all time - sits in the armchair and stares at the muffin. He stares at it with such electrifying, passionate intensity that is the scene ran any longer, dogs watching at home would have to trot out to the backyard for a cigarette.
Standing just off-camera, behind Moose's chair, is his beautiful French companion, Mathilde DeCagney. She wears a bag of treats around her waist. It is rumoured that he sleeps with her. From time to time she bends and whispers in Moose's ear. Twice she swoops down and kisses him on his fanny.
When the director calls for the next scene, the rest of the cast rapidly disperses, chatting and laughing. Grammer walks to the piano, seats himself and begins a sonata. Moose, however, like Jim Carrey making the Andy Kaufman movie, remains completely in character.
Like other great figures before him, he was born in a barn. Tag, a celebrated and brilliant beauty, gave birth to him on December 24, 1990, in Weirsdale Florida. He was the fourth and last puppy of the litter and the largest, so he was named Moose.
He was difficult, if you please, from the age of 8 weeks. After annihilating the house of his first owners, Connie and Sam Thise, Moose was given to a blacksmith. At the blacksmith's, he managed to turn the horse loose, start a fire and run off the family's beloved cat, all in less than 64 hours. He was returned to the Thises, who bred dogs to hunt in competitions. (Like I was going to spend my life doing that." says Moose in his hilarious autobiography, My Life as a Dog, written with Brian Hargrove and out this Christmas in a special edition.)
Here is a partial list of what the future star did to celebrate his return home:
Destroyed the couch.
Severely gnawed the legs of the dining room table.
Ate the telephone wires.
Vomited on the stereo speakers.
Urinated on Sam Thise's favourite chair.
Terrorised Tommy, the Thise's horse, by jumping up, biting his tail and swinging back and forth on it.
Dug a hole through the wall of the upstairs bathroom.
We'll pass over in silence his antics with the neighbourhood cats. Just minutes before the Thise family went mad, fate intervened. A trainer by the name of Cathy Morrison, who worked for Birds and Animals Unlimited, a talent agency for animals, happened to stop in the veterinarian's office where Connie Thise worked. By a stroke of luck, Moose was there too. One glance at the irresistibly charming little rascal and Morrison fell under his spell. She trained him in Orlando, Florida, where she worked with Animals Actors Showcase at Universal Studios, then sent him to Los Angeles to audition for Frasier.
Technically, Birds and Animal Unlimited still owns Moose. But he lives with the firm's number-one trainer, the shapely Mathilde DeCagney, Santa Monica, California.
"He needed to have some kind of a job," says DeCagney, who is well-known for finding dogs at pounds and turning them into actors, "something to keep him stimulated in his mind. He has so much energy, so much charisma!"
"Who has more charisma?" I ask. "Kelsey Grammer or Moose?"
DeCagney smiles. She speaks like Catherine Denuve and has the slightly bucked overbite of Rosanna Arquette - an inhumanly sexy combination.
"Kelsey is just the greatest actor," she says. "But who is the better actor? Kelsey Grammer or Moose?"
DeCagney looks down at Moose, who is scratching both ears at the same time and snorting with the sound of a tractor exhaust.
"This guy has the personality that you can't compete with." she says.
Moose moved in with DeCagney after the Frasier audition. "The truth is the producers were having a terrible time casting the role of Eddie," she says. "They had seen nearly every dog in L.A. Then Moose flew in from Florida, trotted out with a group of seven other dogs, they went down the line, stopped at him and said, That's it."
He began leading the life of a star - riding horseback with DeCagney, running by the sea Jane Leeves has given him the keys to her beach house), flying first class, appearing at charity events and thrilling tour groups on the Paramount lot by permitting himself to be fondled amid the bulbs and bushes of Lucille Ball Park. But he has never stopped being Moose.
"One day I'd given him a bath and put him in the yard to dry," says DeCagney. "I have a pepper tree, and Moose managed to actually climb up this tree, get on the roof of the dog kennel, jump down into the neighbour's yard and get out!"
Moose enjoys hearing this story so much he rolls on top of his own head and grins up at DeCagney in his celebrated Kelsey Grammer imitation. It's a perfect impression in every way, except that Moose possesses no teeth, having chewed them off on plaster, rubber, wood, marble, vinyl, masonite, beaverboard, slate and cat dolls.
By the time DeCagney discovered his escape from the yard, he'd been gone a good hour or so. "And I went calling 'Moose! Moose! Moose! Moose! Moose! No Moose. My heart was beating really, really hard. But I said to myself, 'Now let's see. I'm Moose. I'm free. What am I gonna do?' So first I went around the neighbourhood looking for cats or another dog to beat up on. I mean, Moose is going to look for trouble. For something he can fight, kill and eat."
Moose, like every other leading man in Hollywood, is genuinely moved by the tales of his own machismo, so much so that he has hoisted up his left haunch and surrendered himself to an ecstatic, eye-rolled-up-in-his-head session of ball-licking.
"But nothing!" says DeCagney. "I couldn't find him. So I went down by the beach Nothing. I went back around the house. My heart was beating so fast. I took my car, and my husband took his car, and we drove around. And nothing! I telephoned friends and had some fliers made up. I went to the shelter. I went everywhere. I picked up the fliers and started pinning them up. The fliers said LOST! BROWN AND WHITE JACK RUSSELL. REWARD."
(Speaking of rewards, despite interviews with the wealthy actor's inner circle, I could not discover how much money Moose makes per episode. When I threw out a frustrated guess of $25,000 per show, DeCagney snorted and said ; "It's more probably more like $2,500.")
"So there's a pet store that we go to, and it's also a grooming place," says DeCagney. "I went there to give them a flier, and I walk in and say to the lady, 'I lost Moose!' And she goes 'Oh, my God! You did really?' And I say, 'Yes.' And she says, 'Well, hang on one second.' And meanwhile, there are people in the store and they're buying stuff - toys and this and that. And a moment later, the lady comes out with Moose, with soap suds on his head from getting a bath! Those people had picked him up, in the street, and he had rolled in dogs**t, the stinker. They were going to take him home. And when I told them who he was, they went 'My God! You gotta be kidding! And this one- DeCagny points to the toothless but totally unabashed little thespian - "acted like he'd never seen me before!"
Just like Sir John Gielgud in Hamlet.
"He was looking like 'What are you doing here? I thought I got rid of you!"
I was in tears, of course. And the people were kind of in tears. And the lady is in tears. She didn't know it was Moose. He didn't have his collar on because I had just given him a bath." "And I burst into tears," says Moose in his book, "because I got suds in my eyes."
Moose's picture is being taken on the Frasier set. While lights are being adjusted, DeCagney notices that she has left the star's toys in his trailer. She hands me the leash, which is clipped to Moose's leather collar, and after instructing me to remain with him on the set, she delivers three caveats:
"Don't let him eat anything!" she says. "Don't go into the trash! And nothing off the floor!"
"Don't worry!" I say. "Go on! Ta-ta!" I smile as she walks away. She halts and looks back doubtfully.
"Go on!" I say again. I glance down at Moose and shrug. He weighs all of what - 24 pounds? He's smarter than I am, but I am bigger.
The very instant DeCagney disappears around the corner, my arm is yanked almost out of its socket, and my body is dragged across Frasier's living room, through his kitchen, around the coffee-house set and straight into the trash cans at a speed of maybe 15 miles an hour. Moose manages to knock down one of the cans - a big 55-gallon job - with such force, the contents nearly fly out the back door.
"Come to Mama," I say, bending over and swooping him up in my arms. "Is he giving you any trouble?" asks a female voice behind me. I whirl around.
Mimi the Eager Publicist.
"If I kidnapped Moose," I say, smiling, "How much would Paramount pay to get him back?"
Mimi sags sideways. This is the kind of question no publicist wants to deal with, but she gamely mumbles something about "millions".
"Would they pay more for Moose than Kelsey?"
"Oh!" She almost chokes, "I don't ...."
"We all know Moose is worth more than Peri Gilpin," I say, "That's a given. But what about Kelsey?"
She doesn't answer.
"Didn't you photograph Grammer this weekend for "In Style"?" I ask Art Streiber. He is down on all fours, crawling around on the cold cement, setting up a shot of Moose.
"I photographed him, yeah." says Streiber.
"Which was more difficult, Moose or Kelsey?"
Streiber stops what he is doing. Moose, who is lying on his back with all four of his paws in the air, turns, looks at Streiber and lets out a low, comical howl.
"This is more difficult," says Streiber. "Why? Because we're asking the dog to do really difficult things. Hold positions. And with a human, I want him to move, interact, and gesticulate. The dog I wanted to hold a pose. And he's trained better than any dog I've ever seen, but it's still hard."
As a matter of fact, the photo session is starting. From the first moment Moose walks out and takes his mark, he delivers an extraordinary performance - mugging, rolling, pawing, smiling, jumping etc., etc. Now of course, Moose is DeCagney's stooge. After all, she can control him with a series of hand signals. And nobody expects any actor to invent things on his own. But still. The sheer force of Moose's personality, his outrageous exuberance, his undeniable cheek (DeCagney had to train him to endure being petted) and his gorgeous sadness (the charisma everyone talks about comes from an unmistakable look of longing in his eyes), all these things add up to an audacity that just blows people away.
"He's supersmart," DeCagney says "It's scary for me because I don't know what to expect. I have many dogs that perform in movies. And we are in harmony. But with Moose, it's not that there isn't any harmony. It's just that he's constantly keeping me guessing. So I have to keep him guessing."
She suggests that people who are training their pets at home should "not necessarily go with treats all the time. What you can do is try to switch - one time you have a treat, two times you don't have a treat. One time you go to a toy, one time you've got nothing."
"You have no trouble with men, do you, Mathilde?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "No. Never had."
"You know why?" I say.
She smiles. She is so French, her cornflower blue bra matches her cornflower blue T-shirt.
"Because," I say "you understand how to train the bastards!"
"It's psychology," she allows.
"Yes," I say, " You offer treats and praise."
"And I cook," she says and gives me a beat of her lashes.
Moose exits the Paramount lot, riding shotgun in DeCagney's big blue van. His pretty friend Tulsa (a whippet mix DeCagney rescued from a pound and is now training to be an actor) is with him. They are headed home, where Moose will run about in the garden to his heart's content. But first they must stop at a pet store and buy two pooper-scoopers. Both Tulsa and Moose caper up and down the aisles, sampling lamb-links and playing with toys. DeCagney is chatting with the cashier, and by God, if the best-trained dog in America doesn't lift his leg and pee on a column. Tulsa steps back and eyes the puddle in happy astonishment.
My own joy on the occasion is immense. I have been struggling for years to train my dogs merely to sit on command - and here is Moose, the coolest, smartest dog of his generation, urinating on a pole in a pet store! It gives me such hope! (And I'm sure Moose feels good about it too.) By the way, if you want a small dog for your apartment, DeCagney advises, get a bulldog, a toy poodle, a dachshund or, better yet, a mutt from the pound. She says if you are thinking of getting a Jack Russell, don't.
Legal Stuff:
Frasier created by David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee. Based on the character "Frasier Crane" created by Glen and Les Charles and featured in the NBC / Paramount production "Cheers". Frasier is a Grub Street Production for NBC and Paramount. All Frasier characters are copyright NBC, Paramount and Grub Street Productions.
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