Published in The Post-Star (D1)
9/10/06
On the Skiff family's land in Easton, the scene is usually simple: a dirt road, a 200-year-old farmstead, about 80 beef cattle and two goats.
Last month, the landscape also included five semi trucks, a pasture-turned-parking lot, two catering tents, and a herd of about 70 movie executives, actors and crew members.
Outside an old, white house, a shaggy-haired young man perched in a high-backed canvas chair, smoking a cigarette and fiddling with the knobs on a tower of sound recording equipment.
"Rolling!" someone called out, immediately hushing everything but the wind in the maple leaves and cornstalks.
A New York City-based production company had set up camp for the week to film portions of "A Dog Year," a movie about the life of local author Jon Katz.
The film is directed by George LaVoo, produced by Liz Manne of Duopoly, and financed by a "modest budget" from HBO Films, Manne said. Picturehouse will distribute the film to theaters next year, probably by early summer.
Katz moved from suburban New Jersey to an old farm in rural Hebron in 2000 and soon adopted a homeless, high-strung border collie named Devon. The tale of that transition forms the basis for his books, "A Dog Year" and "The Dogs of Bedlam Farm," on which the film is based.
As Manne put it, "This is a story about a guy having a sort of existential, mid-life crisis...who takes in a border collie that turns out to be crazier than he is."
In the interest of preserving Katz's sanity as a writer, however, the film crew did not descend on his home, called Bedlam Farm. Instead, a scout scoured Washington County for similar-looking farms with scenic views, and discovered the Skiffs' 550-acre property in Easton.
Other portions of the movie were filmed at John Irwin's farm in Greenwich and the Bedlam Corners store in West Hebron. The Skiffs' property was used primarily for the scenes that include Katz's house.
Carol and Stewart Skiff have run the farm for 50 years, and their son and daughter-in-law, Tom and Michelle Skiff, live in a house next door. All of them were startled -- but in the long run, thrilled -- by the chance to have their property used as a movie set. Tom and Michelle's house was "de-renovated" to mimic the look of Katz's home when he first moved in, a process the crew promised to reverse once filming was complete.
The crew's presence definitely interrupted the Skiffs' daily routines, they said, but it was worth it.
"Oh, it's just been wonderful, very exciting," Carol said, beaming.
Jeff Bridges plays Katz in the film, but local people got involved in smaller roles.
Stewart was an extra in the scenes filmed at the Bedlam Corners store, and their grandson, 12-year-old Chris Herbst, was a stand-in for one of the film's main characters.
Madison Keator, a 6-year-old Ballston Spa native who now lives in Ohio, played Ida Armstrong, the daughter of Katz's neighbor Anthony. Her flair for drama was apparent when a reporter asked if she thought she would like to be in another movie.
"I don't know," she said, falling backward onto the grassy lawn with an exaggerated sigh and a wide, gap-toothed grin.
Most of the crew hailed from New York City, and several compared the rural film shoot to a vacation. They doted on the Skiffs' pet goats, sunbathed in the fields, and explored local attractions like the Washington County Fair.
"It's been such a welcoming, fun experience," Manne said. "We've been treated with incredible warmth and hospitality."
One sunny afternoon, Stewart offered crew members a ride up the grassy hill in the back of his old Dodge pickup truck. At the top, they all scrambled for their cameras when they saw the panoramic mountain view.
"Oh my God! It's so...wholesome!" exclaimed one woman.
Later, Carol giggled as she told the story of a set painter who was so unaccustomed to rural life that he had to ask her what a certain abundant substance on the ground was.
"It was cow manure," she explained, nudging a dried chunk of the stuff with her toe.
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Q&A with Jon Katz
Bio: Jon Katz, author and Hebron resident, is having one of his novels, "A Dog Year," made into a movie that is being filming locally.
Q: Did you want to play yourself in the movie?
A: No, I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid (laughs). And they didn't ask me, anyway.
Q: Did you watch the filming?
A: I visited the set a few times, but I didn't want to visit too much because I thought it would be strange for the actors, too distracting.
Q: Were you involved in other ways?
A: Yes. All the movie dogs were staying on my farm, for one thing...In the middle of all this, lambing started, and I had eight border collies running around those poor sheep, who were about to have a nervous breakdown.
Q: Did you like the dogs?
A: They're different than my dogs. They all have contact lenses and hair extensions and get spray-dyed every morning so they have the same coloring. And one morning, the trainer, who was also staying with me, asked me to tell them a story about my dog, to inspire them. I said, "That's a little weird, even for me." But she was very charming, so I did. They stared at me the whole time and gave me licks when it was over. It seemed like they wanted the story.
Q: Wow. Any other ways your life was disrupted?
A: One day, a raiding party -- I call them movie thugs -- came to my house and stole a bunch of my clothes, just stuffed them in a trash bag and took off while I'm standing there yelling...they used them to make Jeff Bridges look like me, the same sort of rumpled L.L. Bean look.
My daughter heard this and said, "Let me get this straight. Are you trying to telll me that Jeff Bridges wants to look like you?" (Laughs.)
Q: Was he wearing your actual clothes?
A: I think they just tried to copy them...One intern rubbed sandpaper on a shirt for like two weeks to make it look like what I wear.
Q: What was it like, seeing someone else pretending to be you?
A: Very strange, kind of surreal...And Jeff Bridges had a stand-in, so there were basically three Jon Katzes wandering around. That almost sent me over the edge. (Laughs.) But it's very flattering and humbling to have such a good actor playing me. He's a method actor, so he wanted to know all about my marriage, my writing, my moods...we had these endless debates about what Jon Katz is really like. Funny, because personally, I don't find myself all that interesting.
Q: So, do you think you'll like the movie? Are you pleased with it so far?
A: I don't know. It seems like it went very well, but I haven't read the script, deliberately. A movie's different than a book, so I don't feel that they need to be literally faithful to the book...
I think it'll take some adjustment for me. People have started asking for my autograph, saying "You're that guy they're making the movie about!" There's a glamour around movies that there isn't around books...I think I'm still kind of in shock a little bit.
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