Dav Pilkey interviews on Dog Man the Movie and the Musical

In the imaginary world of Dog dogThe graphic novel series on a half-man hybrid, half a dog who works as a police officer, is presented to us both the homonymous hero of history, a semi-channel non-language, and his arc-enemy, the “most evil cat in the world”, Petey.

Sitting with the author Dav Pilkey to unveiling the great mysteries of life, his literary works, the vast global fandom and the new cinematographic adaptation of Dog dogIs it difficult to overcome one of the big existential questions in the anthropomorphic animal world: dogs or cats?

“I don’t know if it is possible to be straight in the middle,” explains Pilkey, in case of challenge to human evolution, which has left us with a cultural division that makes a discussion on global policy of the 21st century seem like the easy way.

“For me, it is more than the dog or the particular cat, regardless of whether I have a connection with it,” says Pilkey. You should be a diplomat, I tell him, adding that I am a team dog and I’m not ashamed. “Like you, I grew up in a dog for dogs, but my wife loves cats. So I grew up to really appreciate cats, and it became a new part of me.

Pilkey’s characters in the first book, Captain underwear.

“Petey’s journey is actually a journey that is very close to my heart because she started to feel like a bad guy and a bad boy, and it’s a bit like it was for me too,” he says. “I grew up with the ADHD and dyslexia; I have always been sent to the corridor, I have always been told that I was a bad child.”

That stuff “attacks with you,” says Pilkey. “I grew up thinking I was bad and I was on a personal journey to become a better person, I think that as we are all. And therefore I think Petey was a good way to exorcise some of those challenges.”

It was in that school corridor in which punishment focused on something more positive and began working on the character of Captain underwearThe best -selling book that launched his literary career in 1997. Other books, including Captain underwear sequel like The terrifying return of Tinkletrouser Tippy AND The revolution of the revolution of radioactive robo-boxesfollowed. Now, with legions of fans all over the world, Pilkey is a kind of junior literary icon.

Then Dog dogintroduced as a comic character created by the kindergartens George Beard and Harold Hutchins in Captain underwear Books, they turned into his series. As Underpants captain, He had a surprising success, with over 3.8 million copies sold.

A film seemed almost inevitable and the DreamWorks animation made Dog dog True. The film is played by Pete Davidson as Petey, Isla Fisher as the journalist Sarah Hatoff, Billy Boyd in the role of the cameraman Seamus and Ricky Gervais in the role of Flippy the Fish. Dog Man does not speak, but director Peter Hastings provides his bark and other expressions.

For Pilkey, whose life seems more comfortably focused on writing, open -air life (excursions and canoeing) or on the encounter with the armies of children asking for his books, walking in a Hollywood recording studio to meet the small surreal cast. “I feel really lucky because almost all the voice actors with whom I have been lucky enough to work are the creators themselves, and they devise their material, and many of them are standing and are just writing constantly,” he says. “I think they have put a lot in their representations of the characters, and I think it makes it a richer experience.”

It is hot behind it is Dog Man: The musicalA theatrical adaptation of history, which plays at the Sydney Opera House. “The overwhelming joy is my takeaway from everything,” says Pilkey, of the multiplatform expansion of Dog dog. “I try to stay out of any adaptation … I try to work with people I trust, and usually based on the work they did before they hired my project. I would not like anyone to stare and look at me behind when I was creating.”

As a child, Pilkey says that curiosity led him to books. “He happened to lie down at home, and so I really liked to watch the photos and I would like to simply explore the books alone,” he says. “As I grew up, my mom started taking me to the library and has always allowed me to choose all the books I wanted, and therefore I would always find books that had great illustrations and wonderful stories and that type of helped me to develop my love for reading,” he says.

In the creation of dogs, Pilkey made a conscious choice to make it a non -verbal character. In history, he is created after a medical accident that has merged a police officer wounded with his company. The advantage, says Pilkey, is that Dog Man can explore and express in ways that words, perhaps, cannot express perfectly.

“I know that children tend to really love dogs,” says Pilkey. “Even if you are looking at a child and a dog happens to walk, all their face lights up, and I think they connect with the eyes of a dog. The dogs have a lot of emotion, and they never talk, so I wanted to do it with the cartoons.

The more deepening the expanded world of these characters – let’s call it “Pilkeyverse” – the individual pieces begin to form a mosaic. In Captain underwear We met two kids who like to make comics. And in Dog dogLi’l Petey is expressed using hand designed comics. Are this world and its inhabitants completely imaginary or some form of autobiographical expression? An artist can ever escape unconsciously – or consciously – make them in some form in their art?

“I can always speak alone, and everything I think I did was autobiographical, including the characters I devised and the stories,” says Pilkey. “Dog dogReally, the first 12 books concern Petey’s arc, and Petey is the cat who starts like a villain and becomes a hero, and is based on me, and that’s what I was. And now I’m writing about a new character, Big Jim, who is someone I am trying to be, I’m trying to be more. So I think there is some autobiography in everything I’ve done so far. “

A quick search for online video channels makes countless appearances appear in class and library, in which Pilkey is welcomed with the type of screaming excitement which, at least historically, has been reserved for artists of the caliber of icons such as The Beatles and Elvis Presley.

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“I’m not sure I can completely understand what they are passing, but for me it is my favorite part of my job because the part of the creation is very alone and insulating,” says Pilkey.

“But being with a pile of families and children who are only going crazy, is wonderful. I must always remember that it is not really about me, these are books, and it is the shared experience of reading and how literacy puts us all together.”

Dog Man is in cinemas nationally from April 3rd. Dog Man: The Musical Will The Sydney Opera House from 11 to 27 April.