Samson(V)

Samson used to sleep almost all day. When the director, Jacqueline Wang, who cast him, came home after a long day of work & extensive rush hour commute across county lines, she found him asleep every night on her bed on top of her blankets. As she turned the light on, he gave her a complaining expression about how she had woken him up. Exhausted, it was all she could do to change out of her wool suits into her nightclothes. However, Samson refused to budge from the middle of the bed where he slept with all his heavy weight on top of the center of her blankets. No matter how she asked him to move over or how hard she tried to lift him then pull her blankets out from under him, he did not move. He was too heavy & she too tired. She slept smashed against the cold wall on the edge of her bed with only a fringe of blanket to try to keep her warm. The next day this happened all over again. Day after day.

She was working on digital streaming launches. She thought it made sense to make a short movie since it seemed like the future. She thought Samson should have to work too to see how he liked that instead of sleeping all day as she worked hard then had hardly any bed to sleep on, or any blanket to keep her warm.

Unfortunately, however, after she wrote a script around him, since she could film him evenings & weekends as he lived rent free there & she thought she could make him work for free, his veterinarian said he had kidney stones. He had to be vegetarian from that day on. She had to stop using his favorite pup treats to coax him to do tricks.

She hoped she could still coax him to act with just affection as his reward. This worked at first. However, she thought it might be a risk with 35 mm. film camera equipment & cast & crew all assembled to shoot.

Luckily, he loved his favorite toy, a squeaky plastic hot dog, so much that this coaxed him even more effectively than vegetarian dog food. (Samson did not like vegetarian dog food & was indifferent toward it as any sort of enticement or reward.) If he heard someone squeeze his squeaky hot dog, he came running to retrieve it, since he loved it so.

Samson did not like being an actor or even a movie star. After a day of shooting, he found the spot at home, under the dining room table against the furthest wall, where no one could get to him, & slept there all night without moving instead of sleeping on her bed with his weight on the center of his blankets.

He did, however, like the cast & crew. He was especially attentive toward the first assistant cameraman, who had a special, gentle manner of speaking to & petting him.

During shooting, just after his hair had been brushed, he ran out into the garden, smashed his face in the dirt & came back to show everyone he had spoiled the brushing & now had dirt all over his face.

During post-production, he gave a complaining expression as he was awoken very early in the morning to shoot foley, such as sounds of his toenails & paws on different surfaces, as it was still quiet outside. The sound designer had kindly lent his Sennheiser microphone, best for recording dog voices & other voices, to Samson's director. As soon Samson's director left the room, however, for mere seconds, to use the bathroom, she heard Samson run straight at, as fast as he could, the microphone stand. It fell over & landed on the expensive Sennheiser microphone, which hit the kitchen tile. From that moment on, the Sennheiser microphone was destroyed. On playback, it only ever recorded a static sound.

The first time he saw & heard himself, as his film played, Samson barked at himself, thinking he was another dog. However, from then on, he seemed to know it was just he himself onscreen.

Though he had not liked starring in a movie, Samson somehow knew he was a movie star. As soon as shooting had wrapped, he started to act somewhat like a diva, though in a still naturally likable way. Once, when his director's bedroom door had already been shut, after she had fallen asleep. He stood at her door and scratched at it so he could be let in. When no one opened it as soon as he would have liked, he used his paws to kick his food out of his food bowl, until someone opened her door for him.

He had not ever before done this, or other similar things he then started doing. These all seemed to suggest, as soon as filming wrapped, that he somehow thought himself entitled to acts he expected to be done for him to be done for him right away.

Very gentle, Samson loved kids. He allowed kids to pull on his tail since he seemed to understand they were too young to know better. One day, an adult who will not be named somehow had the idea to do a test to see if he simply did not mind having his tail pulled or somehow understood kids were just kids. When this adult pulled a little on his tail, Samson immediately growled his warning to stop.

Early on, after Samson had first moved into his director's home, it had taken time for him to show any response at all to affection. At first, his director had not known if even liked being petted or hugged. He simply stood stoically. Eventually, in about several months or so, however, he tilted his head to show he liked having his ears scratched & liked being hugged. This helped her during her hardest hurdles.

Samson used to explore, by escaping, no matter how careful everyone was about keeping the doors shut. He became best friends with another dog in the neighborhood who, together with his humans, found him. After, the two played together in this other dog's outdoor space that afternoon. He made lots of friends with humans in the neighborhood too.

Samson had special talents. Every evening, no matter where he was, when his director came home any time before late (when he was already asleep on her bed), he got up shortly before she drove up the street. He somehow knew to await her at the back door starting about fifteen minutes to a half hour or so before she came in after driving into the garage.

She still dreams about Samson regularly. In these dreams, he is always still happy & alive.