{After an unguarded moment of tenderness, Alex (Dennis Flanagan) watches over an exhausted and beleagured Mitchell (Brik Berkes)}

Had a really fun conversation yesterday with Douglas Carter Beane, the author of The Little Dog Laughed.  I was driving (cellphone in hand, I know, I know) to Columbia Gorge - he was doing research for an upcoming project at Barnes & Nobles in Manhattan.  I met Doug about a decade ago, when he was kind enough to fly to Atlanta to help us promote his play As Bees in Honey Drown, and asked if he would talk to me for a bit about this current project.

First question:  what inspired the play?  Doug said he’d been writing ‘The Adventures of Alex’ for several years, thinking it might become a novel.  Alex was inspired by his discovery of a website called “Manhattan Schoolboys” or the like, where you could pull up the profile of an appealing ‘escort’, read his bio - and actually link to his blog where he would offer up details of his daily activities.  Doug became fascinated by the human beings behind the commerce and started writing about Alex (the ‘rent boy’ in Little Dog)

{Caught in the Act! Rising star Mitchell Green (Brik Berkes) tries to explain a “slight reoccuring case of homosexuality,” spurred on by the sweet natured rent boy Alex (Dennis Flanagan) to his scheming agent Diane (Antoinette LaVecchia).}

The evolution of Alex into Little Dog was inspired by Doug’s adventures in Hollywood - when Bees had been optioned for production as a film.   The studio execs he encountered were so determined to change almost every element of the original, that he finally gave up and just put the script on a shelf (where it remains).  But his window into the ruthlessness, and formulaic demands of ’showbiz’ seared themselves onto his brain.

A common request was, “Can’t we soften up the heroine?”  To which he would reply, “You mean the psychotic, lying con-woman at the center of the story?  What exactly would ’softer’ look like?”

{Nothing to see here: Diane (Antoinette LaVecchia)tries to steer the media glare elsewhere as Mitchell (Brik Berkes) and Alex (Dennis Flanagan) fall in love.}

He also took inspiration from a particularly famous, Oscar-winning movie star - who took his mother to the award ceremony - and upon receiving his statue - turned to his manager (apparently a well-known lesbian in the business) and thanked her as “the woman who taught me how to love”.   When the cameras panned to the manager, she was looking behind herself in confusion to find out who he was talking about.

 Doug is as funny (spontaneously) on the phone as he is in real life and on paper. 

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