Decades before Dog Man — Universal’s new animated feature based on Dav Pilkey’s graphic novel series about a hybrid dog-human police officer — Tom Hanks starred alongside a pooch sniffing out a role in law enforcement. Bounding into theaters in 1989, Turner & Hooch focused on Det. Scott Turner (Hanks) and the unruly French mastiff he teams up with to solve a murder.
Henry Winkler, who had helmed the 1988 Billy Crystal feature Memories of Me, was originally hired to direct Turner & Hooch but was fired weeks into shooting. Roger Spottiswoode recalls Disney Studios boss Jeffrey Katzenberg approaching him to take over amid concerns that Winkler felt overwhelmed with filming the dog. “I said, ‘If I shoot, I need five cameras, and Tom and the dog are going to improvise,’ ” Spottiswoode tells THR of his pitch to go more off-script. Winkler hinted at tension between himself and Hanks at the time by quipping in an interview, “Let’s just say I got along better with Hooch than I did with Turner.” (Winkler has since clarified that he and Hanks have no bad blood.) Spottiswoode also remembers Katzenberg suggesting they recast Hooch’s vet, played by Mare Winningham, but Hanks went to bat for his co-star; ultimately, Katzenberg came around.
Spottiswoode used four dogs to play Hooch and had a ball during the shoot, although Hanks might have felt differently. “That was the hardest I’ve ever worked,” he said in 2001, recalling the unpredictable nature of performing with a canine. Reginald VelJohnson played a fellow detective and remembers Angela Bassett filming several scenes as his wife before they landed on the cutting-room floor. “I was upset when they cut her out of the film,” he says.
Buena Vista released Turner & Hooch on July 28, 1989, and it collected $71 million ($179 million today). In 2021, Disney+ released a series remake starring Josh Peck as Turner. “Animal films can be very charming; we got the right actors,” says Spottiswoode of Hanks and the dogs, “and I tried to stay out of their way.”
This story appeared in the Jan. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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