You are listening to the Next Best Picture podcast, and this is Will Mavity's interview with

the canine star of Anatomy of a Fall, Messi, who plays Snoop, accompanied by his mom and trainer,

Laura Martin.

I just want you to know one thing.

I'm not a monster.

I need you to be precise.

Tell me everything.

Yes.

I'm sorry I couldn't make it down to see this guy in person.

He looks like the softest most handsome dog.

Look at that, Messi's beautiful. I'm sure he's tired out.

So I've seen many impressive dog performances over the years, but Messi is on a whole other level.

There's a particular scene I was curious about how you got this dog to pull it off,

which is the sequence where messy is sick and is just lying there with lifeless eyes, you know,

just like limp to the world, tongue hanging out.

How did you get this dog to do such a realistic, almost dead performance?

I don't know what happened. I think you fell off that third floor. The windows open.

The autopsy report is inconclusive.

An accidental fall is going to be hard for us to defend. Okay, we have to come to two months before the film. Okay, so to get to that kind of a truth, a truthful moment,

it takes a very long time and it's a very step-by-step process.

There was two months of training before the camera started rolling,

and it starts with the basic lay down play dead then

...