The city’s pet lovers have good reason to look forward to tonight’s Academy Awards telecast — and not just because the Disney Pixar masterpiece “Up,” nominated for Best Picture, stars a talking mutt named Dug.
The event’s co-host, Steve Martin, is a New Yorker, devoted dog owner and . . . K9 movie producer? Tonight, he’ll be presiding with Alec Baldwin at the film industry’s event of the year. But he’s already opened the envelope to announce a different breed of motion-picture prize: best video starring a dog.
Last year, Martin composed a fetching tune called “Wally on the Run,” inspired by his beloved yellow lab. The fast-paced number is featured on Martin’s album, “The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo.”
But Martin couldn’t create a video for “Wally on the Run” because he didn’t have the time or the editing facilities. So the busy comedian-actor-screenwriter-author-banjo picker held a contest, asking dog owners to make a video featuring their own mutts. The first-place winner would win $1,000, Martin promised, while the second-place winner would get . . . 99 cents (“The cost of downloading the video,” he explained on DailyMotion.com, the site that hosted the contest.)
In December, after viewing hundreds of submissions, Martin announced the winners: The top prize went to Adrienne Mercurio of Colorado, who filmed her boisterous border collie running and playing outdoors. Second place went to Michelle Carman of the West Village for her charming animation inspired by Terry Gilliam’s classic “Monty Python” graphics. Both videos can be viewed at dailymotion.com/group/WallyOnTheRun.
In true, “It’s an honor to be nominated” spirit, Carman couldn’t be more thrilled with her second-place win. “I hope [my video] speaks to dog lovers everywhere,” she says. And like the most gracious Oscar nominee, Carman “pawsed” to thank her K9 talent: “Ginger, Chestnut, Gomez, Jethro, Apollo, Bel, Zosia, and Scruffy . . . a cast of canines that could melt a brass candle.”
Martin was so impressed by Carman’s efforts that he raised the second-place prize money. “I know it took a lot of work and it’s very entertaining,” he said through an online video on Daily Motion, “so I’m upping that award to $500.”
Fear not, though, the Fido-favoring funnyman hasn’t lost his edge: He also raised the first-prize award to . . . $1,000 and 99 cents.
petreporter1@gmail.com