August 21, 2009 – The video trailer for the HBO movie “A Dog Year” is up on the HBO Films site, and available for downloading. The movie will air at 8 p.m. on September 3, and be available later on DVD. It was inspired by my first book about dogs, “A Dog Year” and the director George Lavoo and Jeff Bridges grasped that my writing and dogs books are often not really about dogs, but about the people who own them. Jeff Bridges is an amazing actor. I can’t say the movie is really my story, nor should it be, but it is a lovely film about the impact a dog can make on a human being’s life.
  There is definitely a lot of me in the portrayal of a frustrated writer whose life is rocked and changed by the arrival of a crazy, needy border collie. The movie people saw my life more clearly than I did, in many ways. I have a lot of mixed feelings about the movie – none of them to do with the film itself, which I much enjoyed.
  I walk a fine line between an open life and a private one, and having movies made about you only tilts the balance. I also recognize what a compliment it is to have someone like Jeff Bridges making  a movie based on one of my books and playing any part of my life. I will be glad when it’s September 4 th, though.