Best In Show

'Best In Show' is a mocumentary by Christopher Guest which looks into contestents all wanting their dog to win the annual Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show. The actors work on a mostly improvisional basis as Guest describes the production process as "getting together with good friends and having fun". The characters are over exagerated but based on realistic elements of the sort of people that would enter the show. Guest himself stars as Harlan Pepper, owner of the winning Bloodhound, Hubert. Other characters include; Gerry and Cookie Fleck with their dog Winky, are a couple from Florida who keeping bumping into men Cookie has slept with in her youth. Meg and Hamilton Swan with their dog Beatrice are a couple that fell in love in a Starbucks and now convinced that their dog accidently seeing them having sex has left him traumatised therefore they patronise Beatrice and treat her like a baby. Scott Dolan and Stefan Vanderhoof are a hair dressing pair that met through Stefan's ex wife and use their hair dressing skills on their long haired dogs. Leslie Ward Cabot and Sherrie Ann Cabot are a couple which are together for every reason but love as Leslie is an old many whose days are numbers and Sherrie a young woman looking to finance her life with as little work as possible and together they have a white Poodle. The commentators at the event are used to stir things up with the over exaggerated characters, during these clips, the camera and sound is focus on these two and flicks to clips of the characters and dogs that they are talking about with the sound still focusing on their voices. The camera uses lots of close ups through out the documentary to show the exaggerated facial expressions.