comedy – Pain In The Bud

New Crime-Comedy ‘Caught Stealing’ Stars A NY Cat Named Bud

A bartender gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to watch his neighbor’s cat in the new comedic crime flick Caught Stealing.

In Caught Stealing, the newest film from director Darren Aronofsky, a seedy guy named Russ (Matt Smith) asks his neighbor Hank (Austin Butler) to watch his cat for a few days while he’s out of town.

The cat is not only a handsome little fellow, he’s got a spiffy name: Bud.

The problem? Russ has seriously pissed off New York’s criminal element, and Hank is unaware a category five shitstorm is about to make landfall. No matter how many beatings he takes from gangsters who mistake him for his neighbor, the Lower East Side bartender takes his cat-sitting duties seriously.

“Bud remains central to the action,” the New York Times notes. “His skeptical gazes punctuate scenes and his presence endears the audience to Hank, who goes out of his way to protect the somewhat ornery creature when the going gets rough.”

Tonic and his co-star, Austin Butler. Credit: Melissa Millett

Alas, Caught Stealing‘s Bud is not our Bud, although that’s probably for the better. Our Bud would drive the on-set catering crew mad with his turkey-related demands, and he’d run off camera to hide behind my legs during fight scenes.

Instead, Bud is played by a pro, a cat named Tonic who has appeared in the remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and the horror flick Thanksgiving.

Aronofsky tells the Times about the on-set cat wrangling, noting felines are usually “not very notorious for their collaboration skills.”

Still, Charlie Huston, who wrote the book the movie’s based on as well as the screenplay, said the team didn’t take any shortcuts with Bud.

“I don’t feel like we made it as easy for ourselves as some people would have wanted,” Huston told the Times. “I remember a lot of conversations about, ‘Do we have to have the [expletive] cat in this scene?’”

The fact that they did keep him squarely in the action is testament to Tonic. Before the little guy got the role, the team had it narrowed down to him and one other cat. Tonic made the decision easy for them.

“It was just such a no-brainer because the other cat was fine, but Tonic was such a rock star on Day 1 and that was without prep,” Huston said.

Tonic with trainer Melissa Millett. Credit: Melissa Millett

Tonic is so accustomed to performing in live events and movie appearances, he was ready to show off his skills — and to get his paws on his rewards.

“The second he came out of his crate,” trainer Melissa Millett said, “he looked like he thought he was the king of the world and he was ready for all the chicken.”

The Best Movies About Cats

A comedy, a remarkable documentary, a classic and a surprise hit make the list for the best cat-centric movies.

Keanu (2016): Jordan Peele stars as Rell, a man who is despondent after he’s dumped by his girlfriend. When a kitten shows up on his front step, Rell takes the little guy in and his life is suddenly transformed. He’s enamored with the kitten, whom he names Keanu, can’t stop talking about him, and even begins photographing him in dioramas based on famous films.

But tragedy strikes when drug dealers ransack Rell’s home, mistaking it for the small-time drug dealer’s home next door, and take Keanu. Rell and his cousin, Clarence (Keegan Michael-Key) embark on a quest to get Keanu back no matter what it takes, even if it means posing as a pair of contract killers to infiltrate the criminal world where Keanu’s been taken. It’s every bit as absurd as you’d imagine — but it’s also very, very funny. “Actually, we’re in the market right now for a gangsta pet,” is not a line I’d expect to hear in a movie, but in Keanu it works.

Flow is the surprise hit of the awards season.

Flow (2024): Even the hype of Golden Globe awards and Oscar nominations can’t take away from the powerful impression Flow makes. By now most of us are probably familiar with it through clips or trailers, but they don’t do justice to the beauty of director Gints Zilbalodis’ world, nor how naturally expressive his protagonist, Cat, is.

The animators put in an extraordinary amount of effort into understanding and perfectly replicating every feline behavioral quirk, every hackled coat and curiously bent tail. They accomplish the same with Cat’s companions, including a Labrador, a secretarybird, a lemur and a capybara. And while we’re dazzled by the visuals and energetic narrative, Zilbalodis poses a thematic question as the flood waters take the animals through the ruins of human civilization: without people, the world will go on. What would a world without humans look like? Cat and his companions tell us one story while the environment tells us another, and the result is greater than the sum of its parts.

Tiger: A Spy In The Jungle (2008): What makes this documentary so special is that it was filmed over three years in an Indian tiger preserve, and the filmmakers not only disguised cameras as rocks and tree stumps, they trained elephants how to carry “trunk cams,” achieving shots which no human cameraman could ever hope to get without spooking the subjects of the film.

Tigers don’t hunt elephants because they’re simply too big. Unlike lions, they’re not feeding a whole pride, and they don’t hunt cooperatively. It’s just not worth the effort required to take down the giant, majestic beasts. As a result, tigers and elephants not only tolerate each other, they mostly ignore each other’s presence.

One of the cubs stares curiously at a camera disguised as a rock in Tiger: Spy In The Jungle

That allowed the team to get unprecedented shots of an iron-willed tigress raising a litter of four cubs by herself. We see their dens, we watch the cubs play, and we witness the incredible prowess of the mother, who according to narrator David Attenborough has a remarkable 80 percent success rate while hunting. That’s pretty much unheard of.

With four young mouths to feed in addition to herself, the tigress is determined, and also supremely skilled. The whole jungle erupts in a cacophony of shrieks and alarm calls the instant a single animal gets a whiff of the tigress’ presence, but that still doesn’t stop her from achieving her goal.

Still, the odds are against all four cubs making it, with dangers like adult leopards, sickness and hunger. Through Spy In The Jungle, we get to see the entire journey, from the newborn cubs to the confident juveniles on the cusp of adulthood. There’s no better tiger documentary anywhere.

Shere Khan, right, makes an intimidating villain in The Jungle Book (2016)

The Jungle Book (2016): With so many Disney cash-grabs in the form of live-action remakes of classics that did not need to be remade, it’s easy to dismiss The Jungle Book. The thing is, this movie has heart. Neel Sethi is an earnest Mowgli, Idris Elba voices the infamous tiger Shere Khan, and to balance out the felid villainy with some heroism, Sir Ben Kingsley voices Bagheera, the noble leopard who discovers baby Mowgli in the jungle and protects him as his wolf friends raise the boy. Lupita Nyong’o as the wolf matriarch Raksha, Bill Murray as the honey-obsessed bear Baloo and Christopher Walken as orangutan King Louie round out a great cast.

Festivus 2023: Little Buddy Has Grievances, People!

Today is a Festivus for the rest of us! Get out tbe Festivus pole and prepare for the Feats of Strength and the Airing of Grievances!

Happy Festivus!

December 23 marks the famously anti-consumerist holiday, and this year is the 27th Festivus since it became a national holiday thanks to the Seinfeld episode “The Strike,” which aired on Dec. 18, 1997.

Before that, it was the invention and personal holiday of Daniel O’Keefe, a Reader’s Digest editor. His son Dan, a writer for Seinfeld, introduced Festivus to the rest of us by making it a focal point of the episode.

Festivus is enthusiastically celebrated at la casa de Buddy, providing Little Buddy the opportunity to engage in the Airing of Grievances and, as is tradition, tell everyone how they’ve disappointed him over the past year.

Buddy the Cat with George, Elaine, Jerry and Kramer in the season five episode “The Litter Box.” In the episode, Buddy, Kramer and Kramer’s friend Bob Saccamano scheme to charge felines entry to the beach, billing it as a “luxury litter box.”

With that, we’ll turn it over to Little Buddy’s list of Grievances. No one is spared.

Big Buddy: For being insufficiently devastated when I got sick a few months ago. I expected more tears. Do better next time.

PITB readers: It has recently come to my attention that some of you are laughing at me, not with me. This disturbing news has caused me to question whether you’re being honest when you send correspondence praising my ripped physique or insisting I should be president of the Americats again.

The Internet: For not making me as famous as I should be.

Big Buddy: For being a vegetarian and not having extra turkey in the house!

Big Buddy and PITB readers (again) for tolerating stories about non-cat species and cats who aren’t Buddy! Who cares about owls in Central Park and chonky cats in Poland? This is littlebuddythecat.com NOT fatpolishcats.com!

Cats and Stand-Up Comedy: “There’s No Purpose To Cats”

Corey Rodrigues loves cats because they’re low key and chill.

Last time we posted a stand-up clip about cats, we watched the hilarious Zoltan Kaszas put a room in stitches with his stories about his cat Jessica, her emphatic rejection of a diet, and Zoltan’s wife’s obsession with special-needs cats.

This time we’re checking in with comic Corey Rodrigues, who explains why cats are better than dogs.

After taking a quick, informal poll asking his audience whether they like cats or dogs, Rodrigues turns to a man near the front, points and asks bluntly: “Why don’t you like cats?”

“There’s no purpose,” the dudebro says, shrugging.

“There’s no purpose, right? There’s no purpose?” Rodrigues says, drawing laughs. “Like the cat’s purpose is to serve him, like ‘I’m here for you, meow!’ What do you mean, no purpose? These are the things people say when you ask them if they like cats.”

With the crazy cat lady trope and American society’s weird insistence that felines are strictly pets for women, there’s a social cost for men who love their cats — and a double standard, since guys who have dogs aren’t considered weird.

“It’s weird if you say you like a cat. If you’re at a bar and someone’s like, ‘Wanna see a picture of my cat?’ you’re like ‘You’re a freak, get away from me!'” Rodrigues says, summing up the reaction he gets. “People will show you their puppy all day, right? But you can’t show a cat at a bar. If a dude pulls out a cat picture at a bar they’re like ‘He’s a creep, get away from that weirdo with three cats on his phone! What’s this dude doing?'”

While dogs are overly earnest, cats “just have personality. You can’t bribe them with treats all the time.”

“You pull a treat out on a cat, the cat’s like ‘Yeah, right! Walk away from it! Put it on the ground and walk away from it! I’ll come back and smell it and decide if it’s safe!’ The dog’s just like ‘Give me that treat!'”