The Cast Of Wes Anderson's Isle Of Dogs Only Did Two Days Of Work

Bryan Cranston has gotten used to putting a ton of hours into his roles over the course of his career. The star of two long-running television series, "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Breaking Bad," Cranston was used to being on set for hours every day.

After remaking his star image on "Breaking Bad," Cranston was in more demand than ever, and was offered a big part in Wes Anderson's "Isle of Dogs." Anderson is one of the best directors going today, so that opportunity had to have been an exciting one for Cranston.

Besides the obvious honor in being asked to star in a film for one of the best directors of their generation, there was another huge bonus involved in working on "Isle of the Dogs." According to Cranston in an interview with Collider, he only had to work two days total for the entirety of the film. "We worked on it for two days. He worked on it for four years. So it's a very different experience for actors on this," said Cranston, who voiced the stray dog who leads a pack that helps the protagonist, Atari.

The contrast in the amount of work done by Anderson and Cranston is wild, showing that even though voice acting may be less time-intensive than shooting on set, creating an animated movie still requires tons of time and manpower.

According to an interview with Anderson for AZ Central, the recording process for the movie was quite unique:

"This one we started with a recording session with, we had Bryan Cranston and Edward Norton and Bill Murray and Bob Balaban and those guys, we spent a couple of days, the four of them and me, together. We were in a recording studio, albeit a recording studio in sort of a log cabin, but it was still a real recording studio indoors."

Doing the voice acting for your upcoming animated film inside a log cabin is the kind of twee nonsense you could only expect from Wes Anderson. It seems like a lovely time. In Cranston's Collider interview, he says the whole process was very relaxed, but at the same time, he admired watching Anderson work:

"It's like we went into a bakery and got a croissant. We stayed very ... 'I'll take that and that. Great, thank you.' And he's like, there, baking. He has a very different perspective on it because he has to have the meta vision of it, and we come in with a little slice. 'How about this? Yeah, that works.' 'Okay. How about that? Okay, yeah, that's good.' And he becomes a conductor. 'A little bit more of this, and a little softer. Now big.' He's operating."

The resulting movie may have, in the opinion of some, uncomfortably verged on cultural appropriation, but I always like to hear that Bryan Cranston's having a good time. And if only for the sake of labor rights, working two days to produce a whole movie would be a dream for anybody.