As an armchair investor in star potential, I bought Glen Powell stock years ago. I’ve held on to it because think he’s got it, and with Twisters about to hit theaters, I’m feeling bullish about my imaginary portfolio … for the most part. Many publications are asking whether Powell’s the next big movie star, and while a few weeks ago I would have said he absolutely is, one little thing has recently emerged to give me pause: His name is Brisket, and he is Glen Powell’s adorable rescue dog.
Have you noticed how aggressively Powell has been incorporating Brisket into his promotional appearances for Twisters? He talked about him on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. He posed with him for an Entertainment Weekly photo shoot. Powell even went so far as to bring Brisket to the movie’s premiere. Social media, naturally, is eating it up. It got to the point where I wondered if Brisket was in the movie, because then it would at least make sense that the little guy was so ever-present in the Twisters marketing, but no, he’s just Powell’s dog. As that Entertainment Weekly story details, Powell adopted him during filming, and he hung out on set so much that he became kind of an unofficial mascot.
No one is going to believe me, but I may as well say explicitly that I bear no ill will toward Brisket. I know it will earn me no friends to admit this and may in fact get my name on several government lists, but the truth is that I don’t care all that much about pets. They’re fine, and I’m happy for people who are into them, but whatever the gene is that causes people to act like silly gooses and do baby voices when they encounter domesticated animals, I just don’t have it. Consequently, I do sometimes resent when someone’s whole personality revolves around them being a dog dad. Like, cool, you have a dog, love it, but can’t we talk about … anything else? Look, I wish I weren’t this way—all you pet lovers seem to get so much joy from it!—but I am. And I do think my pet-related apathy occasionally allows me to see things with clearer eyes. Let’s take this bit from the EW story, for instance:
“Sets can be very lonely places,” [Powell] continues. “And it’s interesting when you see a dog that’s just filling you up with love, how it brings a cast together even more. There’s something wonderful about animals, about how they can bring our walls down a bit and expedite friendships and things like that. So yeah, Brisket’s been amazing. I consider him the best special feature of Twisters.”
I’m sorry, but this is one of the corniest paragraphs I’ve ever read. Notice how there are no actual cute anecdotes or specifics about how Brisket brought the cast together—it’s all empty platitudes! I’m asking for just a few fun details here, something that ties all this together. Have journalists everywhere become too mesmerized by the thought of a hot man snuggling a puppy to ask follow-up questions? An abrogation of responsibility, if you ask me. Entertainment journalists know all about being starstruck, but they need to do better to prepare for the possibility of being jointly star- and puppy-struck.
Powell’s thirst traps with Brisket, which even Colbert remarked upon, have been a particularly egregious example of the shamelessness of all this. We get it, he’s cute, and so is the puppy: double cute. If I were good at Photoshop, I would put a photo of him with Brisket onto a mousetrap and tweet: Many of you would fall for this. And I’d be right. Why is everyone so willing to be pandered to?
While this ultimately doesn’t matter that much—Powell would have to do so much worse to derail my desire to sit down with a huge soda and watch Twisters in glorious air conditioning this weekend—I do find the Brisket Strategy (copyright pending) curious in light of the questions I alluded to earlier about whether Powell has what it takes to be a movie star. It’s been my contention for a while now that he does. So why did he (or his publicity team) feel as if he needed the gimmick of a lovable animal to get him through his press tour? Looking back on the Anyone but You marketing blitz, Powell and his co-star Sydney Sweeney admitted after the fact that they chose to play up the intrigue about whether the two of them were romantically involved in real life in order to juice the movie’s buzz. Does Powell feel that he needs a ploy to sell every movie? From my vantage point, not leaning on a dog or a fake romance as a crutch would project real movie star confidence. And doesn’t the poor pup deserve to be a dog of leisure rather than a glorified promotional prop? At the very least, it might be time for a new bit, because Powell talking about Brisket so much has gotten a little overcooked.
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