That initial script I wrote was rewritten many times, and then finally made into Jumanji. So I started writing out some ideas, and the studio liked the treatment, and I actually wrote a script which then, as many scripts are, was really only a starting point for a development process.
The studio had optioned it and had commissioned some screenplays and weren’t really happy with it, and it looked like they were maybe going to abandon the project. How involved were you in the first movie adaptation? In Jumanji he’s a pull toy, in The Polar Express he’s a hand puppet… I have gone to book stores and done signings of new titles and seen kids rifling through the books without reading them because the first thing they want to do is try to find out, where’s Fritz? I made a decision when I started the second book, which was Jumanji, that as long as I kept on doing books I would provide the dog a cameo appearance. He unfortunately passed away - he had an accident, so he didn’t live that long. I told him, “Gee, that’s such an ordinary dog, you should get something a little more interesting, a little more exotic.” And he said, “Like what?” And I said, “You should get a bull terrier.” I sold him on the idea, and I used the dog that he had acquired as my model for the dog in The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. My brother-in-law was visiting around that time, and he told me that he was about to acquire a golden retriever. I found them peculiar looking and charming in an idiosyncratic sort of way, but did not have access to one. When I wrote my first book, I had in mind that the story would include a dog, and the dog I had in mind was a bull terrier. Why did you put that bull terrier in all of your books? Well, that’s a bull terrier, and that’s probably more dog than I can handle at my age. So not like the one that you have in all of your books.
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