Tom Hanks called the exhausting work of Turner and Hooch his most difficult shoot

In the 1989 buddy cop comedy Turner & Hooch, Tom Hanks plays Detective Scott Turner, a police investigator who looks after an out-of-control French mastiff who happens to be the only witness to a murder. The film received mixed critical reviews but was a box office success (via Checkout Mojo) and spawned the short-lived 2021 Disney+ show.

In an interview with Collider during the promotion of A Man Named Otto, Hanks was asked which scene he recollected was the most difficult to film. Hanks recalls the moment in “Hooch” when “the first time I put this dog in a collar, in a car or tied to a car, it was … the most physical, tedious, time-consuming thing … this is not a CGI moment to this, there is not one moment when a stuntman was involved. It was just me and Beasley the dog who played Hooch… my body was beaten to a pulp by the time we got to the end and it was also full of energy the whole time… that was 33 years ago and yet I still have tactile memories of how hard it was to take that shot.”

Knowing this, it’s hard to watch the film without noticing the raw nature of the scene, which, intentionally or not, furthers the titular duo’s relationship as a touchstone of where they start their journey.