Last year, as we all know, wasn’t so great, and I’m not sure that any of us know what to make of this one. But in a year full of public tragedy and disaster, the saddest purely show business moment of 2016 for many of us was the back-to-back passings of Carrie Fisher and her legendary mother Debbie Reynolds. So it made a lot of sense that TCM Fest 2017 featured a number of Reynolds’ films and one written by Fisher.

1990’s “Postcards from the Edge” is a reportedly loose adaptation of Carrie Fisher’s own 1987 novel and is a fairly direct semi-fictionalization of her own struggles with multi-substance addiction, debatable romantic choices, and life itself. Directed by Mike Nichols, it’s a solid piece of inside-Hollywood comedy on the precipice of tragedy in which a working actress (Meryl Streep) tries to check out of rehab and back into some kind of emotional stability. Standing in the way is whatever it was that was making her drug herself to oblivion in the first place and her own loving but overly complex relationship with her formidable Hollywood legend of a mom (Shirley MacLaine).

The movie does a solid job of bringing the sun-dappled, stress-filled world of workaday Hollywood to life, even if it only hints at the mental health demons that Carrie Fisher would later discuss in admirably frank detail. It’s also not afraid to make drinking look pretty fun. After all, no one would develop a problem with the stuff if it wasn’t so damned attractive.

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James Brolin has been a star of TV and film since the ’60s, rarely disappearing from either for very long before popping back up somewhere or other, and tonight at 9 PM he can be found starring in “Christmas with Tucker,” the debut original movie from the Hallmark Movie Channel (which, just in case you aren’t aware, is a separate entity from the Hallmark Channel), playing a gruff but loveable grandfatherly type fella who gets to have a lot of scenes with a very cute dog. I was fortunate enough to chat with Brolin for a bit when he attended this summer’s Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, and – as you’ll read below – I was even more fortunate to be able to continue the conversation a bit later.

Bullz-Eye: So you’re in a dog movie, but are you a dog guy by nature?

James Brolin: Yeah, but guess what? I don’t have a dog right now. But I’m kind of shopping! The thing is, I’m not sure where I’m going to be next, and I kind of hate to go off and leave a dog once I have it. I’ve found that didn’t work well in the past. But I got my wife a dog. And the dog is… I can’t believe she’s had it 10 years now. And it sleeps right here. [Points to his head.] It likes the top of the couch or the head pillow. So usually, if you roll over it or around it, it gets out of your way and just goes down to the other end. Anyway, I’ve been moved to the back seat of the car now. [Laughs.] Those two run things.

BE: Yeah, we just got a dog a few months ago, so I know what you mean.

JB: Oh, yeah. If it ain’t a baby, it’s a dog. [Laughs.]

BE: How was this dog, Tucker, to work with?

JB: Fine! Really good natured. He would do all the things, and then when you’d go to shoot, sometimes the dog would have a little brain fade or confusion, but it’s not unusual. You just keep going. You have the trainer keep going, you run the camera, and now with digital, you can just turn the camera on and let it run for two hours, and then you go in there, wade through it, and pick out just what you need. But that’s Filmmaking 101, in a way. If you have time for that, you do that. And if you’re doing a dog picture, you make time. And the kids… Anyone youthful who was involved was just right on. Gage (Munroe) is just like a honed pro, so that wasn’t an issue. Kids weren’t an issue. But animals are always an issue, and you just need to schedule the time to shoot and shoot and shoot a little bit.

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