In Memory of Max (Milo from The Mask)

I recently learned of the apparent passing of one of my favorite movie animals, Max, the Jack Russel terrier who played “Milo” in Jim Carrey’s The Mask. I say ‘apparent’ because the details are sketchy, as are the specifics of Max’s very short career. Despite the mystery surrounding Max, or maybe because of it, I created a sculpture of his Milo character for an art show at Gallery1988.

The gallery show is called Thirty Years Later: The Movies of 1994, and maybe that should’ve been my first clue that Max might not still be around. Wikipedia says Jack Russel terriers have a relatively long lifespan, between 13 to 16 years. But that’s still just about half the time that’s passed since Milo helped Stanley Ipkiss break out of jail, defeat Dorian the mobster, and win the love of Tina Carlyle at the Coco Bongo Club. If no part of that sentence seems familiar to you, do yourself a favor and rent The Mask. It’s been thirty years. What are you waiting for?

If you dig into Max the dog’s filmography on IMDb, he’s listed as having appeared in only two movies: Mr. Accident (alongside Yahoo Serious) and the aforementioned The Mask. Here’s where the mystery begins. Max is listed as playing “Wayne” in Mr. Accident, but when “Wayne” bounds onscreen, he is clearly a giant German Shepherd. Max was an amazing actor, but not that amazing.

It follows that any reasonable person would have to assume that “Audrey”— the female Jack Russel pup in the beginning of the film — must be Max. But IMDB says “Audrey” is being portrayed by a dog named Peanut. And if you look closely at “Audrey”, You’ll note that her markings are vastly different than the markings “Milo” sports in The Mask. Would they have gone to the trouble of airbrushing different markings on Max to make him look different in the two different movies? Or is it more likely that somebody mixed up their Jack Russels?

Here’s something else to consider — Max’s IMDb biography mentions that, while he was well-liked by casting directors and producers, he often lost roles because he was either too small or too big for the part. The biography also mentions that Max appeared as a space alien in disguise in Mom and Dad Save the World (1992). Honestly, I’ve seen that movie over twenty to thirty times. It used to run on a loop at a video store where I worked. I have absolutely no memory of a little dog like Max running around, disguise or no. Is my memory flawed? Did it even happen? Did the scene end up on the cutting room floor?

I guess, in the end, it might not matter. There was no announcement of his passing. He hadn’t reached the legendary showbiz heights of Trigger, or Lassie, or Flipper. And it’s assumed he passed sometime in the early 2000s, quietly and without fanfare.

I never watched Flipper, I thought Lassie was a snooze, and I never saw Roy Rogers ride Trigger into the sunset. But I have seen The Mask many times. And Max has made me smile every single time. His turn as Milo was his best performance. The scene where he leaps across the screen to catch the enchanted Mask of Loki and then goes full-cartoon-monster-dog to terrorize the gun-weirding criminals and help save the day is one of the highlights of that movie. That’s how I choose to remember him. As a cute, heroic little hurricane with teeth who held his own onscreen next to one of the biggest stars of the day.

Gallery1988’s show features a lot of art inspired by movies that were released in 1994, and you can see (or purchase) it at this link. If you’d like to see my process video for creating Milo, you can watch the video below.