By MARY BROWNFIELD

UNLIKE Paris, Lindsay and Nicole, the star of the latest film shot in Carmel-by-the- Sea was a consummate professional.

"He was mellow and didn't do anything a celebrity shouldn't do," enthused the director.

For instance, he didn't gobble up anybody else's lunch or swallow the cork from the wine bottle - one of the things Robbie, the First Dog of the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea, did as a young pup.

But during the filming of "A Day in the Life of Robbie," which will be screened at city hall Aug. 8, Mayor Sue McCloud's Dandie Dinmont terrier acted with the utmost poise.

"He must have been another dog I picked up along the way," McCloud commented. "I guess it was his show-dog heritage - he just did his thing all the way along the line. He was quiet. He was great."

Known to interrupt phone conversations with enthusiastic barks and wander around city hall when his owner is working, Robbie kept it cool during a long day of shooting and re-shooting scenes for the 15-minute film, which has also been compressed into a fiveminute podcast that will be available on the city's travel website.

Robbie's owner also behaved herself.

"Sue is a natural on camera," said director Maria Goodavage, author of "The Dog Lover's Companion to California," and the co-owner of a new San Francisco business, Smiling Dog Films, with her husband, Craig Hanson. They immortalize pets, and sometimes their people, on video.

"We love dogs," said Goodavage, who met Hanson when he and his dog came to interview her and her dog about the first "Dog Lover's" edition for a television program in 1992. "And there aren't really any dog videography companies out there, though there are lots of photographers."

She came up with the idea of a videography service after encountering a woman who wished to catch her ailing pup on film.

Keepsake turned marketing tool
The Robbie project grew out of Goodavage's work on a written piece commissioned by Bay Woof, an online and print publication providing "news with bite for Bay Area dog lovers."

After interviewing McCloud extensively about Carmel - which Goodavage considers paws-down the most dog-friendly city in the state - Goodavage asked advertising executive Jeff Burghardt, who holds the city marketing contract and helped arrange interviews for the piece, if he thought the mayor would like a free Robbie-based video.

"He saw the opportunity," she said, to turn it into something the city could use. "I thought it would just be a keepsake for Sue."

McCloud, always happy to talk about Carmel's reputation as a canine-accommodating community, agreed to help disseminate the dog's-eye view.

"I'm the talking head, and Robbie is the four-legged critter," she said.

In the film, McCloud talks about the town as "Dog Heaven on Earth," and shares its history as she and Robbie visit various historical, commercial and city sites, from the beach, to lunch at the Village Corner, to shopping at one of Carmel Plaza's upscale retailers.

"It's just to promote Carmel's uniqueness as a dog-friendly town," McCloud said, adding that she spoke extemporaneously on camera. And, of course, some of those who paused to pet Robbie (and read his official calling card, which McCloud carries for him and distributes to those curious about the First Dog and his breed), ended up on film as well.

The duo stopped for coffee at Caffe Cardinale on Ocean Avenue, where they encountered kilted resident Gene McFarland and his ever-present companion, Sir Shedsalot.

McCloud said Robbie shopped for collars at Wilkes Bashford, but at $2,000 a pop, the alligator and crocodile pieces were outside the mayoral dog's budget.

"They were lovely, as you can imagine, and unusual," McCloud said. "But they would be gone in two gulps." (While well behaved on movie day, Robbie is known to chew on expensive items generally not approved for canine consumption.)

The outtakes
The full day of filming, which left two-legged and fourlegged stars tuckered out, included plenty of material that failed to make the final cut.

McCloud recalled one such moment: In the sophisticated dog domain of the Cypress Inn, co-owner Dennis LeVett's standard poodle, Strutz, sidled up to his owner for a scratch on the head as the group enjoyed their tea. "The next thing you knew, his big head went right into the middle of the sandwiches and inhaled them, and then he sat back on his haunches and let out this big burp," she said.

The mayor said she enjoyed seeing the finished products - the 15-minute version and the five-minute podcast. "It isn't schlocky," she said. "There's lots of history and local color. They did a good job of editing."

McCloud and Robbie, as well as Goodavage and Hanson - and their 5-year-old rescue dog, Jake, who's "99 percent yellow Lab" - will be at the screening of "A Day in the Life of Robbie" in city hall at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 8. Members of the public and their pooches are also invited. Snacks, including "pupcorn," will likely be offered, though McCloud said she's still working out the details.

"We won't have big searchlights out front à la Hollywood," she promised.