Live action with animated dog.
The title role marked Hank Azaria's first voice work in animation, and his sole voice work before The Simpsons:
"I really fell into it. One of the first jobs I got in L.A., before Family Ties even, was a semi-animated pilot Fox did called Hollywood Dog. It was sort of Roger Rabbit-esque, where the dog was animated but everybody else was real. I did the voice of the dog."Azaria recalled in 2011: "Hollywood Dog was this failed pilot. A very cheap version of (Who Framed) Roger Rabbit, where the dog is animated and everyone else is real. Again, in the very early days where no one had the slightest clue how to work anything like that. It was a Fox show, and this was in the early days of Fox, so for it to be a pilot that they didn't pick up, you can imagine how bad it was.
"And I think the casting director, Bonnie Pietila, knew of me, or probably the Fox casting person knew of me because of this Hollywood Dog thing that I did, so they had me in to read for The Simpsons."
