See No Evil.(The Talk of the Town)

Mike White, the screenwriter and actor ("Chuck & Buck," "School of Rock"), passed through the city the other day to promote his film "Year of the Dog," his directorial debut. It stars Molly Shannon as a secretary who goes to pieces after the death of her beagle. She becomes a vegan and an animal-rights activist. At first, you think White is making fun of her, but then you come to realize that he's in her corner. Still, a certain ambiguity of tone, a typical White trait, makes you wonder where he really stands on the question of, say, killing animals for clothes, food, or sport.

Here's the news: White stands opposed. He is, in his own words, an "imperfect vegan"--he eats fish and wears leather belts. Two years ago, he acquired two French bulldogs that looked to him like pigs, which got him thinking differently about meat. Then he read a book about the emotional lives of farm animals. That sealed it.

One windy morning during his New York visit, he accepted an invitation to stroll over to the Central Park Zoo and have a look around. He wore a down vest over a hooded sweatshirt. He's a very fair and slightly built redhead. If there's any scorn in him, he disguises it well. He is the mildest of wise guys, the gentlest of imps. Asked how much time he had to go zooing, he said, "I have till I don't remember. I have something sometime."

The first stop was the Tisch Children's Zoo. "Is it a children's zoo because all the animals are children?" he asked. "Or is it that only children can appreciate these particular animals?" Almost immediately, he found something to appreciate: a pig-nosed turtle. "Those are two of my favorite things. Turtles and pigs. I love snub-nosed anything. I have two snub-nosed dogs. I also have two cats. Actually, one of them just croaked. So I have one cat." As for human family, White has a father who was an evangelical minister and a ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, and who later came out of the closet and now runs a gay ministry called Soulforce; and a mother who is "a church lady," according to White. He grew up in Pasadena.

White passed into an aviary whose inhabitants--ducks, lily pads--failed to impress him. "Are there little monkeys, do you think?" he wondered. "Oh, there's some goats, dude." Outside the aviary, he bought a handful of feed for fifty cents and began ...