Boy with Dog.(The Talk of the Town)(Dominic Scott Kay; "Saving Angelo" )

Dominic Scott Kay has made twenty-three movies since he started his career, seven years ago, at the age of four. He is gap-toothed, big-eyed, and less enfant terrible than James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree: he holds doors; thanks waitresses in a practiced singsong; is courteous to reporters ("Tell me if I'm talking too fast for you"). He is precocious, sure. "I started making my own plays, making little shows, when I was two," he said the other day, over a glass of water at the Malibu Inn. ("You need to drink lots of that!" his mother, Cindy, told him.) "I was so into creating and doing shows and entertaining. Even then, people were saying, 'You should get an agent, you should get into acting.' My first audition was 'Minority Report.' I was four then. I played Tom's son, and Steven directed me."

Last January, Kay outdid himself, in a classic Hollywood twofer--neighbor dispute meets battle over creative differences--when he filed suit in Malibu against Conroy Kanter, an aspiring actress and producer who lives near him and was a family friend. He was seeking control of his directorial debut, a short film called "Saving Angelo." Kay's complaint--voice-over material--said, "This is a case about how the dream of being a 'player' in Hollywood brings out the worst in people." Kanter countered, in a cross-complaint, that Cindy Kay is "a 'stage mom' who dominates Dominic's life." The two sides settled last month: Kanter, who invested roughly eleven thousand dollars in the movie, got a producing credit. Kay got final cut.

In "Saving Angelo," Kay--who was the voice of Wilbur in last year's movie version of "Charlotte's Web"--cast himself as a modern-day Fern Arable, rescuing a sick, unwanted dog and nursing it to health. The story is based on Kay's own experience of finding a comatose white boxer by the side of the road. He was in his car seat, headed to Vegas for a rock show. (His father plays drums for the Commodores.) "We've always rescued animals in our family," Kay said. "There's this dog on the side of the highway. Everyone is passing it by. They all think it's dead. We stopped. He was lying in a dried puddle of blood, his leg was fractured, and he wasn't moving at all." The Kays, who maintain a menagerie of ailing dogs, cats, and guinea ...