Sam, winner of several of Petaluma's annual 'World's Ugliest Dog' contests

This Christmas season, the ugly dogs will have their day.

“Worst in Show,” an hour-long documentary by two local filmmakers about the annual, wildly popular “World’s Ugliest Dog Contest” in Petaluma, comes out Dec. 13, on DVD, released by Breaking Glass Pictures.

The film, made by Don Lewis of Petaluma and John Beck of Benicia, follows the rivalry between the 2009 winner, Pabst, a boxer mutt with a serious underbite, and Rascal, the 2002 champ, leading up to the summer 2010 contest at the Sonoma Marin Fair.

After playing the Roxie in San Francisco, “Worst in Show” made the U.S. film festival rounds, picking up Best Documentary at the Kansas City Film Festival in June.

“As dog lovers began to sniff out the film’s animal rescue message, we took it out on the road again for a series of doggie benefits in Berkeley, Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, Flagstaff, Dallas and Austin,” Beck said.

Beck and Lewis previously collaborated on “Stringers,” a 10-minute documentary that follows video freelancers in San Francisco as they document crime scenes and sell the footage to TV stations. The film won the audience award for best documentary short at the 2006 Austin Film Festival.

Beck, a staff writer at The Press Democrat from 1998 to 2009, writes freelance articles about entertainment.

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