BEFORE: I've got something of a linking emergency on the horizon, because I found out today that the release date for "The New Mutants" has been pushed back yet again, and now that film won't be released in August 2019 but April 2020 instead. This would only be a problem if I'd been planning to build my October horror movie schedule around this film - since it links to "Bird Box", "Glass" and "The Witch" it seemed like a natural fit, being something of a horror-based "X-Men" film, by all reports. But now, without that film in the mix, my linking for October 2019 is liable to fall completely apart. I can try to piece it back together again, but it won't be what it was, and what it was was an already reduced October, just a few films with no breaks, so as not to spoil my "perfect year".
Unfortunately, this could very easily have a domino effect - one solution to fix October would be to move "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" to that month, since that superhero film also looks very dark, and links to films like "Let Me In", "It: Chapter Two", "Glass" and "The Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse". But if I do THAT, then I'll have a hole to plug in June's schedule. That would take some of the pressure off of seeing the "X-Men" film in the first week of release, but at what cost?
So, I've got to make a decision about how to deal with the loss of "The New Mutants". I can:
a) keep going with my schedule as is, make it to "Spider-Man: Far from Home" and then re-assess October's schedule, and how to get there OR
b) put a rough October schedule together now, and see if there's a path between "Spider-Man" and whatever the start of that October schedule is OR
c) move "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" to October, find a new path to "Spider-Man: Far From Home", maybe flip the documentary chain around so it comes AFTER "Spider-Man" and not before, and see if the end of the doc chain will link to the start of the October chain, because they'll be a lot closer at that point.
Option "c" is clearly the most work, because I'd have to re-do almost two months of the upcoming chain, BUT the chain right now is far from perfect, I could try to come up with a better Memorial Day film, also try to find something for Father's Day in June, also I had a late May slot for "Hellboy" but it's now disappeared from theaters, and also maybe I can get something better to land on July 4. That's a lot to accomplish, and I've only got a couple of days before another film on the schedule with like 100 different actors in it. Perhaps I should treat that film as a nexus, and consider that from there, I can go just about anywhere - it almost seems a shame to waste such a film between two other films with Hugh Jackman in it.
That's a lot to think about, and not a lot of time to find the new course, if that's what I want to do. I guess I'm going to treat my current plan as a back-up, in case I can't find another passage to get to "Spider-Man: Far From Home" that hits all the proper markers along the way.
Now, as for today's film, Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo, was heard in "Tully" on the TV as the kids watched "Sesame Street", so that allows me to link to a couple of documentaries that resisted being part of that upcoming documentary chain. I found that when I included these two films, the chain just didn't work, and as soon as I removed them from the larger chain, everything just sort of came together. So my path was clear, I'd isolate them from the main herd, and just work them in between the fiction films, like I did with "Quincy".
THE PLOT: Caroll Spinney has been Sesame Street's Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since 1969; at 78 years old, he has no intention of stopping.
AFTER: Well, the tagline does need some updating, because Mr. Spinney did retire last year, after making it to Sesame Street's 50th season. But since I'm late myself in getting around to watching this film, some allowances have to be made...
Another thing that needed updating was the IMDB listing for this film - while I was watching I made notes about people in the film who were either interviewed OR appeared in archive footage but were not mentioned in the IMDB, and that was 30 people! Now, maybe Michael Jackson only appeared interacting with a Muppet for a few seconds, or David Letterman was seen in an old episode of "Hollywood Squares", but that all counts, damn it! If the IMDB listing had been complete in the first place, then I could probably very easily have included this film in my main doc chain. But the only way for me to find out who's not listed is to watch the film, and I can't do that before scheduling it. The best I can do is to make the best schedule I can, and then update the IMDB just in case anyone comes along doing the same thing that I'm doing - which is unlikely.
But the die is cast, I've watched this one, so let's get to talking about it. This profiles about the best career that a puppeteer could hope for, even if there were a few bumps in the road at first. Spinney was there at the beginning, as Jim Henson was formulating the ideas for the Muppets (few people remember that in addition to being on Sesame Street, the Muppets appeared on early episodes of "Saturday Night Live") and he got in on the ground floor as both Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch (whose NY accent was apparently borrowed from a cab driver that took Spinney to work on the first shooting day...).
Spinney was fascinated by puppet shows at an early age, but there's a big difference between enjoying those as a kid and then telling your parents that you want to play with puppets as an adult. Spinney's father did not take it well, but everyone's got to make that break from their parents some time, right? (And I was worried about telling my parents that I wanted to go to film school...). In my senior year at NYU I took an internship at a company that made music videos, dance videos, art videos, and once in a while, some contract work for Sesame Street. Despite being federally funded, the Children's Television Workshop did pay pretty well, because they were looking for short pieces that resembled music videos, only they taught kids the meaning of words like "between" or "adventure". So in the early 1990's I was a P.A. on several projects that ended up airing on Sesame St., sometimes they'd have a pop star or group in them (like En Vogue) and sometimes they'd have a muppet like The Count in the background. I never worked with Big Bird, but we did film a piece with Blue Bird, who was the superhero version of the character, but he didn't last long on the show, and was performed by a different puppeteer.
Still, I learned a few things about how the costume works, like the fact that one of the puppeteer's arms is working the head, and his other arm works an arm, and then the other arm of the character tends to not move. Once I realized that, I couldn't help but notice that Big Bird also had only one working arm, though in the years to come, they figured out a way to make one puppeteer arm work both Big Bird arms. (It's probably best if kids don't watch this documentary, because it kind of spoils all the magic about how Big Bird and Oscar, and several other Muppets, work). Some Muppets (like Kermit the Frog) require only one puppeteer hand, and then the character's hands are moved by small rods, and other Muppets (like Bert and Ernie) require two puppeteers, one who works the head and the left arm, the other works the right arm. Spinney also had a TV monitor inside the suit, so he could see how his movements looked on camera, plus he found a way to tape his lines inside the suit so he wouldn't have to memorize them. I think he also had like a microwave and coffee pot in there, which came in handy during those long shoot days.
Big Bird was not an instant hit, and whether this had to do with the way his character was written, or the fact that Caroll Spinney was going through a tough divorce, is probably a debatable point. But once the man started putting more childlike wonder into the character (B.B. has the sensibility of a five-year-old who never ages) then it really struck a chord with the pre-school audience. And for Spinney this led to many great moments over the years, like traveling around the world, entertaining children everywhere, and meeting his 2nd wife, who also worked as his manager/assistant/traveling companion.
Since I was born in 1968, I sort of came of age with the Sesame Street show, some of my earliest memories are sitting way too close to the screen because I was fascinated by TV, and I probably learned all my letters and numbers from the days they "sponsored" each broadcast. This movie made me re-live the dark day that Big Bird had to deal with the 1982 death of "Mr. Hooper", who ran the local grocery on the show (though obviously, by that point I was 14 and had aged out of the program) and then in 1990, the death of Muppet creator Jim Henson. Big Bird sang "It's Not Easy Being Green" at the funeral, which didn't really make sense because Big Bird is yellow, but he was wearing a green bow. I think maybe "Rainbow Connection" would have been more appropriate, but what do I know...
Spinney had his own close call when he was invited to travel into orbit on the Space Shuttle and perform as Big Bird in orbit, which obviously would have gotten a lot of little kids interested in the space program. He trained for the trip, but then NASA decided to send a teacher into space instead, and of course that was the ill-fated Challenger mission. That must have been an odd feeling, to be disappointed that Big Bird got scrubbed from the Space Shuttle mission, but then the mission ended in disaster. Probably a lot of mixed emotions there.
Anyway, this is a fascinating portrait that ended up being about creativity, perseverance, love, loss, love again, a guy trying to be a good Dad and a good husband but also spending a great portion of his life dressed up as a giant yellow bird that's beloved around the world, and all the ups and downs that came with that (mostly ups) and then making a very decent living at that, but ultimately needing to train someone to fill his shoes. His giant, orange, three-toed shoes. There are probably some parallels to Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca for many years in the "Star Wars" films, but eventually retired after training his replacement.
Several generations have grown up with Big Bird, and I think a lot of that has to do with the show's appeal - a lot of people who watched it as a kid come back to it as adults, either because they had kids of their own, or because they need something to watch while they get stoned, or in some cases, because they watch the show ironically. It doesn't really matter - although I haven't seen the show since it moved to HBO, so I wonder how much the curse words and topless scenes have impacted the show. The show got a lot of extra attention during the 2012 election, when Mitt Romney made some reference to de-funding PBS, even though he "liked Big Bird". Yeah, Romney should have known better, to not fuck with the big yellow bird who grew up on the Street.
Also starring Caroll Spinney (last seen in "Drew: The Man Behind the Poster"), Frank Oz (last heard in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Jerry Nelson (last heard in "The Muppet Christmas Carol"), Dave Goelz (last heard in "Inside Out"), Joan Ganz Cooney, Roscoe Orman, Sonia Manzano, Emilio Delgado, Bob McGrath, Loretta Long, Matt Vogel, Cheryl Henson, Fran Brill, with archive footage of Jim Henson, Steve Whitmire, Richard Hunt, Will "Mr. Hooper" Lee, Chevy Chase (last seen in "Orange County"), Billy Crystal (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Danny DeVito (ditto), Jimmy Fallon (last seen in "Whip It"), Robin Gibb, Bob Hope, Michael Jackson (last seen in "Quincy"), Barack Obama (ditto), Waylon Jennings, Jay Leno (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), David Letterman (ditto), Seth Meyers (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden"), Mitt Romney (ditto), Conan O'Brien (last seen in "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast"), Jon Stewart (last seen in "The Beaver"), Barbara Walters (last seen in "Vice"), Flip Wilson, Anderson Cooper, Ed Schultz, Garry Moore, Kitty Carlisle.
RATING: 6 out of 10 Daytime Emmy nominations
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