Unsung

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Oh, man, you guys. There is a documentary about Carroll Spinney out!

ABOUT TIME.

No, seriously, you guys. Carroll Spinney is one of the finest actors ever to appear on TV, AND YOU ALL FUCKING LOVE HIM. He is awesome. I've said it before, but I still think Carroll Spinney is BRILLIANT. Not only can he act enough to make you cry like a goddamn baby, but he can do it in a giant sweaty yellow bird suit where he can only see what's going on through a TV monitor and his right arm is holding up a giant puppet head and moving it like an actual bird would while controlling the eyes with his pinky finger. Sometimes he even roller skates that way.

Carroll Spinney is BIG BIRD.

And even if you're one of those people who thinks Big Bird is annoying, well, 1) I do not understand you, but 2) he is also Oscar the Grouch, so you still love him.

I'd have liked to hear a few more stories about actually being Big Bird in the doc, but I'm just glad he's getting some recognition. Mad respect for that guy. Check out the documentary.


DISCUSSION QUESTION: When, if ever, did you realize that Big Bird's right arm is basically a sticker? It's on a string that loosely moves it to act as a counterweight to his left arm, but yeah, he's pretty good at hiding that it doesn't really move much.

Comments

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I never realized the hand thing until I saw a diagram of how the costume works, as an adult. In spite of how interested I always was in the inner workings of things, and in spite of the fact that I knew how the other puppets on Sesame Street worked, somehow it just completely failed to occur to me until I had already grown up that Big Bird was a puppet. I guess that speaks to how good an actor and puppeteer Spinney is. He brought Big Bird to life so completely that I never even thought about it.

I watched the documentary two nights ago when you pointed it out. The part about the target age group for the show changing made me sit back and think a bit - I had never understood why the "face character" of Sesame Street had at least partially shifted from Big Bird to Elmo, but it makes sense that with the change to a younger target audience, a younger-acting character would resonate better. ... I still think Elmo is massively annoying and like Big Bird much better, but I get it a bit more now.

And man, I never knew that Big Bird was almost on the Challenger. I can't imagine the heartbreak that would have caused. I'm just old enough to remember it happening and to have known that it was a terrible thing, but had one of my favorite characters been on it ...

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Challenger thing was a bit of a surprise. They put that segment together well, too. I started out thinking, "Dude, Big Bird in space? Did that happen? I'm pretty sure I'd have heard if that had happened ..." And then as they went along talking about how they were going to watch the launch on TV after he was taken off the flight I started thinking "Oh, shiiiiit ..." I was too young to recall the Challenger disaster, but oh my GOD, that would be ... yeah, in some horrible parallel universe people had some serious trauma to deal with.

I know a lot of the Sesame Street Muppets actually are set at specific developmental ages. Big Bird is 6, and Elmo is 3 1/2, so they really do appeal to different age groups. But while I like Big Bird enough that he can carry a movie for me, I like Elmo better in much smaller doses.

My brother commented that it was interesting to watch Follow That Bird in part because you see other full-suit bird puppets, and none of them manage to look, well, bird-like the way Big Bird does. He's really got a natural way of moving. (I've seen a few shots of Big Bird preening his feathers that just amuse the hell out of me for this reason.) Pretty impressive.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I think Elmo's voice is what gets to me, specifically; there's a pitch to it that most actual children's voices don't quite hit that grates on my nerves super fast, and referring to himself in the third person drives me up a freaking WALL. He feels more like a caricature of a three-year-old, while Big Bird feels more like an actual child. I don't know how much of that is me and how much of that is the acting/voicing, but that's MY beef, anyway.

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

I haven't had the chance to watch it yet, but I was so damn happy to see this project reach completion.