30 Minutes on: "I Am Big Bird"

The following is an installment of "30 Minutes On," a regular feature at the MZS blog wherein the author spends exactly 30 minutes writing about a movie, then hits publish. 

______________________________________

"I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story" is a tear-producing machine for any American who grew up watching "Sesame Street." Spinney, who is now 80, originated the character of Big Bird and has played him more or less continuously for almost 40 years, although recently he's slowed down and let fellow Muppeteer Matt Vogel fill in for him. When you see him at work on the Astoria, Queens set of "Sesame Street" performing his most famous creation, you understand why. Puppeteering, like most forms of stage performance, is an athletic skill as much an imaginative one; most of the popular Muppets require at least two operators, but Spinney does Big Bird by himself, and he's not just a half-character who's only seen from the waist up, he's a full-bodied creation who walks around and happens to be eight feet tall.

Spinney brings him to life by holding his right hand up over his head: if you think that's easy, try doing that for an hour or two at a time while holding a five-pound weight that stands in for the bird's headpiece, and see how well you do. While you're at it, make sure you're enclosed by a body suit that shuts out light, and simultaneously reading a script taped to the inside of the breastplate and checking your movements on a video monitor strapped across your chest with velcro, and mentally flipping everything you do in order to hit your marks, because the monitor shows what the TV camera sees—i.e., a mirror image.

The footage of Spinney performing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch alongside "Sesame Street" puppeteers, actors and crew comprise the best parts of "I Am Big Bird." Co-directed by Dave LaMattina and Chad N. Walker (a team that also wrote, shot and cut the movie), this is not a hard-hitting investigative look at anybody or anything, although it does feature a few off-color bloopers, and some anecdotes revealing that the people who  make "Sesame Street" have egos and issues just like any artists, and sometimes lose their cool or behave unprofessionally. (Spinney's rocky relationship with one of the show's key directors is proof that no matter how nice you are, some people will never like you, and the section about Big Bird being supplanted in popularity by Elmo has a bit of an "All About Eve" flavor, although the filmmakers appear to be pulling their punches for diplomacy's sake.) Mostly this is a feature-length valentine to one of the sweetest characters ever to appear on TV screens (and also movie screens — the bird had a cameo in the first Muppet movie and got a solo film, the very good "Follow that Bird," in 1983). And of course it's a celebration of Spinney himself, who overcame a difficult childhood and seems (rather like his mentor Jim Henson, and Frank Oz maybe, and probably a lot of other puppeteers) to be a melancholy soul.

Spinney's wife, kids and colleagues agree that the key to Spinney's greatness is his ability to channel the child inside of him—a child that a lot of us have lost touch with, or at least can't immediately access. He can see the world through innocent eyes and respond accordingly, immediately, without his voice or gestures seeming studied, always dredging up responses that feel honest.

That authenticity is the reason Big Bird became the soul of "Sesame Street" almost immediately, and has remained so, even as the program remade itself to appeal specifically to toddlers. Spinney expresses joy throughout the film, not just in present-tense scenes but in archival footage of him with his wife and children; he's often seen roller-skating around the set in those astonishing foam-footed trousers, and doing flips, and pratfalling and generally clowning around. And yet it's impossible to shake the feeling that, like a lot of kindhearted people, Spinney is carrying around a tremendous amount of pain, much of it rooted in his experience as the child of a doting mother (who eagerly encouraged his interest in puppeteering) and a cold and disapproving father who sometimes beat him. (The film doesn't come right out and say it, but there's a strong indication that Oscar the Grouch comes from Spinney's dad.)