I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story. Documentary, 2014. Directors Dave LaMattina, Chad N. Walker. (9 out of 10)
Last year a documentary was released that I tried to get to in the theatres, but was there so briefly I didn’t make it. Now that “I Am Big Bird” is available free on Amazon Prime, I made a point of watching it as soon as I could. The doc is subtitled “The Caroll Spinney Story,” following the life and career of a puppeteer who has found a way into most of our hearts. The Caroll-as-a-kid stuff is pretty standard, especially for artists — an encouraging mother who fostered his talents, a domineering father whose lack of understanding for the kid pushes him out of the house as soon as possible. Very quickly, we get into Caroll’s work as a puppeteer, on the “Bozo the Clown Show.” This gave him experience both as a puppeteer and a performer wearing large suits, which would serve him well.
Caroll was “discovered” by Jim Henson at a puppetry festival in my hometown of Salt Lake City — Spinney describes it as a performance where everything went wrong, and yet Henson approached him anyway, saying “I like what you were trying to do.” There’s a gentleness that comes most of the time Caroll is talking about Jim Henson — not a reverence necessarily, but certainly a love and a respect for what Henson was able to do. Jim wanted Caroll to be a major player on “Sesame Street” of course, and he’d be performing two iconic characters: Big Bird and (improbably) Oscar the Grouch. The two characters are the Muppets we saw most often on the street in the 1970s and 1980s; Bert, Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover — they were all usually in filmed segments that were like commercials airing between the street segments. So if Maria, Gordon, Susan, Bob, etc. were interacting with a Muppet character, it was likely Big Bird or Oscar the Grouch.
The documentary does a good job of explaining the technical details of puppetry — how exactly Big Bird works, for example — through diagrams and animations. The animation also highlights certain key moments in Caroll’s life (the meeting with Jim Henson above), and reminds us of Caroll’s own considerable skills as a cartoonist and artist.
In this era of Elmo-dominated “Sesame Street,” and at a time when the show has had to resort to partnering with HBO to sustain itself, it’s hard to remember when the show was producing more than a hundred episodes per season. Each episode featured Big Bird. Seriously, Season 6 (1974-75) had 130 episodes. The nature of the series meant a lot of things were reused of course–you didn’t see “Rubber Duckie” just once, after all–but the street segments were always new. Big Bird was on the cover of Time Magazine. Big Bird was conducting symphony orchestras. Big Bird was the center of a theme park in Pennsylvania. Big Bird was…big.
“I Am Big Bird” gets into the fame that Caroll found. It was an anonymous fame of sorts, because with any of the puppeteers, his character was famous, but no one knew his face or name. The documentary looks at the relationships that came and went through his life, both professionally and personally. There were challenges, but no real unexpected tragedies in his story. There are a few stunning what-ifs, including one I won’t spoil, but would have basically traumatized every adult and child in the United States. Like…no one would get over it, ever. Overall though, this is a very sweet story. Unexpectedly, a very sweet, romantic story. You will cry.
I came into this as a Muppet fan, and one that had already read “The Wisdom of Big Bird (and the Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch),” so I already knew a lot of these stories. My wife didn’t, and my sons didn’t. In between the human stories, the Muppet stories, and the always-interesting behind-the-scenes of movie and television production, this made for compelling viewing. Caroll Spinney is Big Bird. And I love him.