Review of I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story (2015) by Harry W — 24 Jul 2015

I saw this at the 2015 Cleveland International Film Festival. Caroll Spinney, the guy behind Oscar the Grouch and inside Big Bird since 1969, gets his own biographical documentary. This, of course, focuses more on the creation of Big Bird.

Caroll is well aware that there aren't many of the original cast of puppeteers for Sesame Street who are still alive, but at the age of 80 when this doc was being filmed he was not ready to retire.

He has been training a young puppeteer to learn Big Bird's mannerisms, but besides the increasing green screen work on Sesame Street, which Caroll doesn't care to do, most recent live appearances of Big Bird have still involved Caroll's performance skills.

I'm from the generation that watched Sesame Street in the 80s, so not at the very beginning of the program, but well before Elmo took off in popularity with toddlers. I vaguely remember my parents taking me to see Follow that Bird in the theaters as well.

As a young child Big Bird was real and Big Bird was the star. Now we get to learn the inner workings of Big Bird, how Caroll Spinney operates the controls in Big Bird's face with his arm extended over his head and how he moves around the set with only a tiny video monitor strapped to his chest to see his surroundings.

It is still AMAZING how he does this while on roller-skates so often. This film also explores his family relationships, especially the love story between Caroll and his second wife Debra. It seems like they have found true love and the home movie footage is quite special.

The story about the NASA Challenger mission is heart-stopping. Not only is Caroll a super talented puppeteer, but he is also an animator, so it is appropriate that the closing credits show off his art work.

The movie covers a wide swath of his life and, though there doesn't appear to be a book biography of Mr. Spinney, my only complaint is that the filmmaker tried to cram too much material in, so that it felt much longer than its hour and a half run time.