Review: I Am Big Bird

This review might be a bit messy and prone to tangents. I rarely revise a review, tending to trust my immediate instincts. Whether it’s out of being lazy or arrogant (possibly both), it seems to work out more often than not. Given my childhood fondness for the subject matter here, I don’t really care if this is the most intellectually well thought out of my reviews, because “Sesame Street”, whilst partly an educational show, has an emotional pull and nostalgia to it for those of us adults who watched it as kids. I think it might be more appropriate to not intellectualise the faeces out of this film. How a film and its subject make you feel and the baggage you arrive at the film with can also be interesting and valid, I believe. If you were born from the 70s onwards, there’s a good chance that a large part of your childhood died when Caroll Spinney died in early December 2019. Spinney was the puppeteer inside the suit of the beloved “Sesame Street” character Big Bird (He also performed Oscar the Grouch, interestingly enough). I grew up watching that show, and in fact one of the first movies I ever saw at the cinema was “Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird” (Which was basically just a re-tread of “The Muppet Movie” but I saw that film years after). The great thing about Big Bird was that he’s essentially a perennial child. He was a kid when I was a kid, and like me when I was a kid, he was still learning. Depending on your age, you will have come to terms with the concept of death alongside Big Bird when Mr. Hooper died. There was also his woolly mammoth-looking imaginary friend Mr. Snuffleupagus, just as many children in real-life have had imaginary friends. I hear the quality of the material dropped off “Sesame Street” in recent years, which is a shame. Some have stated that the arrival and popularity of Elmo led to the end of what the show was like at its best. Having been a kid when Elmo first started on the show, I’ve got some fondness for him and think he’s got a very similar child-like quality to Big Bird, albeit he’s much more emotional and saccharine.

Anyway, that’s the baggage/history I had with me when sitting down to watch. this 2015 documentary from filmmakers Dave LaMattina and Chat N. Walker. It is a wonderful, insightful, and moving tribute to what appears to have been a very nice man, who was involved in doing what I consider very vitally important work in the education and entertainment of children. In fact, from watching this film and everything else I’ve ever seen and read, the Jim Henson Workshop was full of a really nice, decent people who worked really hard at what they did. I love that they seemed to be a really supportive family, and on “Sesame Street” that included not just the puppeteers like Spinney but the human ‘cast’ like Bob McGrath. The world lost not only a creative genius but apparently a very nice, kind man when Jim Henson died in 1990, and Spinney too appears to have been similarly gentle in nature. Thus it’s fitting that protégé Spinney, inside Big Bird should sing at Henson’s funeral. Big Bird singing ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ will break your heart. Kermit was voiced by Henson so they didn’t know what to do about him yet. In a way, having Big Bird do it seems like a son eulogising a father. Spinney was quite sensitive, and we learn that unfortunately he was bullied a bit when young due to his first name and the fact that he was interested in puppetry. I felt a pang of sadness when hearing that Spinney’s first wife didn’t appreciate what he did for a living. It’s her loss, because this man helped create magic, and helped shape the childhood of millions throughout the world. He was important, and thankfully he eventually found a woman who really did appreciate his career, and seems just as lovely as him.

In a perhaps weird way, this film was a really emotional experience for me. Forget the Muppets for a second, seeing Bob McGrath, Loretta Long (Susan), Emilio Delgado (Luis) etc. now in their old age while I’m in my middle age…it made me rather misty-eyed. In a way they were like childhood friends, and I’d not seen them in decades (though I did watch Roscoe ‘Gordon’ Orman as a boastful pimp in the 70s blaxploitation film “Willie Dynamite” last year). Big Bird and (particularly) the Muppets have continued to be pop culture icons for decades, but unless you watched “Sesame Street” in the last decade or two, you wouldn’t see any of the human cast members you grew up with if you’re around my age (39-40). It’s not all doom and gloom and nostalgia, though. For instance we get a fascinating bit where we have it explained to us how Spinney operated Big Bird. It sounds awfully difficult, I must say.

This is a really wonderful documentary, important in its own way just as its subject was important in his own way.   

Rating: B