I am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story
Grade: B
Director: Dave LaMattina (Brownstones to Red Dirt), Chad N. Walker (We Must Go)
Screenplay: LaMattina
Cast: Caroll Spinney, Jim Henson
Runtime: 90 min.
by John DeSando
“He didn’t fit in, and he knew it.” Frank Oz
I am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story is a big, feel good doc about the man under the bird for over 40 years. While Big Bird is arguably the best known animal icon for kids in the world, relatively few know the soul of that puppet, much less the workings of its animated presence on Sesame Street.
Carroll Spinney’s story, as told in this documentary for all ages, is an upbeat survey of a life well lived for children by him and other geniuses like Jim Henson, for whom puppets were an expression of the highest creativity even when the circumstances are not as perfect as the kids’ perception of Big Bird.
Directors Dave LaMattina and Chad N. Walker do not sugar coat or dumb down Spinney’s story: He was initially wracked with doubt about his abilities, his director did not like him for unknown reasons, and his role was alone amidst the very social other members and roles of the cast. Yet out of this isolation came a character that showed his humanity in ways different from everyone else, to such a successful extent that NASA invited him to fly with Challenger. That role’s last minute cancellation spared Spinney’s life and saved him for generations of youngsters.
The Challenger tragedy and his contemplation of suicide keep this doc from being too sweet, peppering it with the kind of reality Sesame Street never shied away from, and in the case of Henson’s death, was able to turn the grief into a lesson for the kids.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
