Rating: PG
Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes
Director: Marilyn Agrelo
Quick Impressions:
Appearing on Jeopardy! has made me think a great deal about sincerity in television. By nature, I’m quite guarded, and early on, I was reluctant to reveal too much about myself. When I first auditioned, I didn’t want to give up anything precious to me, to exploit my kids for a shot at fleeting fame, to bare my soul so cheaply. But over time, I began to understand the show differently. I came to realize that in order to make a genuine connection with the audience, you must give something of yourself to them. People can’t connect with you emotionally if you don’t show them who you are. And interacting with Alex Trebek made me understand that television can be a medium of sincere connection. You can, in fact, give a little of yourself and perform on stage simultaneously. There’s nothing cheap or exploitative about it at all. Mr. Rogers used the television as a method of earnest communication every time he looked at the camera and had a genuine conversation with the children watching him. The people behind Sesame Street had similarly noble intentions as I learned in this documentary.
I love Sesame Street. I watched it regularly well into my teens. I don’t mean that in high school I set an alarm and never missed it, but often when flipping through channels, I discovered that it was, in fact, the best thing on TV at that moment. (I definitely got some funny looks from classmates in fifth grade when I volunteered that I still watched. I remember pleading, “Why wouldn’t you want to watch Cab Calloway perform with the two-headed monster?” and getting even funnier looks, prompting me to switch my defense to, “My sister is five.”)
The thing about classic Sesame Street is that besides being wonderfully educational (on multiple levels), it’s a genuinely entertaining show for people of all ages. Sometimes the phrase “for people of all ages” means there’s no graphic sex or violence. I mean it more literally. No matter your age, Sesame Street has something to offer you. (My grandma, for instance, got a kick out of seeing performers from her youth turn up to receive star treatment. She also liked the monsters.)
And when I was school-aged, Sesame Street was the surest place to find Muppets. When I was little, we watched The Muppet Show in primetime or reruns. (I can still hear my grandma saying, “That Fozzie—he slays me!”) But by the time I was going to school, Sesame Street was where to go to enjoy Jim Henson’s wonderfully dark (yet simultaneously silly) humor. Nothing else is quite like it.
And then, of course, I identified with certain characters, making the experience emotionally rewarding for me. (When I was very little and my grandpa still worked, he’d often come home in the evenings and read me a scratch-and-sniff book called Big Bird Gets Lost, using a Big Bird hand puppet. In my mind, I was Big Bird, and my grandpa was Mr. Hooper.) As a child, I always found Sesame Street useful in sizing up people I met and figuring out things about myself. (I remember telling my mom, “I think I’m a cross between Big Bird and Ernie, don’t you?”
As an adult, I bought compilations of classic Sesame Street. (I think my husband gave me some as a gift.) But I didn’t really have time to watch them…until my daughter came home from the NICU. I loved turning Sesame Street on to watch something cheerful as I pumped for her and fed her. Then quickly I discovered that she was watching, too. She was really little, but she was used to the bustling atmosphere of the crowded NICU where friends were all around her, taking turns dropping by her bed for a chat. We had only a few episodes on DVD. Her favorite was brought to you by the letter H. (Soon she developed an obsession with the letter H. My mother made her a plastic-backed, laminated H card, and she carried it around everywhere.)
As I re-watched the show with her, I suddenly realized just how much Sesame Street had influenced my character (particularly how it had informed my sense of humor). Even as an adult, some of the bits play really well. (As a kid, I always loved the song “Wide Open Spaces.” I found it hilarious to watch the lumberjack become so absorbed in his rapture for nature that he fails to notice it being destroyed all around him. At the end of the song, he suddenly comes to himself again and discovers he’s standing in a rundown gas station. Oh that killed me as a kid! (For one thing, I was always getting drawn away into my own imagination, then coming to with a start.) As an adult, it was still just as funny. But, obviously, it’s not only funny. The entire bit makes children aware of how precious and threatened our wide open spaces are, how we need to wake up and pay attention to prevent the destruction of the whole planet. Come for the irony, stay for the ecology lesson!)
Also, as an adult, I noticed how beautifully Sesame Street shows children the nuances of social relationships. On my daughter’s favorite episode, Maria is still dating David and asks Luis to help her fix up a typewriter as a birthday surprise for him. Though Maria is filled with joy as she imagines surprising David, we can see pretty clearly that Luis already has feelings for Maria and would do anything he can to make her happy. A lot of kids’ shows today are missing this kind of subtlety and realism. There’s a lovely authenticity to the character interactions on Sesame Street.
The Good:
People make TV shows. That’s an aspect of Sesame Street I never considered as a child, but now that I’ve been on Jeopardy!, I’ve noticed how much hard work and careful planning goes into creating a successful show. So the idea of getting a peek into what Sesame Street looked like from the production side intrigued me. And we do get to see quite a bit of stuff we never dreamed of as children here.
Based on a non-fiction book by Michael Davis, this documentary focuses on the first twenty years of Sesame Street and spends particular time on the show’s inception. We look mainly at the efforts of Joan Ganz Cooney, Jon Stone, and Jim Henson, though all kinds of people show up in episode clips, archive footage, and new interviews. (Among others, we get to hear from Caroll Spinney, Christopher Cerf, Joe Raposo, Sonia Monzano, Roscoe Orman, and the adult children of many key figures, including the family of Matt Robinson.)
Going in, I knew nothing about Cooney and Stone but their names (mainly her name. It’s all over everything associated with Sesame Street). This documentary clearly explains the origins of Sesame Street, and I found the noble intent driving its creation both thought provoking and humbling. We get to see how they set out deliberately to make a show targeted at children who were getting left behind (both academically and socially). They noticed kids effortlessly memorize commercial jingles. They wanted to teach literacy and good citizenship, showing children the value of education and community in a fun, engaging way. They envisioned a project on which educators and entertainers could work together. And then they brought in the Muppets.
I particularly like the way the documentary presents Henson and showcases his work. I especially appreciate the acknowledgement that much of his humor is dark as well as being zany. There’s a very particular tone in Muppet projects involving Henson that no effort to reboot the Muppets has ever quite recovered. I’m always happy to see someone take a swing at breathing new life into the Muppets. Some get close to tapping into Henson’s genius, but I’ve noticed conspicuously more misses than hits. I remember the day Jim Henson died so vividly. It was shocking news. My mom and I came in from taking a walk, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the TV.
Henson’s creative contribution to the world is well known, of course, but this documentary also shows us the genius of some people we may not know as well like activist Matt Robinson (the other Gordon), and prolific musician Joe Raposo. I do wish we got to see more of what happened behind the scenes, but we do get a tantalizing peek at the making of the show that made me wish I were a much better person, devoting my life to educating generations of children.
Best Scene:
The way Sesame Street chose to handle the real-life death of Will Lee who played Mr. Hooper never fails to bring tears to my eyes. (I was so upset when I first learned he had died. My mother gently broke the news, and three-year-old me assured her cynically, “No, no, that just means they wrote him out of the show.” When she explained that no, no, the actor had really died, I was devastated. My cousin had died not long before.) The show handled the scene when Mr. Hooper’s death hits home for Big Bird just beautifully.
I’ve seen other documentaries revisit this scene, but this one juxtaposes this sad moment with a scene of outtakes and bloopers that follows. In combination, these moments work better than they ever could on their own.
Best Scene Visually:
I enjoyed watching Caroll Spinney (who died so recently) walk around in his Big Bird costume, reflecting on the privilege of voicing both Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.
Best Action Sequence:
I was thrilled to get a look at Joe Raposo, the person whose name I know from record covers and CD track liners. From owning a bunch of tapes, records, and CDs of Sesame Street songs over the years, I’m quite familiar with Raposo’s name, but I had no idea who he was. I knew nothing about his personality. Video clips of him explaining the origins of some of his songs helped me put a face and a personality to all those songs I grew up singing.
The Negatives:
The only downside of this documentary is that its tight focus on the first twenty years of Sesame Street and three key figures (Cooney, Stone, and Henson) leaves us wanting more. I like the restriction of covering the first twenty years. That makes sense to me because the death of Jim Henson was a huge blow to the show and inevitably set off a chain reaction of gradual change. But I wanted to hear about more people who worked on the show, on and off camera. For example, I love that we get such a long look at Matt Robinson, a pretty fascinating individual, unfairly reduced to being “the wrong Gordon” in my young, uninformed mind. I had no idea of Robinson’s other work, his broader fame, his activism. I didn’t even know that he created and voiced Roosevelt Franklin. In fact, I had forgotten all about Roosevelt Franklin until watching classic episodes on DVD as an adult. Seeing him again triggered a trove of memories that felt like a dim peek at a past life as they slowly returned to me. When I saw him, I did remember him, but I didn’t remember forgetting him. Ordinarily, I have a pretty good memory. In fact, I’ve been told my memory of my early childhood is unusually good. Yet Roosevelt Franklin is someone I only associate vaguely with the far distant past, and this documentary’s mention of his quiet erasure from the show explains why.
What I want to see is other characters given the Matt Robinson treatment. What about David, for instance? Selfishly, I wanted to hear more about Northern Calloway because I know he had bipolar disorder, and since I do, too, I’m always curious to hear the stories of others. What little I have read about Calloway’s death is shrouded in controversy and confusion. Hearing this discussed more frankly by his relatives would have been just as welcome to me as information about Matt Stone’s activism and frustration at the show’s approach to race. I’d also be curious to hear more about Linda Bove. Who decided to add a deaf character (played by a deaf actress) to Sesame Street? I’m thrilled that the documentary gives us a closer look at Robinson, but instead of satisfying my curiosity, it makes me long to hear the stories of other cast members, too.
I also wanted more clips from the show, again for selfish reasons. I wanted to hear more about how some of this material was developed. I wanted more specificity. I’m thrilled with the anecdotes about “Letter B” and “It’s Not Easy Being Green” from Christopher Cerf and the late Joe Raposo. I want more material like this. I suppose the problem is that John Stone, Jim Henson, and many of the other people working to create iconic scenes are now deceased. But the answer, “We don’t know what they did! They were such a bunch of crazy geniuses! They slept at the office! They were so wacky and amazing!” feels vaguely inadequate. Frank Oz is still alive. Why did he not participate in this documentary? (Did he participate? I only remember seeing archive clips of him.) We should hear from more of the writers, too. I only remember getting to hear much from one of them. I would also love to hear from more crew members. The stories we get in this documentary can’t possibly be all the material there is. (I guess I’ll have to buy the book.)
To be honest, I even wanted to hear more about Cooney, Stone, and Henson. (Well, if I’m being completely honest, I think Henson is adequately covered. We see him a lot. In older clips, we hear him in his own voice. Lisa and Brian are brought on to talk about him. Most people are already pretty familiar with Henson and his contribution to Sesame Street. But for me, there can never be enough Jim Henson.) Going in to this documentary, I knew nothing at all about Cooney (except her name). Now, at the end, I still feel like I don’t know much about her. Granted, the story here is Sesame Street, and she’s simply one of the people who enabled it to come together. But for someone seen, heard, and talked about so often, she ultimately remains pretty mysterious. And Stone! His daughters and colleagues constantly allude to his dark moods, his depression, his difficult periods. I started to wonder, “Did he commit suicide?” But, in fact, he died of complications from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. I’m not saying that a show focused honoring someone’s work should show every private detail of a person’s life and death. I’m just noting that I left with unanswered questions about Stone.
Part of me wonders if some of the material about Mr. Hooper’s death could have been omitted since I’ve seen that covered so often and so well before. But I can’t say that doesn’t belong in the film since it was one of my favorite moments. That scene always makes me cry.
Overall:
If you have fond memories of Sesame Street, then you should like Street Gang, a (perhaps too) brief look at the origins and early years of the show. Now I’m really dying to watch more classic episodes of the show!