The stories Caroll Spinney can tell you. ADVERTISING The stories Caroll Spinney can tell you. There’s the time he was at a wine and cheese party along with Dr. Seuss, who was chain smoking, and Spinney happened to wander by
The stories Caroll Spinney can tell you.
There’s the time he was at a wine and cheese party along with Dr. Seuss, who was chain smoking, and Spinney happened to wander by two guys having a conversation about him, though neither guy knew it at the time.
“You know the guy who plays Big Bird,” one guy said to the other. “I hear his right arm is twice the size of his left one.”
Twice as strong maybe, but not twice as big. So Spinney, who has played Big Bird for almost 50 years and holds the Sesame Street character’s famous tall head up with his right arm inside the costume, corrected the gents.
“And how would you know?” one barked back.
“Because I’m that guy,” Spinney said.
And there’s the times he and his wife dined with musician and actor Waylon Jennings, who couldn’t finish one bite of steak before autograph seekers interrupted their table.
“You don’t know how lucky you are nobody recognizes you,” the Country Music Hall of Famer told Spinney, whose five decades of fame came covered in costume.
But anonymity from the outfit has been pulled back recently thanks to a Tribeca Film and Copper Pot Pictures documentary, “I am Big Bird, The Caroll Spinney Story,” which has been screened across North America since 2014, and is showing Saturday at the West Hawaii Community Health Center in Kealakehe.
Spinney, 82, and his wife, Debra, live in Connecticut but used to own a home in Keauhou. They sold it in 2003, but still spend about five weeks a year in Kailua-Kona. Proceeds from the 6 p.m. donation-based event will benefit the Otina Waa Children’s Village, though the Living Stones Church, which is traveling to Uganda to support orphans there.
Guests are invited to bring lawn chairs and blankets but the film, despite its lead character who, by the way, also plays Oscar the Grouch, isn’t for children. The documentary touches on love, marriage and relationships, including an abusive one Spinney, who grew up outside of Boston, had with his father. The two later reunited in life, but adult themes are the center of the story. A question and answer session with the Muppeteer will follow the documentary.
“We didn’t know what it was going to turn out to be, it’s really a beautiful story,” said Debra, who provided the film team with a lifetime of home movies and photos they combed through for three years before starting their interviews that took the next two. “They combed through it all.”
But at the heart of the story is the magic of television and the perks, joys and responsibilities that come with producing it.
Spinney became enchanted with puppetry at age 5 — was teased for it in high school — and 50 years later grown men will greet him and cry.
“You don’t know, you were my only comfort in childhood,” one man told him.
Another, who was 7 years old when his father died, couldn’t process the enormity of it until seeing the episode one week later where Big Bird learns of Mr. Hooper’s death.
“It did wonders for me,” the man told Spinney.
But there are the funny stories, too. Once, vacationing in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, waiting in a long line of ice cream with children, Spinney went to the trash can, looked in and greeted Oscar the Grouch. When Spinney stuck his head in further, he bellowed in Oscar’s famous voice: “Hey, get your head out of my trash can, I’m on vacation here.”
Wild with excitement, children fled the ice cream line and dug in the can, and Spinney slipped to the front of the parlor.
And there was the time, before his big break on Sesame Street, that Spinney knocked himself out on live TV. His co-host told the kids in the audience he was taking a nap and diverted them until Spinney came to with new toys. As far as Spinney’s big break? He got it in 1969 at the Puppeteers of America Festival, where he bombed in front of Jim Henson, Sesame Street creator who was, unbeknownst to everyone, looking to fill roles on his brand new show. Spinney was having lighting issues with his act, but recognized it and worked it into his routine. If he was going down, he was going down swinging.
“I was very funny in my desperation,” he said. “I was very depressed though.”
When he was leaving, he heard Henson behind him.
“I like what you’re trying to do,” the 32-year-old show creator told a 35-year-old Spinney. “I like how you rolled with the punches.”
And it was about one year later that Big Bird graced the cover of Time Magazine.
“I thought, ‘Wow, I think I made it,’” Spinney said. ■
