I AM BIG BIRD plays Hot Docs 2014

There are so many things that can be learned from the way people handle their mistakes. Frustrations are inevitable of course, but there’s a certain amount of grace that the best people demonstrate, even in the face of failure. Caroll Spinney is that sort of person. While Spinney very easily could have displayed a great deal of anger when a piece of performance art was stalled by technical difficulties. Instead, he chose to display his dismay with clever creativity,

He wound up meeting Jim Henson that very night. The rest, of course, is history.

I AM BIG BIRD is a documentary about the life and times of Caroll Spinney. He is 80 years old, and spends a lot of time inside a gigantic yellow-feathered costume. He is the body and the voice of Big Bird from Sesame Street, and is the last of the original puppeteers still at it all these years later. Beyond his professional journey with Jim Henson’s creations, the film focuses on his relationship with his wife Debra, and the undying love they have shared through more than forty years of marriage.

The film is as bright and plucky as you would guess, with a glorious amount of archival footage thanks to The Spinneys tendency to record everything. There are too many specific moments to choose from, but I must say that the sight of Spinney traipsing around in the bird leg pants never gets old. Nary a bad word is said about the man, even when discussing his early struggles to find the character and fit in at Children’s Television Workshop. While it sometimes feels as though the film is trying to toy with our emotions and make us nostalgic, the fact of the matter is that any footage of Big Bird makes us nostalgic.

The memories will flood back, and with them thoughts of the child you were and the grown-up you are.

One of the most surprising things about Spinney’s story is the amount of darkness he’s had thrown his way through the years. Between professional doubts, a broken relationship early on, the unexpected death of his mentor, and some recent wrong-place-wrong-time bad luck, Caroll has a lot of moments of deep sadness to contend with. Time and again, we are left thinking “he doesn’t deserve to be in that situation”, and time and again he eventually finds his way out. There’s a lesson to be learned – as there usually is when Big Bird is involved – on how to soldier-on when bad things start aligning themselves in front of you. Like the bird himself, Spinney shows that being an embodiment of love is a far better way through life than forsaking it for anger or despair.

One would think that trick would stop working eventually, but Caroll Spinney’s story proves otherwise.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t end this piece with a Big Bird memory of my own. When I was in elementary school, I was teased by my classmates for all sorts of reasons. One twerp liked to keep bringing up the fact that for my eighth birthday party, my mother put on the Big Bird movie FOLLOW THAT BIRD for us to watch (“a baby’s movie” was what he liked to call it). The crazy thing is that when clips from the film came up during I AM BIG BIRD, I couldn’t help but notice how truly funny they still seemed.

I guess my classmate decided that Big Bird had nothing left to offer him well before he turned eight years old. Pity, because in my thirties, I feel like I’m still learning things from that fine feathered philosopher.

I AM BIG BIRD plays Hot Docs 2014 tomorrow Wednesday April 30th – 1:30pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox. It plays again at Lightbox on Thursday May 1st – 1:30pm, and finally at The Revue on Sunday May 4th at 4pm (official website)