A few years ago, the ebullient documentary Being Elmo told the story of Kevin Clash’s journey from puppet-struck kid to international Sesame Street celebrity. This account of Caroll Spinney’s life as the heart and soul of Big Bird takes a similar tack, painting a picture of a lovable man-child whose professional playfulness counters personal melancholia. Spinney is a complicated character (he’s also Oscar the Grouch), but the tone of the film is positive, with painful childhood paternal traumas raised and resolved, separated friends reunited, and even the spectre of a grisly crime turned to an opportunity for tearful reconciliation. An incessantly schmaltzy TV score threatens to drown us in syrup, but the sight of Big Bird singing It’s Not Easy Being Green at Jim Henson’s memorial provides a powerful emotional sucker-punch. The history is fascinating, too, the Bird’s yellow-feathered path crossing with Chinese politics, the Space Shuttle disaster, and the public shaming of Mitt Romney, who found himself on the wrong side of popular opinion when ill-advisedly ruffling PBS funding feathers.
