 At the time of Polaroid - and I did a couple of other commercials just before I stopped doing that stuff - at that point I was at the level where they respect you and your opinion and all that sort of thing. |
| It's into the same bag as E.T. and Yoda, wherein you're trying to create something that people will actually believe, but it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to do the thing itself. |
| If anything, there's a difference in working with color in England and the color in the US. |
| It has always been difficult to get Big Bird to be very pretty. Big Bird in England is much more gorgeous. |
| NBC was trying to convert all of their local programming to color right away to encourage the sale of the sets, so I barely remember working in black and white, although I do know that I did do it, but there was not a major difference, though. |
| Actually the copies of characters is something I don't particularly like to talk about in articles but just for your information, most characters there's only one. |
| Yeah, I did some small parts in high school and the first year of college and then fairly soon thereafter I settled into the backstage scenery, and then at the University of Maryland I was doing posters for their productions. |
| The most sophisticated people I know - inside they are all children. |
| Somebody like a Piggy or a Kermit, there needs to be several versions and so there will be several of them. |
| Yeah, I think we did the term Muppets before we got the show Sam and Friends - a few months after I started working. |
| I do remember doing shows strictly in black and white, too, so you're right. |
| Well, Detroit Institute is kind of a key - probably the largest permanent collection of puppets in the US. |
| My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here. |
| At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design. |
| You're assisting the audience to understand; you're giving them a bridge or an access. And if you don't give them that, if you keep it more abstract, it's almost more pure. It's a cooler thing. |
| There was a little afternoon show that was called Afternoon. Back in those days in television, most local stations had a midday show for housewives that had a series of things. It was like a variety show for midday. |
| I was very interested in theatre, mostly in stage design. I did a little bit of acting. |
| And also there wasn't much money in television in those days anyhow. |
| When I was a kid, I never saw a puppet show. I never played with puppets or had any interest in them. |
| Yeah, well when I first started working, it was $5 a show; it was probably a little higher by the time I got to my own show, but I remember that they put me under contract at $100 a week, which to me was really an astronomical price. |
