Carol Spinney a 'Muppeteer'?

[Marky]

Dude, Marky. You're kinda freaking out here. Can you please explain it, cause I have no clue at all.

Okat Renee. Forget the whole "Why does Carol Spinney get different credits", I'm over that one. Here's my question:

Why would a show like Sesame Street, with so many muppeteers at their disposal, have so many core scenes by two characters (being Oscar and Big Bird) that are performed & voiced by the same person?

This makes for a lot of double-shooting and post-voice editing - more than you would if you had to performers. This way, you have to shoot Caorl in the bird suit, and carol in the trash can. You then of course have to shoot the double in the bird suit and the double in the trash can as well. You have to train the double to perform both duties - bird suit and trash can. You have to Carol Spinney performing post-audio tracking for the voices much, much more often this way (which is tough since Oscar cuts in all the time!)

So... my question is... Would it not hae been WAY more easy to just have two performers - one performing each?







Byt the way, I love the way CS does both characters, so this is in no way a comment on that.

 

[JJandJanice]

Maybe it is because those are pretty much the only main characters he has?

Please let me know if I'm wrong here, but aren't thoes Carol Spinney's ONLY characters. I don't recall him ever doing the voice of any other Muppet ever.

 

[Marky]

Please let me know if I'm wrong here, but aren't thoes Carol Spinney's ONLY characters. I don't recall him ever doing the voice of any other Muppet ever.

Best way to find out: search him up at imdb.com.

Ahh, here we go...
"Sesame Street" (1969) TV Series (voice) .... Big Bird (1969-)/Oscar the Grouch (1969-)/Bruno (1978-1990)/Granny Bird (1981, 2001)/Lefty (1969)

So you got yer Granny Bird and Bruno. Hmm, not much of a stretch. Isn't bruno just the guy who carries Oscars' can? Just a suit for CS to wear so Oscar can be mobile?

 

[JJandJanice]

Yes, Marky, that is all Bruno was for, well at least as far as I know. I was wacthing Christmas eve on SS just the other day and Oscar use to just have feet sticking out and walk, while his head was still in the trash can. Maybe someone saw that and thought that wasn't such a great way to make Oscar move around and made and so Bruno was made.

So I guess we all know that Carol has two main characters and two other characters that now you never see. But hey I would rather have two big characters than nothing at all, right.

Oh and by the way Marky, that's really odd, because I was just on that site and was looking and I was just about to post the very same thing you just did. lol

 

[Marky]

Yes, Marky, that is all Bruno was for, well at least as far as I know. I was wacthing Christmas eve on SS just the other day and Oscar use to just have feet sticking out and walk, while his head was still in the trash can. Maybe someone saw that and thought that wasn't such a great way to make Oscar move around and made and so Bruno was made.

So I guess we all know that Carol has two main characters and two other characters that now you never see. But hey I would rather have two big characters than nothing at all, right.

4 sure. I'd rather be on it once with a no-name Frackle just for the memories & a keepsake (and bragging rights akin to touch-a-muppet-auditioning)!
Well, he is a HECK of a lot older than all of the rest. What is he, 72? 73? Almost as old as Sir Sean Connery. He's the 007 Sr. of Muppetdom.

(cue trumpets)

Long live the Grouch and Turkey!

 

[minor muppetz]

I know that it was more common for Caroll Spinney to perform other characters during the first season, but shortly after that, it seems like he pretty much stuck to just performing Big Bird and Oscar.

Some of his roles as one-shot characters include the nerdy boy in Everyone Likes Ice Cream, the two brothers in Five people in My family, Scourge and Baby Monster in the First and last skit, and the engineer in Goin' For a Ride.

By the way, Bruno did occassionally talk. There was a song called Put It In The Trash Can, where Bruno sang some lines, and he had a line at the end of Follow That Bird, and I've read somewhere that he spoke in Here Come The Puppets.

And Bruno didn't put an end to Oscar walking with his feet sticking out of his trash can. bruno was introduced in 1978, and Oscar walked with his legs out of the can in the 1983 special Don't Eat The Pictures. he also walked like this in the opening from 1992-1998. I also recall Oscar walking with his legs out of his can alot when I was a kid, and I was born in 1984. Also, that's the only way that Oscar walked in Sesame Street Live, which had it's first show in 1980, two years after Bruno was introduced.

 

[ReneeLouvier]

Perhaps Carrol wanted to do something like this and they just obliged? *shrugs shoulders, curiously wondering*

 

[minor muppetz]

People mention that Big Bird and Oscar didn't appear togetehr much during the early years, but oddly enough, it seems like there were a lot of sketches during the early years where multiple characters were voiced by the same performer, even if those sketches don't feature any regular characters. I'm not sure if the dialogue was pre-recorded or if the voices were dubbed in later. I do know that the audio for Guy Smiley's segments were recorded before the segments were tapped.

Some segments featurng multiple characters performed by the same person(s) include The King and His Problem, Fat Cat, and Snow White counting six drawrfs.

And oddly enough, Caroll Spinney still performs the voices of both Big Bird and Oscar when they have conversations, even though Matt Vogel occassionally performs and voices Big Bird.

 

[Barry Lee]

He also played Picklepuss in some of the Playalong Muppet videos from the 80's such as "Wow! You're a Cartoonist!"

 

[Was Once Ernie]

Why would a show like Sesame Street, with so many muppeteers at their disposal, have so many core scenes by two characters (being Oscar and Big Bird) that are performed & voiced by the same person?

This makes for a lot of double-shooting and post-voice editing - more than you would if you had to performers. This way, you have to shoot Caorl in the bird suit, and carol in the trash can. You then of course have to shoot the double in the bird suit and the double in the trash can as well. You have to train the double to perform both duties - bird suit and trash can. You have to Carol Spinney performing post-audio tracking for the voices much, much more often this way (which is tough since Oscar cuts in all the time!)

So... my question is... Would it not hae been WAY more easy to just have two performers - one performing each?

You're overthinking this. One reason is money. They get two main characters for the price of one. Second, in the beginning of Sesame Street, there weren't alot of Muppeteers, so as minor muppetz pointed out, they all doubled and tripled and quadrupled on characters. That's the way voices are cast in animation as well. Screen Actors Guild rules allow one performer to do two voices for the same fee. Plus, if you've read any of Carroll's writings, he was afraid he was going to wash out as a Muppeteer in the beginning. I doubt Jim would want to be training two people from scratch for this important show.

Next, it's not that complicated technically. I'd guess they have someone else performing Oscar, while Carroll just changes his voice in the Bird suit. They're not ad libbing. The Oscar puppeteer would know what he was going to say to move the mouth.

And finally, scheduling. Jim and his core group basically worked one month a year on Sesame Street, taping all their bits so they were free to do other things the rest of the time. But Carroll had to be available for all the street segments. Why not have him do the two main characters that interacted with the humans? It makes perfect sense.