The New New Quote Thread

antsamthompson9

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Jarrod Fairclough: TheWhatnot21 asks "Do you think we'll ever see Rizzo again?" Let's delicately answer that question.
JD Hansel: Uh, is there a delicate answer to that question? I think it's possible.
Jarrod: It's possible, I don't know who I could see doing him.
JD: Right, that's the thing.
Jarrod: I don't want Rizzo to just come back for the sake of coming back, because he was so much a part of Steve, that he needs to have that same sort of thing. This is speculation, I don't know for sure, I think we'll see a lot of Gonzo-and-Pepe combinations in place of where Rizzo would've once gone. But I don't wanna see Rizzo come back for the sake of coming back, because he needs to have that character that Steve gave to him.
JD: Yeah, and that's not something that can be easily replicated by another performer. Taking over another character is always difficult. I don't like it when the takeover of a character is forced fast. If there's someone who's right for the part, we can bring Rizzo back. It's not like a Kermit situation where someone needed to be Kermit right away, Muppet productions can function without Rizzo. I love it when he's there, he's a great character, but I think we should wait until the right person comes along, and then we can try bringing the character back.
 

D'Snowth

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Inside info has it the reason why we've been seeing less of Rizzo (and other rats) is because they don't make the fur that was used to fabricate them anymore.
 

antsamthompson9

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Inside info has it the reason why we've been seeing less of Rizzo (and other rats) is because they don't make the fur that was used to fabricate them anymore.
That makes no sense, since Rizzo was in basically every episode of the ABC series and Yolanda is no longer obscure.
 

D'Snowth

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Perhaps, but how do we know they weren't using whatever older puppets they had on hand? Or, maybe they just had enough of the fur in their stock to do new builds of those characters?
 

antsamthompson9

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Cameron Garrity: Elmo really came into popularity and there was the Elmo domination in the '90s, which if you were a fan of the Muppets and Sesame Street, you were maybe in the generation that was a Big Bird devotee. So what were your thoughts about Elmo when you were a kid?
Ryan Dillon: That's a good question.
Cameron: Was he a character that you liked?
Ryan: I didn't dislike him. I never really understood the backlash. I thought he was an interesting character. To be perfectly honest with you, this may not be the best thing to say but, I always gravitated more towards the Muppet Show. I loved Sesame Street, but my favorite moments on SS, I liked the street itself, but I really loved the inserts. I loved Frank and Jim playing off each other, Richard and Jerry playing off each other, and I was big into the duos, that was something that appealed to me as a kid, Kermit and Grover, the Guy Smiley stuff, that was really what I loved. Not to discredit anything else, I thought it was all great, but I was really a Muppet Show devotee as a child. But Elmo I thought was fine. I hadn't watched a whole lot of SS after the age of "You don't watch SS anymore." And so I picked it back up when I became interested in puppetry, when I was 11 or 12, and he was a big part of the show at the time, but even then, I think I always liked Elmo more when he could be slightly rye or sarcastic. I always liked him with Zoe, that he was slightly annoyed with some of Zoe's mannerisms.
Cameron: The Rocco thing was gold.
Ryan: Rocco was great. And we tried to do it after the fact, and it just didn't feel right, it felt like that was a thing of it's time, and certainly that was Kevin and Fran, and I don't know if I'd wanna do it now, cause it's one of those things you kinda wanna keep with those performers. But Rocco and that kinda thing, I always thought Elmo was a fun character. I always loved Elmo and Telly, I love Telly, and Rosita, I thought they were really strong characters.
 

antsamthompson9

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Ryan Dillon's Puppet Tears story:
Elmo's eye fell off once on TV, that was good. We were doing a live show, me and Chris Knowings, one of the greatest guys in the world, he's just so kind and we're practically the same person.
Cam Garrity: He plays Chris on Sesame Street, one of the humans.
Ryan: Exactly. And he and I, once we get going, it's endless. We were doing some live show somewhere, I don't know what it was, but it was something on PBS I think, it was in the city, really early in the morning, and we were outside. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary, I flipped the head around to look at someone in front of me, and in slow motion, I started to see a sphere, a white sphere slowly making little circles, and the sun was hitting it, and I just saw it fall down and all I heard was like a (drops his water bottle). We're still live, okay? We're still live and Chris, I love Chris so much, didn't say anything comforting like "Don't worry, he's okay." He went "Elmo! Are you alright?!" (Cam and Adam Kreutinger crack up) It was hilarious, Elmo's laughing, I'm making him scream laughing. And it was the sweetest thing, the camera operator for the show, he was doing a handheld, so he's got the camera with one hand, with the other, he's picking up the eye and handing it back to me. What am I gonna do with that? But it was so kind, this guy just wanted to help. And in my delirium, I'm a crazy person, in my delirium, I put the eye in his palm. (Adam and Cam crack up) Don't ask me why, but at that point I was desperate. I thought maybe I could do a thing where he puts it back on. And I DID get it back on. But it was spinning, cause they're on posts. So one of his pupils was like a Marty Feldman. So Phil Toscano who was one of the people who worked in our PR team, went all the way out to the Henson shop in Queens, and had to give Rollie Krewson and Jason Weber the bad news, and they fixed it. And a week later, I went into the shop and Rollie went "I'm gonna teach you how to put Elmo's eyes back on in case this ever happens again." That was a real initiation moment in my puppeteering life.
 
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D'Snowth

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I had a similar experience with Steve D'Monster his very first day on PBS: since the puppet was a rush job, he wasn't built very well, and his entire arm fell off right inbetween pledge breaks. Luckily, one of the other PBS teamsters happened to have a small sewing kit in his office, and I was able to do a really quick repair job before we were on camera again.
 
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