Memoirs of a Muppets Writer: (You mean somebody actually writes that stuff?) (6 page)

Of course, Jon knew this as soon as he read the script. But he liked the idea enough to okay the additional construction expense.

Educationally, writing
Sesame Street
worked like this: At the beginning of each season, the research department issued a rather dry document entitled, “Statement of Instructional Goals for the (number) Experimental Season of
Sesame Street
.” It varied from year to year, depending on research from the previous season. (
Sesame Street
pieces were constantly tested and rated with age appropriate focus groups.) But, the tried and true stuff, like counting and the alphabet, remained from year to year.

The Statement broke down the educational goals to be covered in the current season. For example:

I. The Child and His World

A. Self

1. Body Parts and Functions -
The child can identify, label and state or recognize the function of such body parts as the:

a. head

b. nose

c. ear

d. eye

e. tongue

f. arm

g. elbow

h. hand

i. finger

j. leg

k. knee

I. foot

(Translation: Write pieces that somehow relate to body parts so the child learns the names of those body parts and what their functions are.)

2. The Child and His Powers
- the child recognizes that he can act effectively on his own behalf:

A. By acquisition of skills and knowledge through:

1. Experimentation

2. Asking questions

3. Practice.

B. By making use of previously acquired information (remembering)

C. By anticipating future needs. (planning)

D. By manipulating the environment within his mind. (Imagining)

(Translation: Write pieces that are simple enough for the child to understand that have positive outcomes by incorporating the above.)

And so on through Problem Solving, Emotions, Social Interaction, Natural Environment, Man-Made Environment, Pre-reading skills, Rhyming, Numerical Operation, Cognitive Organization, all the way to Bilingual/Bicultural Objectives.

Basically, it was a list of things our audience was capable of comprehending. It was the writer’s job to demonstrate the material and make it interesting and entertaining enough to be memorable.

Every
Sesame Street
script started with an assignment sheet. It listed the numbers and the letters of the day,
(Today’s show is brought to you by the letter “P,” and the number “4”)
; the cast members and puppeteers who were assigned to that show; the particular education goals for the show; and a list, by category, of the library Muppet pieces, and live action and animated films that were to be slugged into the show.

The new pieces for the show, which were the writers’ responsibility, were divided into two types: Street Pieces, which were shot on the
Sesame Street
set with the live cast and Muppets; and Muppet Inserts, which were all the Muppet bits which were shot in Muppet scenery.

The shows required an opening and closing scene on the Street and a “Street” piece every 12 and a half minutes. This gave the show a solid footing in a “home base” that kept
Sesame Street
from being just a floating montage of cartoons and puppet scenes.

A second rule stipulated that when the show was assembled, there would be two and a half minutes of “something” between the show’s Muppet Inserts. The reason being that puppets, in reality, are an illusion. And if you stay on any illusion too long, it loses its magic.

The final script ran 20 to 25 pages. It listed and numbered every element of the show in order, from the Opening to the Sign Off. The newly written pieces were inserted into their appropriate slots in the script.

The first thing I did when starting a new script was check on the available cast members. Caroll Spinney was always available for “Street” pieces. He’s the very talented man who performed Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. So, Big Bird and Oscar were always around on the Street.

Since Gordon and Susan owned the brownstone at 123
Sesame Street
, Luis ran the Fix-it shop with Maria, and Mister Hooper and David kept the corner store, their presence on
Sesame Street
might suggest a piece based on one of those locations.

Occasionally, puppeteers Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson and Richard Hunt were assigned to a show. That meant that Cookie Monster, Grover, Bert, Herry Monster, The Count, Biff and Sully, the Snuffle-upagus, the Two Headed Monster, and Forgetful Jones were possible characters for “Street” pieces.

Jim Henson insisted that the recognizable Muppets always be performed by the same puppeteers to preserve the purity of the character’s personality. For example, Kermit and Ernie were always performed by Jim. Frank always did Bert, Grover and Cookie Monster. And Caroll was Big Bird and Oscar. Jerry Nelson and Richard Hunt would team up as the Snuffle-upagus or the Two-Headed Monster. Jerry was also the man behind (or beneath) the number-crazed Count Von Count.

A great deal of the Muppets success is due to the creativity of these very talented performers. Over time, they have honed and expanded their characters to make them as memorable as any live character on television.

Writing for the Muppets always involved give and take between the writers and the performers. A writer would write a piece for a certain character. That would inspire the puppeteer to find a new aspect of that character’s personality. That, in turn, would inspire the writers to take the character in a new direction.

Strictly speaking, every
Sesame Street
script was supposed to adhere to the teaching curriculum on its run-down sheet. But Jon Stone recognized that it was difficult enough to be entertaining at a consistent level. Being entertaining and covering a specific subject was impossible, especially with the amount of original material we were creating over the course of a season.

So material that covered any subject in the Research Syllabus was acceptable to Jon, as long as it was funny. He felt that the library animation and Muppet pieces contained enough education material for one show and the individual show pieces should keep
Sesame Street
contemporary and entertaining.

If a piece had no recognizable syllabus material in it, we still had a way of getting it in the show. Two rather broad syllabus categories stated that a child could be taught about “Natural Environment” (animals, plants, air, water, etc.) and “Man Made Environment” (appliances, machinery, habitats, etc.) So, if a piece took place outside, it was, “Natural Environment.” If it was inside, it was Man Made Environment.

Sesame Street
material also had one more condition. At its inception, the show was conceived to reach underprivileged children in poor households. The thought was that those homes only had one television set. So, an effort was made to make the show fresh and entertaining for adults as well as children so there would be less chance of adults changing the channel. It also encouraged the adults to watch with the kids, which was another objective of the show.

Additionally, in the early 70s, more likely than not, poor households had black and white TVs. So,
Sesame Street
writers were forbidden to refer to anything by its color. (I recently had a conversation with a current
Sesame Street
writer. She told me that now, the writers are directed to imagine what their pieces might look like on an l-Phone.)

Finally comes that chilling moment when I have to write five acceptable
Sesame Street
scenes in seven days time. Red Smith, a famous sportswriter once said that writing was easy - you just sat at the typewriter until the blood came out of your forehead.

And I believe it was James Baldwin who equally claimed writing was easy. His theory was if you sat at the typewriter long enough, God would drop by and write it for you. The only problem was that you never knew if God was coming today, next week, next year, or the next millennium.

(A friend of mine once called in the middle of a work day to ask me to stop writing and hang out with him. The day would be fruitless, he maintained, because he had just seen my muse having lunch on the other side of town with a “very talented choreographer.”)

All of the above, sadly, are true for me. Some days my forehead was bloodless. And the rest of the time, God was occupied elsewhere. My muse took more time off than a French civil servant. Writing comedy always came hard for me. I spent hours pacing, doodling, and staring into space in search of an idea you could build a “bit” around. But somehow, I turned out something for the first Tuesday morning deadline. (The writers had insisted early on that the weekly script deadline be moved from Monday to Tuesday so they wouldn’t ruin their weekends trying to finish a script.)

The second week was more of the same - pace, doodle, day dream. The ideas are slow in coming. This is a way to make a living? I’m working late into the night. I work through the weekend anyway, as well as into Monday night.

Tuesday comes and I go to the office and turn in a script. But now I sit down with Jon for re-writes on last week’s script. It’s got some problems. Maybe three pieces are okay. Two have problems.

So, this week I have to rewrite or create two pieces for Script Number One and write five new pieces for Script Number Two. The next week, of course, requires a new script, rewrites for Script Number Two and maybe even Script Number One.

In the ensuing weeks, the re-writes seemed to multiply logarithmically.

(Once, I was so frustrated with re-writes that I threw my typewriter across the room and attacked it with a large plumber’s wrench. - Another writer told me his solution was to keep a rubber typewriter nearby when he wrote.)

Generally, after 12 or so scripts I wound up working three weeks or so into the writers’ hiatus just doing re-writes. Since I made it a point to be in the studio whenever my material was shot, my life boomeranged between the studio and the typewriter with little time left for anything else.

But, it was a terrific learning experience, as they say. I
had
to come up with something to fill all that time. I learned that when you write comedy you look for an ending first before you start to write. Then you work your way backwards like a murder mystery. For example, you can’t start by saying, “I think I’ll write a piece for Bob and Oscar.”

That’s the kiss of death. You open on Oscar in his can and Bob enters. And Oscar says … Or Bob says … No, Oscar starts … How about … Time is passing and the deadline is approaching.

But, suppose one day you say to yourself, “Wouldn’t it be funny if somehow squeaky-clean Bob ended up down in Oscar’s trash can?”

BOB IN OSCAR”S CAN
(Educational Goal: Differing Perspectives - People do not always agree on everything.)

OPEN TO BOB WALKING DOWN
SESAME STREET.
HE IS WHISTLING HAPPILY. AS BOB PASSES OSCAR’S CAN, OSCAR POPS UP.

OSCAR

All right, Blue Eyes, cut that out!

BOB

What’s wrong, Oscar?

OSCAR

Can that racket!

BOB

But I was only whistling.

OSCAR

Yeah? Well it sounds rotten.

BOB

You know, Oscar, everybody’s getting a little tired of you coming out of the can and insulting us whenever we go by.

OSCAR

Yeah? So what?

BOB

Well, I think you ought to stop. We don’t like it. Put yourself in my place.

OSCAR

No. You put yourself in
my
place.

BOB

What do you mean, Oscar?

OSCAR

C’mon down in the can, Mister Clean.

BOB

What me? Get in the garbage can?

OSCAR

That’s right. Put yourself in my place. Come on. See what it’s like living in a trash can. Then see if you feel like whistling.

BOB

Well… Okay.

OSCAR GOES DOWN IN THE CAN. BOB GETS IN AND STARTS TO LOWER HIMSELF DOWN.

Bob descends completely into the can. For the rest of the piece we hear him navigate through Oscar’s in-door swamp, get bitten by Hortense, Oscar’s pet dragon, and end up in Oscar’s rotten egg collection, breaking several of them.

At the end, Bob exits the trash can much the worse for wear.

In the
Sesame Street
studio I finally saw my work change from the written word into living, breathing television. Whenever anything I wrote was in production, I was on the studio floor talking to carpenters, electricians, stage hands, teamsters, lighting, technical, wardrobe and make-up people while they worked on my material.

All of these people possess unique skills and abilities. I always believed that a good part of being a professional writer was the ability to turn in material that could be produced in the time and with the money allotted for it. So, the technical conversations with the
Sesame Street
production crew added greatly to my professional expertise that started with the R.A.I.

I always found it easier to sell creative material if I had already worked out the production problems ahead of time. So, when the inevitable question came, “How would you produce that?”, I could tell them. The more you understand other peoples’ problems, the better the writer you become.

The maximum length of any
Sesame Street
piece was three and a half minutes. That was the maximum attention span of our three to five-year-old audience, according to our research. Since the script format we used averaged out to a page a minute, when you put the fourth piece of paper in the typewriter, you knew you had better be bringing the piece to a fast close.

Here’s a piece I wrote for Grover’s alter ego: Super Grover, the Muppet Super Hero who is absolutely useless.

The education subject was Problem Solving. The message was that you solve problems by trying out a series of solutions until one works.

It was winter time on
Sesame Street.
Snow was everywhere.