Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird
Trailer
Synopsis
When a well-meaning but rigid social worker decides Big Bird belongs with a family of his own species, he's shipped off to a nest of dodo birds in Illinois who can't understand why he'd rather be friends with an elephant-sized imaginary companion than a fellow bird. Miserable and homesick, he runs away and starts hitchhiking back to Sesame Street, crossing paths with kindly truckers, a farm family and a pair of con-artist brothers who lock him in a cage and repaint him as a sideshow attraction. His friends fan out across the country in a caravan to find him before it's too late.
Context & Trivia
This is the only Sesame Street feature to star both Jim Henson and Richard Hunt, and the last Muppet film either performed in before their deaths in 1990 and 1992. Shot on location around Toronto, the production drew on performers from Fraggle Rock to fill out the additional Muppet cast, and while filming Bert and Ernie's 'Upside Down World' number, Henson and Frank Oz genuinely performed from inside an upside-down biplane eighteen feet off the ground. Puppet builder and performer Kermit Love, best known for constructing Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus, appears on screen in a human role as Willy, and Big Bird's suit was deliberately kept scratched and shabby to match its television counterpart after test footage from a farm shoot was found unusable and had to be entirely reshot in winter.
Puppeteers
Caroll Spinney, Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Kathryn Mullen, Martin P. Robinson, Kevin Clash, Pam Arciero, Fred Garbo Garver, Tim Gosley, Noel MacNeal
Puppet companies
Henson Associates · Children's Television Workshop · Warner Bros.
Puppet building
Kermit Love
Direction
Ken Kwapis
Writing
Tony Geiss, Judy Freudberg
Cast
Sandra Bernhard, John Candy, Chevy Chase, Joe Flaherty, Waylon Jennings, Dave Thomas, Caroll Spinney, Jim Henson, Frank Oz
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Don't Eat the Pictures: Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Elmo's Magic Cookbook
Henson's Place: The Man Behind the Muppets
Sesame Street: Elmo Visits the Firehouse
Sesame Street: Trick or Treat on Sesame Street
A Swingin' Sesame Street Celebration
