My Life as a Furry Red Monster - Kevin Clash [19]
MY FATHER HELD the nub of a flat carpenter’s pencil in his hand, the copy of TV Guide open to an ad for a correspondence art school, as he tried his hand at drawing “Winky.” The ad featured a basic line drawing, but Dad went well beyond that and embellished the character with shading to give his drawing depth.
I was fascinated, watching his natural talents at work as he unknowingly gave me a lesson on the finer points of perspective and shadow. After a while, Dad would wad up the paper and push himself away from the kitchen table, yawning. In my young mind my father had produced a masterpiece.
Dad was content with doodling on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but I looked for opportunities to create on a daily basis, and often my best efforts unfolded in front of the TV. Drawing “Winky” was dandy, but I wanted to get down on paper what I saw on the small screen. By the time I was six, I was spending hours in front of the television with my supplies gathered around me—sheets of paper, crayons, Magic Markers, and, occasionally, one of my Dad’s treasured Marks-A-Lots, with its overpowering smell and brilliant color.
I’d watch Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Shari Lewis’s Lamb Chop, the marvelous creatures on Sid and Marty Krofft’s H.R. Pufnstuf or The Banana Splits, and, of course, later, all those curious Muppets from Sesame Street. I’d sit up-close as possible to the set (Mom was wrong—I’m proof you won’t go blind) and study those figures as I drew them, trying to understand how on earth they made those puppets.
And I didn’t restrict my viewing to children’s television. I would watch Petticoat Junction, The Brady Bunch, The Beverly Hillbillies, or similar fare while wearing one of my puppets on my hand. I’d watch the screen and, at the same time, watch my puppet in the mirror that hung by our TV.
My goal was to perfect the facial expressions and mannerisms as well as move the mouth in sync with the voice on the screen. So, if Mr. Douglas on Green Acres was having a chat with Mr. Ziffel about keeping his pig Arnold out of the corn crib, I’d have put my puppet in one role or another, acting out the scene. There was no danger of me ever becoming a couch potato, because I seldom just sat there passively watching TV.
As another part of my “training,” I was becoming a serious people-watcher, all in the name of trying to make my puppet creations as lifelike as possible. I probably stared at a lot of folks, but I wasn’t being rude; I was just doing my homework, watching how people of all ages moved, spoke, emoted, and generally behaved.
As it turned out, the first key to my performance as Elmo was, of course, emulating the children I saw at home. And one of the things that I’ve always loved about children is their vivid, unrestrained, and far-reaching imaginations—the depth and breadth of their creativity.
“ELMO’S PACKED HIS suitcase and Elmo is taking a trip!” Elmo told viewers in his first appearance on the 1986 season of Sesame Street, when I began performing him as a regular featured character. By now I’d had a good chunk of time to think about his developing personality, as had the talented writers behind the show, and we were clearly on the same wavelength. Elmo, like the children who inspired his creation, was going to be a character who would make liberal use of his imagination!
In that very first scene, Elmo, dragging an imaginary suitcase, walked up to the workbench in front of the Fix-It-Shop, where Luis, played by Emilio Delgado, was repairing a toaster (the same toaster that never, ever seemed to get fixed, no matter how many scenes it was in). “Hi, Luis! I’m going on a trip! Can you help me with this suitcase?”
Elmo wasn’t stopping at using his imagination to dream up his “trip.” Like most freethinking children, he’d taken his creative play a step further and had packed his imaginary suitcase. He had crammed it so full that he couldn’t close it,