NEW YORK (AP) – He has lent body and soul to a certain 8-foot-tall 6-year-old for nearly half a century, all the while hidden from sight.
Now Caroll Spinney drops his fine-feathered obscurity (and emerges from his garbage-can fortress as Oscar the Grouch) for an enchanting film portrait, “I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story,” which celebrates this “Sesame Street” puppet master who, at age 81, continues to breathe life into a pair of the world’s best-loved personalities.
The documentary will be available starting Tuesday on iTunes and video-on-demand and arrives in theaters nationally May 15.
“Why now?” says Spinney with a smile. “Well, I’d rather see it come out while I’m alive.”
In a recent joint interview with Debra, his onetime colleague and his wife of nearly 40 years, Spinney, sporting shaggy silver locks, a trim beard and a self-effacing manner, calls the film “kind of flattering, ’cause I was never cool. But Big Bird and Oscar are cool to people.”