Digital Sextant

Jenny and I bought this movie for $5 at Target, after I saw it and was filled with nostalgic longing for one of the first movies I remember being pumped for. In looking at the year, I notice it was 1985 and I worry that I was probably a little too old to be excited about Sesame Street, but there you go.

A few thoughts after watching bits and pieces of it with Avery.

• It’s too narrative and slow for a 2.5yo to follow. She kept stopping it and asking for Toy Story, at least until Big Bird got on the road.
• The end is a strange counter to the (presumably mid-80s) purist adoption movement. For those few of you who don’t remember the plot of the Big Bird movie, old yellow feathers is gathered up by a bird-adoption agency and sent to a dodo colony, the closest in size and shape to BB. He runs away and everyone from Sesame Street goes after him. The ‘moral’ of the film, which occurs about halfway through this attached clip (after some exciting car leaping and a John Candy cameo), involves the Sesame Street cast declaring that Big Bird is part of their family, and then listing all the different kinds of folks on the block, going through genders and races, then mentioning Bert and Ernie, and then on to monsters etc.It occurred to me, could this be a tacit admission to what we have all known for a long time: that Bert and Ernie are gay? Watch the sequence and tell me if that isn’t how it reads to you. I read it as saying, “we have all kinds of folks here: white, black, boy, girl, gay, and so on.” They don’t single out the other individuals from the chase, just B&E, so there must be something about them that makes their presence special and worth mentioning. Hmmmm.
• The two principle villains, the Sleaze brothers, are played by Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty. Dave you’ll remember as the less-famous half of Bob and Doug Mackenzie, from Strange Brew. Joe is one of those guys who shows up in everything, but I know him best as the guy who shouts “Jackass!” at Happy Gilmore. Both of them are SCTV alums, as is John Candy. I wonder, is there a Sesame Street / SCTV connection? According to Google, SCTV did a Sesame Street Parody early in their run, and several SCTV characters showed up on Sesame Street.