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| Mimey |
It's weird how you can go into something with all the best intentions, and the whole thing just ... fizzles.
I've had this experience enough times now to know it's a part of life. Part of the
cycle of life, I should say. We're born, a lot of stuff happens, we die. It's kind of important to remember that we're not the stuff that happens, lest our errant identification and projection lead to pointless, wheel-spinning suffering.
In other words, I am not The Felties. And I'm really not that baffled or upset that I couldn't pull it off.
Looking back over past posts on this blog, I see some insightful reaching and charming naivete. I had just turned 30 when I started it, and was just beginning to feel that "Oh shit I better do something with my life" desperation that has since become as ubiquitous as a persistent ringing in the ears.
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| Between shows at Playhouse Disney - Live On Stage! |
I left Disneyland earlier that year, and was casting about for something resembling a career as a puppeteer with very little success. I shot a couple of pilots, worked with some incredible people, but could not find my footing.
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| Performing Mi-Ka, one of the Teenie Tones |
I tried to make my own thing happen. That was The Felties. Working with some of those incredible people, I made pretty significant strides. But--and this is very important--I had no idea what I was doing.
The Felties had become way too precious to me, so rather than going the rough-and-tumble route with the precious, I tried to teach myself everything there is to know about producing a webseries with a little thing called
Disembodied Animal Head Theatre. I made six episodes of the show a decade ago, and not one of them has been viewed more than a few hundred times.
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| Tex, the host of Disembodied Animal Head Theatre |
Inexplicably hosted by a rubber chicken with a bad English accent, a variety of animal head "snapper puppets" acted out bits and pieces of Shakespeare. The animal heads are in storage today; the rubber chicken has disintegrated into nothing.
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| Maybe not quite "nothing," but the rubber has degraded beyond repair. |
I learned a lot with DAHT. Mostly, I learned that--in the internet parlance of that long-gone era--the cake is a lie. If you build it, they most certainly will not come. I also learned that one person acting alone can only do so much.
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| Cheese Pizza, aka "Cesare Piazza," one of the stars of DAHT. |
So what to do about The Felties?
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| The evolution of Mimey, from the first puppet to the last. |
One of the folks I worked with post-Disneyland saw my video tests of Mimey and Clownie and proposed we do a show with just the two of them. Again, my high esteem for the characters trumped any effort to bring them to the screen that wasn't
exactly what I had envisioned in my most fervent daydreams. I'm the first to say I'm a dummy. This was a talented collaborator actively expressing an interest in making something happen, and I backed away from the table.
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| I actually did storyboards for the first "Mimey & Clownie Show" episode. |
I returned the Stan puppet to the brilliant puppet builder who built him, fulfilling a nine year-old request he made back when it became obvious I had no idea what I was doing, and The Felties wasn't going to happen. This was me turning a corner, I think.
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| Stan, a screengrab from his camera test. |
But I still have Mimey, Clownie, Dully, and a secret desire to see this long-dead project spring to life.
Stuff happens, so who knows?
