I wish we had taken a picture of this, so I’ll attempt to provide a word-picture of the endeavor. The Mayor, normally played by David Feldman, had to enter a scene with hedge clippers, talk to Ziggy and then exit. Because of a number of variables, including that darn bicycle, we had to be on the floor instead of in an elevated set. David must have know this was coming because he had arranged to be on a plane heading back to the U.S. for the weekend. Ron Binnion had agreed to cover David while he was gone, so I went in to be the Mayor’s live hands.

When we are on the ground and the puppet has to travel, we work on rollie carts in a partially reclining position. Live hands, by contrast are performed in an upright position so that the assistant puppeteers arms are in the same plane (or as close as possible) the lead puppeteers arm (which is functioning as the spine of the puppet). Does this make sense? It means that these two things, on the ground and live hands are incompatible.

Ron and I had to try several positions before we found one that worked–remind me to add that to the top ten list. Basically, I knelt on the cart at the back and Ron lay back on the cart using my legs as a back rest, in the partially reclining position that the carts normally allow us to do. I then leaned forward, under the puppet, with my arms lifted up in the puppets sleeves. My torso passed to the right of his arm and on top of Ron’s torso. Someone else pushed the cart to get us in and out of the scene.

Got the picture? Basically, what it comes down to is this: Never play Twister with a puppeteer.

Today one of the puppets had to ride a bike through a scene which involved screwing three of our rollie carts together. Two of them supported Thor, and one had a kids bike screwed to it. A twenty-foot pole pushed the whole shebang through the frame. The only problem was that we couldn’t back the puppet far enough out of shot, because of the pole, for him to be in the right place for one of the live actor’s eyelines to make sense. So in order to create the idea that the puppet came from far away, they handed me a pink bathrobe to hold at the height the puppet’s head would be, and then had me run with it and touch the puppet’s back, at which point the puppet would move forward at the same speed I had been travelling. I’m sure to an outside observer it was very strange.