Carlo Alban's greatest fear while working on Sesame

D'Snowth

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When was he known as "Chris Alban"? :confused:
Maybe a misprint?

Either way, this is an interesting read, and in a way, I feel sorry for having to live in fear the way he did: you never really think about what kind of inner "demons" are the people you see on TV having to live with while they work, and yeah, I can understand how humiliating it would be for him to be "Teenager from Sesame Street an illegal alien".

I wonder if there wasn't so much legal drama in his life, and if he wasn't living in so much fear, if he'd still be on the show today, or at least longer than till Season 29?
 

CensoredAlso

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Oh my gosh, I remember him! Wow what a story, I'm glad things turned out OK for him. :smile:
 

Drtooth

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Well, I never cared much for him until I read this... Ouch. I'm not saying anything beyond that.

you never really think about what kind of inner "demons" are the people you see on TV having to live with while they work
Holy crap. David went through quite a bit at the time he was on... eventually it lead to his illness and later death well after he left the show. I forget the specifics, it's in that book I NEVER got around to reading or getting.. :sympathy:

it is really sad when some of the backing is pealed off... when I learned about how everyone on ALF hated working on ALF I was very depressed by it. Sometimes the audience needs the smoke and mirrors. Thankfully it doesn't come off as any internal problems with the show here, and so far there hasn't been anyone who dreaded working for them. A lot of them seem pretty happy for what they've done on the series.
 

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Holy crap. David went through quite a bit at the time he was on... eventually it lead to his illness and later death well after he left the show. I forget the specifics, it's in that book I NEVER got around to reading or getting.. :sympathy:
Well that was in part about mental illness; nobody asks for that to happen to them, it's tragic.

when I learned about how everyone on ALF hated working on ALF I was very depressed by it.
Well personally I think some people should just be grateful they are working. :wink:
 

Drtooth

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Well personally I think some people should just be grateful they are working. :wink:
Way I heard it, Paul Fusco was pretty demanding as a puppeteer... I recall some ALF bloopers on YT, and they took multiple takes of stuff that went on screen literally a minute... the hazards of puppeteering. Let's say profanities flew like migrating birds.

But other than that, the actor who played Willie Tanner was furious with the fact he didn't get the good lines and everything was upstaged by the puppet... I forget what happened with Brian, but Lynne had weight problems (bulimia or anorexia, I forget...which...).. Kate had problems with multiple takes... and I remember when they had the NBC salute, they had all this special treatment to make sure ALF was not acknowledged as a puppet, and all this other weird stuff about the treatment and holding things up... I forget.

Luke would fill you in much better than I could.

Yeah, sometimes you should be grateful you're working... but sometimes you can only take so much.

And sadly, the cartoon was so much more fun than the show.
 

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But other than that, the actor who played Willie Tanner was furious with the fact he didn't get the good lines and everything was upstaged by the puppet
Well I get that the guy was a "Shakespearan actor" (I saw him in Twelth Night at Lincoln Center years ago) and probably felt embarrassed doing a sitcom with a puppet. But seriously, did he actually think the stiff human father was supposed to get more attention than the funny alien puppet? Sometimes the writers do actually know what they're doing, heh. Plus I always found the whole cast to be very funny, so the upstaging wasn't that bad, IMO.

But yes I understand how demanding and frustrating it can probably be to work with a perfectionist like the puppeteer seemed to be.
 

D'Snowth

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heralde is right: Northern Calloway was, unfortunately, quite mentally unstable, the only reason he was still on the show was similar to Carlo's fear, to avoid having any kind of public humiliation that "Sesame Street's 'David' in trouble", etc, and they made sure he had like a supervisor, or a "guardian" on the set with him at all times while they shot. But actually, he was still on the show up until his death: he was there when Gabi was born in 1989, and that's the same year of his death; they explained on the show that David moved in with his grandmother, who needed help running her farm, and that David sold Hooper's Store to Mr. Handford.

I've heard similar stories regarding people not particularly like a show they worked on: there was a lot of controversy from the beginning surrounding Hogan's Heroes. The pilot episode included a Russian POW, but when the series was picked up, he refused to sign on because of how the Nazis were made to look like lovable buffoons; conversely, Werner Klemperer only agreed to play Colonel Klink so long as he WAS made to look like a fool. A lot of the actors who played the Nazis were, in fact, Jews who fled Hitler's Germany; John Banner, who played Sergeant Schultz, even said in one interview, "Who better to play the Nazis than we Jews?" There was some initial friction between Bob Crane and Richard Dawson, since Dawson wanted the part of Hogan, but Hogan HAD to be the ALL-AMERICAN war hero, and his accent was still to heavy at that time, though in recent years, Dawson has mellowed down, and gotten his ego in check, and has said despite the "problems" on the set, he is glad he had the opportunity to be on such a long-running show.

But getting back to ALF, you'd be surprised, even though there are a lot of people who would love with work alongside a puppet like that, there are just as many who would rather now, and it's kind of sad. In Caroll Spinney's memoir, he writes about a rapper who was brought onto the set in the 70s to do a rapping alphabet with Big Bird, but he kept flubbing the lyrics... FINALLY, he got it right... then Caroll flubbed a line at the end, and when they said they'd have to do yet another take, the rapper got physical with Big Bird for ruining the shot, and smacked the puppet's head right out of Caroll's hand, and it fell to the ground. Sadly, shows like these, the puppet characters ARE the stars, and the actors have to learn to accept that, BUT, the actors' egos get the better of them, and they can't accept that this fake construction of foam, fleece, fur, etc is the "star", and not them.
 

dwmckim

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When was he known as "Chris Alban"? :confused:
Never. Apologies to Carlo Alban. This is what happens when one both hardly eats anything anymore and posts late at night due to insomnia courtesy of overwhemling stress about drowning in finances and soon running out of their measly unemployment benefits. Suffice to say, my mental faculties have been rapidly diminishing all around.

I'd ask a mod to fix the headline/original post but i've learned how much an exercise in futility this is lately.
 
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