Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird
Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird (or simply Follow That Bird) is a 1985 American musical road comedy film directed by Ken Kwapis, starring many "Sesame Street" characters (both puppets and live actors). This is the first of two "Sesame Street" feature films, followed in 1999 by "The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland". The film was produced by Children's Television Workshop The Jim Henson Company and Warner Bros., and filmed at the Cinespace Film Studios, and on location in the Greater Toronto Area. The film received positive critical reviews but was a box  office disappointment, grossing $13.9 million ($36 million when adjusted for inflation), resulting in a slight loss for the Children's Television Workshop. This is the only "Sesame Street" feature film to star Jim Henson and Richard Hunt. This was Henson's final performance as Kermit the Frog (as well as Ernie) in a theatrical feature. Plot. The Feathered Friends' Board of Birds, an organization whose purpose is "to place stray birds with nice bird families", discusses the case of Big Bird. The group's social worker Miss Finch is sent to Sesame Street in New York City to  find Big Bird and bring him to a worthy family of dodos in Oceanview, Illinois. However, Big Bird begins to feel distressed in living with the Dodos as they all think very poorly of non-birds, and his breaking point comes when the Dodos suggest he should have a bird as a best friend instead of Mr. Snuffleupagus, who is watching over his nest on Sesame Street. When Big Bird runs away from his new home to head back to Sesame Street, he ends up on the news. Miss Finch tells reporter Kermit the Frog that she intends to find  him and bring him back to the Dodos. His friends on Sesame Street also see the news and band together to find him before Miss Finch does, and take various vehicles on their quest. Bob instructs them to head to Toadstool, Indiana where they are expected to meet up with Big Bird. Along the way home, Big Bird hitches a ride with a trucker who encourages him to persevere. He later meets two kids named Ruthie and Floyd at a farm and sleeps in their barn overnight. The next morning, Miss Finch arrives and Big Bird sneaks away. Afterwards, Big  Bird comes across a cornfield, and is spotted by Bert and Ernie in their biplane. However, Big Bird is unaware that they are in it and thinks that it is Miss Finch. When Ernie steers it towards Big Bird, he nervously flees. Ernie turns it upside down to get his attention and begins singing, with Bert soon joining in, but when they turn it back up Big Bird is gone. Big Bird is also sought by two con artists, the brothers Sid and Sam, who call themselves Sleaze Brothers and operate a fraudulent carnival called The Sleaze Brothers Funfair, wanting  to capture him to put him on display. Eventually, Big Bird arrives in Toadstool, but shortly after arriving, Miss Finch finds him there and chases him through the city. On the outskirts, the Sleaze Brothers have set up their carnival and Big Bird shows up asking if they have a place to hide, so they put him in their cage. Shortly afterwards, they decide to paint him blue and tout him as "The Bluebird of Happiness." However, his performance is one of sadness as he sings about wishing to be back home. Despite this, he brings in plenty of customers . After the show, two kids sneak backstage to see him. Upon noticing them, Big Bird asks them to call Sesame Street to tell his friends where he is, which they do. The next morning, his friends sneak into the carnival and find him. However, the Sleaze Brothers quietly wake up, and just as Linda unlocks Big Bird's cage, they drive off in their truck with the cage (and Big Bird still in it) in tow. Gordon and Olivia give chase in their Volkswagen Beetle and successfully rescue Big Bird, after he jumps from the moving truck. Shortly afterwards, a  police officer pulls the Sleaze Brothers over for speeding and arrests them on various charges. Back on Sesame Street, Big Bird is happy to be back home until Miss Finch arrives. She admits to Big Bird that the Dodos were not perfect for him but says she has found him another bird family. Maria tells her that he is happy on Sesame Street where it does not matter that his family consists of humans, monsters, grouches, and other species. After considering what she has heard and realizing how far his friends went to bring him back, Miss Finch declares that  Sesame Street is his home and leaves satisfied. At the end of the film, Oscar the Grouch is carried around the block in his trash can by Bruno the Trashman in order to get over everyone's happiness. Cast. Muppet performers. Additional Board of Birds Members are performed by: Bob Stutt, Nikki Tilroe, Lee Armstrong, Rob Mills, and John Pattison. Additional characters are performed by: Frank Meschkuleit, Terry Angus, Matthew Pidgeon, Stephen Brathwaite, Tom Vandenberg, Francine Anderson, Ron Wagner, Martine Carrier, Karen Valleau, Michelle Frey, Gus Harsfai, Patricia Lewis, Charlotte Levinson, Carolanne McLean, Peter McCowatt, Brian Moffatt, Myra Fried, Jani  Lauzon, Sandra Shamas. Production. "Sesame Street Presents Follow That Bird" was filmed on location in Ontario, Canada (Bolton, Schomberg, and Georgetown), and at Toronto International Studios in 1984. The street set, built to look more realistic than the television series, was expanded to include a music store, a fire station, an auto body shop, a family clinic, a bakery, a bookstore and a grocery store. According to Noel MacNeal, after filming the footage of Big Bird on the farm with the kids, the filmmakers discovered that the film was badly scratched and unusable. The actors, crew and performers had to  return to the same location months later in winter. Many of the green leaves the audience sees are spray-painted, and after each take the kids would run to put their coats on. Early in production, the crew noticed that Oscar's trash can looked too new, so they banged it up and dirtied it to match the one in the show. While filming Bert and Ernie's "upside-down world" song, Jim Henson and Frank Oz were actually in an upside-down biplane eighteen feet from the ground. After filming wrapped, the filmmakers did not believe the voice of  Cheryl Wagner, who had performed Miss Finch while voicing her simultaneously, seemed appropriate for the character, so her voice was dubbed over by that of Sally Kellerman. Before Kwapis was picked as director of the film, John Landis (who had previously puppeteered Grover in the "Rainbow Connection" finale in "The Muppet Movie") was asked by Warner Bros. to direct the film. Landis liked it, but dropped out due to work with "Into the Night". Due to having a criminal record, Northern Calloway was banned from entering Canada. Thus his character David is not seen in the film. Soundtrack. Track List . Side One. 1. "The Grouch Anthem" 2. "Big Bird's Goodbye/The Runaway" - Big Bird, Mr. Snuffleupagus, and Kermit the Frog 3. "Ain't No Road Too Long" 4. "Big Bird on the Farm/One Little Star" - Big Bird, Ruthie, Floyd, Olivia, and Mr. Snuffleupagus 5. "Easy Goin' Day" Side Two. 6. "Don't Drop Inn/Workin' on My Attitude" - Ronnie Milsap (Written by Eddie Setser and Troy Seals) 7. "Upside Down World" 8. "I'm So Blue" 9. "The Chase/Sesame Street Theme" - Big Bird, Gordon, and Olivia 10. "All Together Now" Reception. Critical response. The film opened on  August 2, 1985. The film was a critical success upon its release. The "Orlando Sentinel" called the film "a flip and funny 'road picture' for children that doesn't let its kind heart get in the way of its often biting wit." Walter Goodman observed in "The New York Times" that "by and large, the script by Tony Geiss and Judy Freudberg and the direction by Ken Kwapis don't strain for yuks; what they seek, and more often than not attain, is a tone of kindly kidding." On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 92% based on  12 reviews, with an average score of 6.4/10. Commercial performance. In spite of the near-universal critical acclaim, the film underperformed at the box office. It opened the same day as "Fright Night" and "Weird Science" and had heavy competition from "Back to the Future", "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome", "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" (another film from Warner Bros. Pictures), "The Black Cauldron", "National Lampoon's European Vacation" (also another film from Warner Bros.), and reissues of "Gremlins" (yet another Warner film), "The Goonies" (still another Warner film), "Ghostbusters" and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial". It grossed $2,415,626 on its  opening weekend. By the end of its theatrical run, its total gross was $13,961,370. This production, along with other unsuccessful ventures, hurt the Children's Television Workshop financially during the 1980s though they did recover. Home media. The film was first released on VHS and LaserDisc in 1986 and was re-released onto VHS three times by Warner Bros. Family Entertainment starting in 1993, then a second time in 1999, and then again in 2002 on DVD (the opening of it starts with the Warner Home Video logo and a text on a black screen says, ""This film has  been modified as follows from its original version: it has been formatted to fit your screen"", in which it appears in some different movies on DVD). A DVD release followed in 2004, which was re-issued as a special "25th Anniversary Edition" in 2009, with the original theatrical widescreen version and the new bonus features and cover art.