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May 11, 2021
Since 1969, children’s television has undergone radical changes. Yet while the volume of educational TV programs for young ones has soared, their access to
non-kid-friendly content has also increased. One constant for families has been “Sesame Street,” the colorful puppet-driven edutainment program that made Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Oscar the Grouch household names.
Before it became a juggernaut, it had humble beginnings as chronicled in the documentary film “Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street,” now available via on-demand outlets. Married filmmakers Trevor and Ellen Crafts, who spoke in an interview their five-year-old daughter briefly interrupted, brought an outsider’s lens even as they worked with Sesame Workshop and The Jim Henson Company to access little-seen archive visuals.
The documentary shows a bunch of the famous names who stopped by to see Oscar the Grouch, Grover and the rest of Henson’s Muppets crew, from James Earl Jones and Stevie Wonder to Johnny Cash and Paul Simon. With behind-the-scenes footage, “Street Gang” lets audiences take a peek at the puppeteering comedy team of Henson and Frank Oz, but also digs into how it explained the death of Mr. Hooper to kids after actor Will Lee had a fatal heart attack in 1982 and even deals with the work-a-holic-sensibilities and mental-health struggles of the “Street” creators.
“This is a vast, vast story with a huge cast of characters,” Agrelo said, so when making the documentary, she decided to focus on the first 20 years of the show. “The origin is the most groundbreaking, the most experimental period of ‘Sesame Street.’ By reducing the vastness of it, we were able to make it stronger.”