On the set of Crank Yankers performing the Special Ed puppet.

What is it like to be a presenter at the TV Music Video awards, and get beaten up by hip-hop’s most notorious white rapper?

How is the art of puppetry a viable outlet for youth culture rage?

I had no idea that my career as a puppeteer would lead me to discovering the answers to these important questions.

Backstage at Rockefeller center in New York is like most theaters except much larger. The building was designed to accommodate massive shows that involve scores of dancers and performers, most notably the Rockettes and their annual Christmas show.

There are dressing rooms on 4 different floors on two sides of the theater. I was in one of these dressing rooms organizing and rehearsing my role several days before the 2003 TV Music video awards I distinctly heard a stage hand give orders over his radio that the pot smoking bands go in the north dressing rooms whereas the cocaine and party drug users go in the south.

During the awards show this building would house every gangsta rapper (East coast, West Coast), every hip-hop artist, every rock, pop, and alternative band past and present as well as their entourages and managers for the duration of the over-hyped awards show. Also there were a lot of celebrity presenters.

Only at the TV music video awards could people like Chris Rock and Jack Black walk around knowing that their celebrity status was minor compared to the mega-stars of the music world.

My job was to perform the puppetry aspect of the character Special Ed.

Special Ed was, for some crazy reason, the most popular character on the Comedy Central show Crank Yankers.

The voice of Special Ed was performed by a guy named Jim Florentine, and on Crank Yankers all of the voices were pre-recorded since the show was all about crank phone calls.

Our job was to perform this character on live television and present an award with none other than Eminem himself.

This was at a point when Eminem was already white hot in terms of popularity due to his recent success with the film “8 mile” and his academy award winning song “Lose Yourself”.

Jim Florentine and I got along fabulously and I was so in tune with his voice having performed this character for years that there was no way he could throw me. We spent a couple of days rehearsing several bits that were going to be in the Awards show. We hashed out a lot of stuff on our own, but everything we did was going to involve some celebrity.

For example there was a scene where Special Ed was supposed to harass the Olsen Twins.

So we would have some stage hands stand in for the “twins” and Jim and I would practice several different ways of abusing and harassing them.

Our bit with Eminem actually had a rehearsal scheduled on the main stage with Eminem himself…a very rare and privileged occurrence.

Most of the time celebrities simply walk out onto the stage and read from Teleprompters. Most of the time they do a rehearsal on the same day just hours before the show, but it’s rushed and it’s more for technical reasons than issues of performance.

Our rehearsal with Eminem was a full day before the live performance and we pretty much had the stage to ourselves.

Simplistically, you can imagine that rehearsing the scene meant Eminem going through the scene with Special Ed being performed by me and Jim Florentine. The reality is that many more people are involved. One has to realize that Eminem is a brand with a lot of people interested in protecting his image representing his vibe as well as the record label’s interests. Then realize that Special Ed is representing not only an entire show, but an entire network…Comedy Central. So for me to just be standing there holding a puppet, I had to deal with an entire entourage of producers and people working for Crank Yankers and Comedy Central all trying to get their two cents into what they think Special Ed should do. Each one second guessing what would, or would not be funny.

Eminem had his own posse of managers and producers trying to project his tough guy Detroit rapper image.

These two entirely different worlds were each nit-picking the script and vying for what they wanted to see happen. At the center of these two large forces was Jim and Me, a puppet and Marshall Mathers.

In the script, the joke was that Eminem had an anger management issue that he was learning to control by adopting a puppet friend, however Special Ed, being a thoroughly obnoxious character actually pushes his buttons and Eminem goes “medieval on his ass”.

The notes in the script called for the puppet to be destroyed and puppet parts to go flying.

In the land of make-believe this is very funny and one can easily imagine a puppet being torn to shreds with pieces of foam and fleece and fur flying everywhere.

In reality one has to prepare for how to achieve that. There are many tricks that are employed to create that illusion. I spent two days in my workshop crafting Special Ed body parts that would look like torn pits of puppet flesh.

When we were in the dressing room rehearsing we played around with these foam and fleece bits and it was very funny. I even had a special rig that when employed would shoot the parts into the air.

The Comedy Central producers cut the idea.

They said it was too violent. They didn’t want their character to look like he was being that hurt. So we compromised, and I simply created a small piece of fleece that I could quickly attach to Special Ed in the heat of battle and make him look like he had a black eye.

They then rewrote the bit and resubmitted it to MTV.

Let me be clear on that point. The Crank Yanker crew decided to change what was written in order to protect their character. The assumption was that MTV would pass the changes along to any other interested parties…namely the Eminem management team.

So here we are on stage rehearsing for the first time…the one and only time…with the man himself. Eminem and his whole crew roll out and they are very cordial and low-key. Keeping it real, as it were. Dressed in the absolute latest in gangsta fashion…one can almost hear the thump thump of the soundtrack as they walked in.

I’m standing on the stage of Rockefeller Center with Special Ed on my arm and my mouth completely closed as the ritual of managers introducing themselves to producers took place. A lot of posturing and bumping chests and ass-kissing.

Eminem is also pretty silent. Eminem…or Marshall as he is known to insiders doesn’t need to say a word. I know better than to make a move towards him.

So “Marshall” is ushered to stand next to the podium, and he is asking the usual questions about lighting and making sure he looks good.

This is a good point to remember that achieving television puppetry requires some technical skills that seem obvious but can easily be overlooked.

For me to pull off performing Special Ed I have to be able to see a television monitor that displays exactly what the camera sees. Television puppeteers perform for the camera. Unlike humans that play to the physical reality a TV puppeteer is generating the illusion and performing all kinds of subtle cheats that rely heavily on being able to have the feedback device of the TV monitor.

How this translates to our current situation is that normally when presenters present at a podium they are properly positioned behind the podium. In this case the podium was clear Plexiglas and a masking was being fabricated to go around the podium and thus obscure the puppet performers and the television monitor that would be needed to create the illusion.

This simply meant Marshall had to stand next to the podium. A concept that took twenty minutes to sort out.

During this confusion, I was dealing with getting my monitor set up and talking to the camera crew guys to make sure that everything was working so that I could rehearse effectively.

I can’t even begin to do my job until the cameras and monitor were up and running.

This involved camera men, live control operators, the technical stage manager, and the video crew guys, as well as the stage hand union crew.

Fortunately I knew most of the guys on the camera crew since the world of television in New York is rather cozy, and they had all worked on other puppet television shows like the Disney Channel show “The Book of Pooh” or “Bear in the Big Blue House” shows that I had worked on as a performer. So they not only knew me, but when I told them what I was up against, they quite enjoyed making sure that I had everything I needed since I was about to go toe-to-toe with Eminem.

This was a clear-cut case of benefiting from the fact that I always treat crew people with the utmost respect and they really came through for me.

Once that was clear, then we were instructed to rehearse our bit. Marshall walks up to, but only next to the podium, and Special Ed pops up from behind the podium.

We were given the cue, and Eminem did his thing like a pro. I had rehearsed this bit many times with Jim Florentine but it was exciting hearing the words and seeing the monitor. The bit ends with Eminem losing control and beating up the puppet. Which he did.

His first punch went straight through Special Ed’s helmet cracking it in half.

I was stunned.

Here’s where we can pause for a bit and consider the value of a television quality puppet.

It’s easy to treat objects in the world as if they are expendable. Most things in life are objects that are replaceable. Even expensive things like cars are not unique. If something breaks one can always go buy another one. Just go down to the Wal*mart where they got every day low, low prices.

It’s hard these days to appreciate things that are actually unique.

When one starts to work on television shows that use puppets one has to have a lot of skill in dealing with the artistry of handling and crafting the puppet characters.

They are not made in factories in China. Each one is a work of art. Even at the Muppets where there may be as many as 5 Elmos…but there are only 5 “real” Elmos in the world. Each one has a specific purpose, and if one is damaged then the entire ability to shoot the puppet is gone. Or at least delayed in a very costly manner.

As I write this I have inside information that at this very moment there isn’t a single usable Mrs. Piggy puppet in existence. If that character is needed, one will have to be manufactured from scratch at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars.

So when Eminem cracked Special Ed’s helmet he was putting his fist through an iconic piece of headgear that had already been documented on two seasons of the low-brow yet successful show Crank Yankers.

A bit like spilling red wine on Archie Bunker’s chair at the Smithsonian.

Maybe not quite that extreme…but pretty darn close. And this was a character that needed to be on live television the very next day.

The producers from Comedy Central were horrified.

Both parties of representatives jumped on stage and as politely as they could with forced restraint…tried to hash over the incident. Of course no one was concerned about my arm.

Meanwhile I’m standing there with a broken puppet, and Eminem next to me calmly and in a subdued fashion defending that he was only doing what was in the script.

His entire posse of managers was not privy to the rehearsals where we figured out a way to safely destroy the puppet. I thought of the bag full of Special Ed body parts in the dressing room above our heads that had been nixed by the Comedy Central producers.

The Em crew waved their older version scripts with the words, “Eminem tears Special Ed to pieces….” which they all thought was funny. And it would have been…had we been able to use the illusion of puppetry to make it look like the puppet was coming apart in chunks.

I can assure you that they were not going for an illusion. There is a very blurred line between the image reflected in rap music of a tough gun-toting live-fast-die-young gangsta…and the real thing.

In fact pretty much all of the hip-hop musicians who would flood Rockefeller Center for this event would have “body-guards” who would be packing chrome plated heat.

As a puppeteer I was only armed with a puppet wrangling kit that included scissors, a needle and thread, and some double-stick tape.

So the Crank Yanker producers and Eminem’s manager are now on-stage hashing it out. The Crank producers are explaining to the Em crew that the bit had changed so as to not be so violent. They didn’t want Special Ed to look like he was torn to shreds.

I’m still thinking of the pieces of Special Ed that were bits of orange died foam with a scraps of orange fleece, and a cracked bloody bone sticking out of it. I spent a day building them, and I couldn’t even reintroduce the idea while all of these forces were crashing on each other.

So a truce was made, and as usual with big meetings that involve a lot of voices people were nodding and disbanding but I don’t think anyone had a clue what the solution was.

I’m still on the stage and I distinctly overhear Marshall’s manager lean over to him and say, “Go for it.”

Huh? What was that? Then Eminem took off.

Here we have a major conflict between reality and illusion.

Again…imagine a puppet. A soft foam puppet that is like a sponge. Imagine tearing this a part and pieces flying. That was what was in their heads.

However television puppets are not crafted that way at all. They are built to withstand the rigors of an entire season’s worth of performer abuse.

My producers were a bit frantic and they looked to me for reassurance that we could repair the specially made helmet and restor this completely priceless, one-of-a-kind puppet character prior to the live performance the following evening.

Having spent 5 years as a puppet designer and builder for the Muppets, my answer was…no problem.

I then retire to my workshop in Brooklyn where I’m up ‘till 2 am working on the Special Ed puppet. I repair the helmet and do some touch-up paint on the surface. As I’m working I am remembering…almost in slow motion…the manager leaning over to Eminem and saying, “Gooooo foooooorrrrr iiiiiiiittttt!!!!” Hmmm. Wonder what that means. So I then take the precautionary step of getting out the heaviest thread one can buy…something called “hymark”…and going around and re-stitching every single feature of the puppet. I reinforce areas like where his arms join his shoulders, or the fleece around his eyes, his lips, his ears…everything.

Then I put the puppet back in his travel case to rest after his extensive surgery.

The next day I bring the puppet and my repair kit back to Rockefeller Center.

Due to a mix up Jim Florentine and I accidentally got “crew” badges which turned out to be a nightmare that plagued us all day. This wasn’t so long after 9-11 and security was still in the Gestapo style fashionable at the time. Ironic considering I was only packing a puppet, and I knew there were gangstas inside with gold-plated “9s” walking around freely because they had “talent” badges.

I did have to open my bag up and show the puppet in order to garner favors, which actually worked like a champ. It may sound crazy, but Special Ed was a bit of a celebrity at the time. Even the guys from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy freaked when they saw him.

So I’m nothing…but the puppet in my bag…huge cultural icon.

I won’t go into the hellish details of all the pre-show confusion…let’s just say that when we were finally called into position and Jim Florentine and I were on stage crouching and waiting behind the podium 30 seconds before we were going to go live, Jim joked, “Do you think we’ll get checked by security one more time before we go on?”

So, the music swelled and the voice announced Eminem, and we were live on television for the 2003 TV Music Video awards.

(Incidentally, this was the awards show that was famous for the kiss between Britney Spears and Madonna…a kiss I saw them do in rehearsal and was, of course, completely staged, even though the media treated it like an impromptu shocker.)

So Eminem plays it cool, and Jim and I go nuts with Special Ed. The video guys got my monitor hooked up perfectly, and I could see everything I was doing. It was beautiful. I was flying.

Then comes the escalation of violence.

We get to the part in the bit where Eminem loses his cool and wails on the puppet. Which…just like in rehearsal he does without pulling his punches. Wham!

Only this time the blows are much harder. Wham! The helmet gets totally destroyed. I’m performing Special Ed like he is being beaten up…and I’m reacting in character…but Eminem is trying to destroy the puppet for real. With my arm in the puppet.

He then grabs the puppet and tries to twist features off the puppet. No luck. Thank god for Hymark thread. Even though my mind is racing and we are on live television I still flash a thought in my mind of, “Gangsta loses, Puppet wins.”

Then I quickly apply the bruise patch and come back up for air.

The bit ends…and I’m behind the podium looking at the floor and a pile of debris from the broken bits of his helmet. Eminem did not manage to pull anything off of the puppet, which would have been very bad, but the helmet was in shards.

They had to strike the podium for the next act, and I quickly picked up as many pieces as I could and put them in my pocket.

A Crank producer greeted me back-stage with a horrified look. At this point we still had to do the bit with the Olsen twins, and now the puppet was compromised to say the least.

He asked if there was something I could do…and I really didn’t know what I could do. We didn’t really have a choice. I had to do something. So we stormed into a make-up room and asked to use some space. A make-up lady was working on someone and she happily obliged. She moved some stuff off the table so I could perform triage on the puppet.

I was frantically pulling bits of helmet out of my pocket and trying to use double-stick tape to assemble some kind of framework that would sort of look like his helmet.

It was then that the guy in the make-up chair asked, very simply, “Having some trouble with your puppet?”

I looked up and saw that it was Ben Stiller.

I explained to him that my puppet just got beaten up by Eminem.

He nodded sympathetically, and let out an understanding, “yeah,” as if he knew what that pain was like.

I put an ace bandage around the puppet’s head and the producer was pleased with my results. It was then that we got word that the show was going over on time and the rest of Special Ed’s bits had been cut.

I was relieved. I had no desire to do a scene with the Olsen twins. I may be a puppeteer, but those two are scary monkey children being manipulated by a corporate machine that makes animal testing look like the humane society.

I have to say that days and weeks later I was actually psychologically disturbed by getting physically beaten by this rap star on live television. I felt a little vindicated that I didn’t let him destroy this puppet that, though on the obnoxious side, was something that I cared about and put my emotion and energies into.

It was such a surreal experience. And as far as Eminem goes, I thought it was a total fluke.

It turns out that he really likes Special Ed and I wound up doing several more projects with Eminem, including, most notably, the “Ass Like That” video where we partnered up with Triumph the comic insult dog. Another obnoxious puppet that started his career on Conan O’Brian and moved on to other areas of media annoyance.

Crank Yankers thanked Eminem for his support by giving him his very own “little Em” puppet. Years later he would call up the production asking for another one since the one he had got destroyed.

This reveals an interesting and not well-know fact about the mega-huge hip hop celebrity, and that is this:

For some reason…Eminem loves puppets…but he also destroys them.

I suppose that turns out to be good job security for people in my industry. It’s hard for a celebrity to beat up a computer generated animation. So as I think about my future career, I can’t under estimate the power of having a character that people can not only love, but also hate…and physically destroy.

I will be making sure I have a good supply of Hymark thread.

The show Crank Yankers has been cancelled and those characters are already fading from pop culture…but I was on a set not less than a month ago performing a puppet character with Kanye West…and we improvised a bit where Kanye shoots the puppet with a stormtrooper’s laser blaster. So that destructive puppet and hip-hop energy is still very much alive and well.

And I am still dumbfounded when I find myself in the middle of battling these forces. I will admit that even though it’s a lot of stress, and work…it’s a lot of fun.

Ronald Binion
July 17, 2008

Photo: Robert Smigel, Special Ed, Triumph the Comic Insult Dog, and me. (Set of Ass Like That, 2005)

Backstory:

Triumph the Comic Insult dog actually did get in Eminem's face during the 2002 Mtv Music Video Awards, and Eminem did genuinely get upset. So the bit with Special Ed was his way of making light of his own behavior at having been angry at a puppet.

As fate would have it Eminem would do a song where he channels the spirit of Triumph the Comic Insult dog, and in the video Triumph and the Crank puppet crew would peacefully exist in the imagination of Eminem.

This is from the veiwpoint of a television puppeteer looking at the monitor and seeing what the camera is shooting (and trying to keep ones head out of the shot).

Steamy rehearsed kiss

Why can't this man get enough of puppets? (photo from the Ass Like That video)

(okay, so sometimes there's more than one, one-of-a-kind.)

On the streets of New York enjoying the weird experience of seeing my puppet character on posters all over town.

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Recent evidence of violence towards puppets.