April 30th, 2007


The following is an LTP Exclusive Interview --

Behind every great town is a great mayor.  And behind every great mayor (if he's a puppet, and aren't they all?) is a great puppeteer. Meet David Matthew Feldman, the man behind Milford Meanswell: Mayor of LazyTown, uncle of Stephanie, handyman (and more?) of Miss Busybody, and friend to us all. He's the tender, goofy heart of our favorite town.

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   LTP: How and when did you meet Magnús Scheving?

   DAVID: I first met Magnús on the European aerobics circuit in the late 80s.  I was his towel boy.  I remember, I'd toss him a towel, and he'd say to me, "Someday, David, I'm going to give you a big, foam-latex bald man to carry around and make a star out of you"...No, that's not true.  The first time I met Magnús was at my second LazyTown audition, at Nickelodeon in New York.  It was the fall of 2003.  I was on a plane for Iceland less than two months later.


   LTP: When did you first become interested in puppeteering?

   DAVID: Like most puppeteers my age (and some older and many more younger), I'm doing what I'm doing because of one person: Jim Henson.  As a kid, I just fell in love with the Muppets.  (The timing was perfect; I grew up, partly, in the 70s, when what they had was like lightning in a bottle.)  The funny thing was, as much as I embraced the Muppets, I never really thought of becoming a performer.  I played with puppets at home, but I was basically a quiet, academic kid who planned on becoming a writer.  It wasn't until a class in college—when my very liberal liberal-arts professor decided to liven up her Shakespeare class by having us perform puppets—that I actually had an audience (beyond my little sister), and their response shocked me.  This thing that I had been doing for years—as just a form of play—actually seemed to impress people.  I thought, hey, I could do this.  It was like a baseball fan not realizing until he was 19 that he didn't just have to sit there and keep score; he could grab a glove and get into the game.


   LTP: What kinds of things were you contributing to "Between the Lions"?

   DAVID: Monkeys.  Lots of monkeys.  And a few ducks.


   LTP: Did you ever work on any movie projects (past or present)?

   DAVID: I've done a few small, independent movies.  I did a thing that came out of Sundance called "The American Astronaut".  It's a black-and-white/sci-fi/musical/western.  I didn't understand it while I was working on it, and I didn't understand it after I saw it.  But it seems to have quite a following.  (I play this shriveled-up, fetus-looking thing that floats around in a barn.  Check it out.)

I also did a thing called "Corn", in the blazing heat on a farm in New Jersey.  We performed sheep that go berserk and start attacking people.  You do a lot of weird, random things as a puppeteer.


   LTP: Puppeteering would seem to be a difficult profession in which to get started.  Is there any school or college that you attended to learn the craft?

   DAVID: Like a lot of things, I think you learn the most just by getting a job and being in the trenches.  There's no substitute for being in a show or being on a set.  You can practice your manipulation and your voices at home, as we've all done, but that only gets you part of the way.  There are so many things unique to a real production—like the pressure to get it done, or the need to adapt to sometimes infuriating last-minute changes—that you can't really recreate it in a rehearsal situation.  I've learned a lot working with a great puppet theater in New York called The Puppet Company.  I can't tell you how many performances I've done with them.  "Between the Lions", which was my first, real television experience, was a great education for me.  It didn't matter what I was doing—assisting, performing background characters, sometimes just sitting and watching; the most important thing was that I was there, particularly when you consider the talented people I was surrounded by.  And you keep learning.  The LazyTown costume people made me my own version of the "Lazy U" sweatshirt that the Mayor has worn, which pretty much sums up the experience.  I graduated from Lazy University: Magnús cum laude.


   LTP: Are there any 'puppet movies' (including all genres) or TV shows from the past that you particularly enjoyed?

   DAVID: Well, it's got to be the Muppets, right?  I think that their first movie, "The Muppet Movie", is one of the best, if not the best thing they ever did.  I just got this ridiculously large television set, and the other day, I watched "The Muppet Movie" on a big screen for the first time since I was six years old.  It was like eating ice cream for the first time.


   LTP: How was it for you, as an American, to work with a mostly Icelandic production team?  And did you learn to speak any Islenska?

   DAVID: The first season, I learned about five Icelandic words.  The second season, I learned about five more.  So, by Season 15, I should be able to carry on a limited conversation.  I think you need to be pretty young and very willing to learn Icelandic.  I'm neither of those things.  Julianna, on the other hand, can sit in her makeup chair and have a perfectly fluent conversation with her makeup artist.  That kid makes me look stupid.

They actually make it very easy for you not to learn Icelandic, since almost everyone in Iceland speaks English so readily.  So the crew was very easy to work with.  Most of them are very easy-going, very resourceful people.  Exactly the kind of people you want watching your back on a set.  There are some that, every time I go back, I just can't wait to see again.


   LTP: Do you have any hobbies?

   DAVID: I scuba dive.  I'm way cooler underwater than I ever will be on land.

And I'm a crossword puzzle junkie.  New York Times crossword puzzles.  I do others, but—to paraphrase Jon Stewart in the movie "Wordplay"—I don't feel good about myself when I'm doing them.  This past season of LazyTown—you know, there's a lot of waiting in production—I started to construct my own Times-style puzzles.  When I was finished with each one, I would bring in copies and make all the other puppeteers sit and do them.  I actually submitted one to the Times, and got a very nice rejection email from Will Shortz.  Someday, I'll be able to quit this whole playing-with-dolls thing and just make crosswords.  That's where the real money is.


   LTP: What kind of music/bands do you enjoy?

   DAVID: I only listen to LazyTown songs.  I drive around in my pink convertible, blasting the music.  My neighbors love me...Actually, my tastes are pretty old-fashioned: show tunes, standards, jazzy stuff.  If it was in a Woody Allen movie, I'd probably like it.  But I do enjoy LazyTown songs, too.


   LTP: As a writer, where do your influences come from?

   DAVID: I think when you're writing for kids, you're basically just trying to entertain yourself as a child.  How successful you are depends partly on whether or not you had good taste as a kid.


   LTP: Can you elaborate on the genesis of the voice for the 'Mayor Meanswell' character?

   DAVID: When you're trying to find a character, you get information from a lot of places: the script, the director, the producers (you want to please the people who are paying you).   But none of them are as important as the puppet itself.  You get cues from how it looks, how it moves, how it feels.  With the Mayor, it probably started with the smile.  Most puppets are built with a neutral expression; but the Mayor has this big, goofy smile sculpted onto his face.  (I can get different emotions out of him, but it always starts with the smile.  It's like—if LazyTown were a play and the Mayor were an actor—he'd be waiting in the wings with that smile on his face.)  You put that smile on your own face and it just puts you in a different state of mind.  And he moves very uniquely, too.  There's a rhythm and a physics to the Mayor that's unlike any puppet I've ever worked with.

I think, though, that my initial instinct was to do something a little more "mayoral"—a little more stately—than he ended up being.  If you watch the first two or three episodes we did, you can hear it.  Magnús was trying to get me to go in a slightly different direction; my job was to find something that worked for him and worked for the puppet.  Eventually, I was able to do that, and Mayor Meanswell clicked.  Now, it's a very easy, very natural place for me to go.  I love playing the character.


   LTP: Are there any animatronics involved with the puppets in LazyTown?

   DAVID: Strictly speaking, no.  Animatronics usually refers to figures that are operated remotely (or are pre-programmed, like the ones at Disney World).  The LazyTown puppets—while they are certainly bigger and heavier than your average TV puppets—are essentially just hand puppets.  It's all very "hands-on."  There are cables that control their eyelids and eyebrows, but these are pretty simple mechanisms that are easily controlled by the puppeteer.


   LTP: Technically speaking, when filming the 'Mayor/Bessie in LazyTown' scenes, are you and Julie Westwood always in the studio at the same time, or are the parts edited together later?

   DAVID: We're all there, working together.

LazyTown is a one-camera production, like a movie, so all the angles are done separately.  Like a movie, we'll generally do the wider shot (where you can see all the characters in the scene) first, and then do the close-ups one at a time.  Usually, even if it isn't your close-up, you stick around to read your lines.


   LTP: Is Magnús Scheving really as strict a director as everyone seems to think?

   DAVID: Strict is the wrong word.  In every script, there are always things that he's envisioned very specifically.  These are usually "gross motor" things like the choreography of an action scene or the way in which a sequence should be edited together.  He's very specific about the overarching beats of the show.  (Which is a good thing, since I don't think anybody understands them as well as he does).  But with the finer, more character-driven elements, he's very trusting and collaborative.  I rewrite a lot of my dialogue.  I don't think a "strict" director would go for that.

I find him to be very patient and very encouraging on the set.  And when you do something he likes, nobody's a bigger fan of yours.  It's like he's thankful, because he loves the show so much.  When the floor of the sports field needs to be swept before the next shot, he'll grab a broom and help out.  When one of those LazyTown walls needs to be moved for a different set-up, he'll grab an end.  I can guarantee you that you won't find many directors, let alone executive producers, let alone CEOs of multimillion dollar companies, who do that.  He's like a kid who got all the neighborhood kids together to put on a show in his backyard.


   LTP: Are there any memorable moments in a favorite episode that you would like to comment about?

   DAVID: There have been a lot of memorable moments.  I loved working on "Secret Agent Zero" and "Double Trouble", which I guess were the big Mayor shows.  In "Secret Agent Zero", I got the chance to name the Mayor's favorite flower after my mother, Gloria.  And "Double Trouble" was great; Robbie disguises himself as the Mayor, so Stefán spends the entire episode doing an impression of me.  It was quite an honor.


   LTP: Do you have any children?  If so, what do they think of LazyTown?

   DAVID: I have a son, who's almost a year-and-a-half.  So far, he doesn't seem too interested in television, which I guess is a good thing.  But I did flip by LazyTown the other day, and he got very excited.  Though I'm not sure if he was responding to the sound of my voice or the sight of his babysitter Julianna.


   LTP: Does Gudmundur Thor (Ziggy) coordinate everything with the puppeteering, or is it a more democratic process?

   DAVID: Thor is a great asset to our department.  As a builder, he helps us better understand the puppets we're working with; as an Icelander, he helps us better understand the people we're working with.  But there really is no head of the department.  Everyone is responsible for his or her own character.  So, if the art department is building an airplane for the Mayor, they consult with me.  If production needs to know if and how Trixie can climb a tree, they talk to Sarah.


   LTP: How much of your own personality do you incorporate into the 'Mayor Meanswell' character?

   DAVID: I think when you're creating a character, you start with input from a variety of sources, but ideally, they help you find qualities in yourself.  Now, I don't think there's anything in Mayor Meanswell that's overtly me (even my own relatives couldn't recognize my voice), but, deep down, we have a kinship.  (Even when he's being clueless…We've all been there, haven't we?)  Besides, you have so much to juggle as a puppeteer (mentally and physically), that you really need to be able to call on the character instinctively.  Jodi is the sweetest guy you'll ever meet, and yet I believe he has a Stingy in him somewhere.  Thor is a pretty level-headed guy—a great, responsible parent—and yet he's got a little Ziggy running around in him.  I'd say the only thing I don't have in common with the Mayor is the whole yardwork thing: he's way better at it than I am.

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Thanks & Best Wishes To David Matthew Feldman and LazyTown Entertainment.


© 2007 L.G. Wise (X RADAR Publ.)
All Rights Reserved

No part of this interview can be used, reprinted, copied or stored in any medium without the publisher's authorization.


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