Since the show was done in small bits and pieces, we seldom taped anything more than a couple of minutes so generally you could learn your lines.
Yeah, well when I first started working, it was $5 a show; it was probably a little higher by the time I got to my own show, but I remember that they put me under contract at $100 a week, which to me was really an astronomical price.
Yeah, all the characters in those days were abstract because that was part of the principle that I was working under, that you wanted abstract things.
When Sesame Street came on - well, it was a combination - we were too busy to do commercials and it was a pleasure to get out of that world.
It's into the same bag as E.T. and Yoda, wherein you're trying to create something that people will actually believe, but it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to do the thing itself.
And also there wasn't much money in television in those days anyhow.