INTERVIEW WITH ADAM BEHR
TMNT PUPPETEER: WICK THE DRAGON


May 18, 2006


RUTGER
Today I'm interviewing Adam Behr. Puppeteer, make-up artist, puppetbuilder and voiceactor. Hi Adam, welcome and thanks for having this interview with me.

ADAM BEHR
You're welcome Rutger- thanks so much for inviting me!

RUTGER
My first question is always, did you always wanted to be what you are now, make-up artist, puppeteer, voice actor?

ADAM BEHR
Yes, I think so- ever since I saw a lot of those horror and fantasy movies in the 70’s, especially Star Wars and all those "disaster" movies, and later came "The Dark Crystal" and so on..

RUTGER
You started out as a make-up artist on the TV movie 'Captive Rage' a movie that is even banned in Finland. How was that?

ADAM BEHR
Well- I'm not sure why it was banned in Finland?? However it was a neat experience, I was working for a guy names Rob Guess in South Africa where I’m from. We made all these piranha fish puppets with steel teeth that could really tear things. Then we made this prosthetic body of an American soldier. The idea was that the body would get torn and eaten by the piranha puppets in this special tank. It all worked out really well- although I believe the effect was too gory to be used in the final film.

RUTGER
You've worked on some great movies by now; Underworld, Scary Movie 3, The Sixth Day. What was the most difficult movie to work on? And the most fun?

ADAM BEHR
Hmmmm. I think every movie has its difficult and fun parts, but some of the highlights were ‘Cats and Dogs’ because we had to do a lot of characterisation which was true to life as well as comedic - and the puppets had to be very realistic the whole time. The Henson Creature shop, headed by Dave Barclay - a fantastic British puppeteer and builder, now resident in LA - made amazing dog and cat puppets.
The sixth day was great too- I was working with Amalgamated Dynamics Inc - the same guys who did Alien 3 and 4 and ‘Alien vs. Predator’ ... there was a team of us puppeteering Simpal Cindy, the child's robotic playmate - it was snowing and there was a lot of hot soup needed to keep warm. Arnold Schwarzenegger was on the set and he's a super nice guy.
‘Snakes on a plane’ was also a lot of fun, I was the lead Canadian puppeteer and the amazing animatronics snake puppets were built by Rick Lazzarini's Character shop.

RUTGER
What part of your wide range of work do you like best; make-up, puppeteering, puppet fabricating or voice acting?

ADAM BEHR
They all have their good parts, I must say - I've enjoyed them all immensely. I'm particularly enjoying voice acting these days because of the immediacy of it - you can create a character in seconds and try things out. With puppetry there's a whole lot of building and wrangling with producers to get the right look and then once you get on set, it's sometimes disappointing because so few directors understand how to use puppets correctly.
It's been a joy working with directors like Kirk Thatcher on the Muppets or Britain's Andy de Emmony on "Don't Eat the Neighbours" who really understands puppets for the screen.

RUTGER
How did you got to be on Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation? And what was your role as a supervising puppeteer?

ADAM BEHR
I was contacted by the production early in the pre-production schedule. Part of my job in addition to performing was casting all the other puppeteers, auditioning tons of people, and then running rehearsals etc. Each episode had a new director, so I had to write a handbook on how they could shoot the puppets to their best advantage.
Also there was a lot of political wrangling between the actors union and the production and I got pulled into the middle of it.

RUTGER
You puppeteered the character Wick the Dragon, a funny and dumb little creature. Is his behaviour based on any character you did before?

ADAM BEHR
Yeah, me as a kid! Hahah - umm, not really I think he was very clearly defined in the writing and was in a way a typical sidekick - so there was a lot of fun to be had in actually making fun of a cliché.

RUTGER
Seeing the locations Wick is in during the show, were you ever in any bizarre positions, in order to move Wick and hide yourself from the camera at the same time?

ADAM BEHR
All the time, my practice of yoga helped a lot : )
I had to squeeze into cauldrons, into tiny spaces in the wall, into laundry hampers, pipes, tubes, hide behind props - it was always a bit of a battle- but that's the game of being a puppeteer. Also the production were always trying to hide the arm rods, and didn’t want to get into rod removal which is so common today ( I think it was a lot more expensive back then) - so there was a lot of manoeuvring to play the arms in a way that would disguise the rods all the time.

RUTGER
And were you also at the controls of Michelangelo's face expressions and mouth movement?

ADAM BEHR
Correct, there was a great performance control system created by Tom Costan the animatronics technical supervisor for the Chiodo Brothers company - the same company that made a lot of the ‘Team America’ puppets.

RUTGER
In the TMNT movies, the puppeteers had a wide range of controls, a headset to be in contact with the suited actor and were able to track the action on a small monitor. Did it go the same way in the TV-series?

ADAM BEHR
Yes exactly the same way.

RUTGER
Do you have any fond memories, or crazy anecdotes from the time you were on Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation?

ADAM BEHR
There were fun situations every day - the best was that we were always wired for sound so we could hear both the director and also talk to each suit performer inside the suit of the character whose head we were performing - so there were a lot of things we heard that we weren't necessarily supposed to.
Also - in between takes we were always making the turtles say wacky things. It was especially fun when the kids would come to the set - we had lots of fun with that! Also there was this puppeteer Luman Coad who was an older- grey haired guy (known for a lot of the marionette work in "Being John Malkovitch" . .. he was puppeteering Leonardo's head for a while and had a very halting, hesitant way of speaking ...one of the lines he had to say was "chicks dig me" , but it came out as "chicks......dig......me". This was hilarious and we were all repeating it for months afterwards. Turtles creator Kevin Eastman and his lovely wife Julie Strain visited the set, they were such nice people!

RUTGER
Thanks for the interview, and for giving the fans a glimpse of your work, and life behind the world of film and TV.

ADAM BEHR
My pleasure Rutger and thanks for your interest in the Ninja Turtles Series! All the best to you and the Ninja Turtles fans.