Los Angeles Independent Article

The Puppet Master

By Kevin Butler

Greg Williams dangles his latest work-in-progress from a few strings -- a flesh-colored marionette dancer, nothing more than a body made of cloth and stuffing, lacking a face.

"My goal is to make one that will be a really good dancer," says Williams, bending the puppet's back. "It's probably going to be lascivious, too. I don't want to say hoochie dancer, but it will be a go-go dancer."

He already has strings connected to three body joints, but he will add two each to the legs, arms and its head, and perhaps one more to the back to give her some extra moves.

"I'm still developing the fanny," he confesses playfully. "I'm going to have some sort of low cut on her so you can see the crack."

Enter Williams' North Hollywood puppet studio and you will find the Hollywood High School alumnus hard at work, carefully crafting puppets of all kinds -- some moved by strings, many by rods, some purely by hand and a few electronically.

The amateur Hollywood historian has worked on television shows like "Pee Wee's Playhouse" and Martin Short's "Prime Time Glick" show on Comedy Central, in addition to movies like "Men in Black."

"It's fantasy and reality," Williams says of his joy for puppetry. "You can create anything you want. Anything you can think of."

And Williams has made just about every kind of creature imaginable. Lester the Lab Rat, a cute, bewildered-looking rodent with red fur and a gray tummy, sits on his shelf. Robin Roach, a takeoff on hyperactive television host Robin Leach, stands against a wall. Don and Herb, a pair of simple penguin hand puppets, are perched in his office.

Williams enjoys making his puppets almost as much as he does working them. He compares the working of the "airplane control," the basic wooden hand device for manipulating strings, to the playing of the violin.

"I start thinking the puppets are real when I'm working one," he says. "And when the audience does, you're home free."

He became fascinated with puppets at the age of 8 when he got his first Mexican marionette and would often perform for his friends.

At 15, he got his big break in the puppetry business. Renowned puppeteer Bob Baker hired Williams to clean his theater's party room. He eventually let Williams work on lighting and backdrops, until one day one of the performers failed to show up. Williams filled in for the missing puppeteer without any training.

He earned Baker's trust and toured with him for five years before entering UCLA film school, where he spent his time making educational shorts using puppets. His fellow students had mixed reactions to his work.

"When I was showing one of my films, one person in the audience asked me afterwards, 'Why did you do that?'" Williams recalls.

At age 27, Williams was tired of touring and quit puppetry, working at his father's business -- until a postcard arrived in the mail promoting a new puppetry school run by Sid and Marty Krofft, two famous puppeteers.

Out of the 3,000 aspiring puppet masters who auditioned, Williams was one of only 20 to be accepted.

"I knew I had a bent as a creative entertainer," Williams says. "So it seemed like a good outlet for me. "I can hide, but I can still be communicating a story, a joke or a character," he adds.

Now, Williams is an expert at all kinds of puppets and is thrilled to show others the inner workings of his creations. He shows how he manipulates "Saymore," a bear-like animal with a green, white polka-dotted tie and magenta suspenders. One person works one of the creature's hands and his body, while a second puppeteer works the other hand and uses cable controls -- essentially bicycle break wires -- to move the eyebrows.

Puppets can vary in complexity -- from a simple-hand puppet to a combination of hands and rods, such as Kermit the Frog. The most advanced contain radio-controlled devices, such as that used to manipulate Williams' life-sized buffalo puppet's face -- while a man stands inside the creature's hump to move the body. Radio controls work by activating a "servo," a small rectangular metal device that uses gears to turn a short, metal wire attached to eyebrows, eyes or other small puppet elements.

Puppetry is just now entering the digital realm, Williams says, as experts learn to paint facial features and insert backgrounds using special technology. Williams' studio houses a green screen, before which he films puppet performances. Later, he uses a computer to actually make the strings invisible, put a moving mouth and blinking eyes onto the puppet's blank face and place a digital background into a scene.

He uses his latest film, starring Peter Cottontail, to show the technique. A puppet rabbit walks through a digitally drawn candy factory, where jelly beans and dyed eggs are being manufactured, and strolls past real-life chocolate bunnies inserted into the background.

Still, Williams thinks that digital technology will never displace puppetry. The real-life movements and appearance of puppets have been enjoyed for so long in human history that few people want them to succumb to computers.

For Williams, who serves movie studios and other corporate clients, making a puppet-for-hire is a long process. He and his business partner, Steve Sherman, have been hired to design a dog to sell Bayer's new flea medicine. Sherman has submitted more than 100 drawings to the Japan-based advertising firm, and the parties have yet to make final decisions on the dog's look.

Of course, no viewer will know of this hard work. The average person would find it frustrating not to have any recognition for his or her labors, but Williams likes his place behind the scenes.

"You hide. You're invisible as a puppeteer," he says. "But you can still be right out there as a puppet." Right out there, dancing, singing, smiling and winking with his creations. Kevin Butler can be reached at (323) 556-5720, ext. 153, or by e-mail at kbutler@laindependent.com