Behind the Scenes

Before the puppets ever appear, the film opens on something else entirely.

An unrelated Frank Barnett sequence drops in without explanation. Donald returns as Frank for a brief fight against a henchman played by Nate. Frank wins, the other guy doesn’t, and he walks off like it’s just another day. The scene also locks in the continuity that Harvey is dead, a fact carried into later projects without much ceremony.

Donald Flores as Frank Barnett

It was shot for a simple reason. Donald was about to report to jail, and this was one of the last chances to get him on camera. So naturally, Daryl had him dress up as Frank Barnett and fight Nate on a playground for a puppet movie.

Nate took the hit, as usual. During the fight, he injured his knee, adding to a growing list of on-set injuries across several productions. It wasn’t the only reason, but it became part of the pattern that eventually led to him stepping away after Revenge of the Golden Hoot.

Nathan Blonkenfeld as the Henchman, concealing his immense pain

Bud the Hobo & Lou the Bear grew out of Daryl’s long-standing obsession with puppetry and animation. He had always wanted to make something in the spirit of the Muppets, filtered through Hanna-Barbera and Ren & Stimpy. Cheap, physical, a little ugly, and alive. The project was originally conceived as one section of a larger feature built from interwoven shorts. That larger plan never came together, but this segment survived.

The puppets themselves were less built than discovered and repurposed. Lou came first. He began life as a white Macy’s polar bear found at the Salvation Army down the street from Daryl’s house. The bear was stripped down, cut open, dyed brown, and rebuilt. Kirsten added a purple mouth and tongue, along with a puppet sock in the back to make him functional. What started as a department-store decoration became something else entirely.

The Creation of Lou

Bud had a different origin. He began as a magician puppet in a tuxedo. Kirsten modified the costume with sewn-on patches to turn him into a hobo, while Daryl added Velcro-mounted googly eyes so his expressions could be changed from shot to shot. The result was rougher, but more flexible, and somehow more human.

Bud and Lou, finished and together for the first time

The characters themselves came out of another practical problem. Daryl had wanted to involve Bob Garrett in something since high school, but getting him to appear on camera was never going to happen. So Daryl found a workaround. “We knew you wouldn’t come out to film with us, so I decided to steal your voice.” Bob became Lou. Robert Beauchamp became Bud. Suddenly the film had something it had been missing: two distinct voices, both fully committed and clearly enjoying themselves, even if neither seemed entirely sure what they had signed up for.

Production became a running collection of whoever happened to be around and willing. The film turns into a loose tour through Daryl’s orbit. Jack Lewkowitz appears for the first time, along with Brian Grima during a door-slamming montage in which Bud and Lou try to scam their way into houses. They encounter Hank Della, Auntie Linda and Uncle Bill, Tim from down the street, Sherin Nand, Kirsten’s sister Jennifer, and one of the only appearances by Joshua Nair. Snyder even turns up in the gorilla suit from Jack Knife vs. the Gorilla, because it was still sitting around and still funny.

Daryl puppeteered most of the film, with help from Kirsten, Tyler, and Nate. At one point, Nate’s dad appears in a doorway wearing tighty-whities, confused but cooperative. The sequence with Grandma and Pa begins outside their house in South San Francisco, then inexplicably cuts inside to Lake Tahoe. The dialogue, however, was real. “Hank, you want some stew?”

“Honey, I’m on the toilet! I don’t eat when I’m on the toilet!”

When Pa read the script, he stopped and said, “Sounds familiar,” realizing Daryl had simply lifted one of their actual exchanges. They performed it anyway. Some things are too good not to keep.

Filming Grandma’s scene in Tahoe, January 2008

Recording the voices brought its own challenges. Getting Garrett to raise his voice at all took effort, and screaming initially seemed out of the question. Eventually he worked his way up to it, cautiously. Beauchamp had no such problem. “I’m a screamer.”

A planned sing-along to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’ “Pardners” never really came together. Daryl recorded Robert’s take and decided it wasn’t going to work. They did, however, manage to persuade Garrett to sing a few lines of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

Bob Garrett with Lou, the only time the voices got to physically interact with their counterparts, November 6, 2009

In December 2009, one month after recording commentary for Bud the Hobo & Lou the Bear, Garrett died suddenly in his sleep. The recording, without anyone realizing it at the time, became a last visit.

Around that same period, Daryl and Kirsten took a long-planned trip to New York with their friend Julie Walsh, who was mailing a letter to Santa wishing for a boyfriend. While waiting in line at Macy’s, they passed a holiday display built from old teddy bears. One immediately stood out.

A white polar bear, mounted in a winter diorama, waving. The same model they had used for Lou. It felt like recognition. Like the character looking back at them.

The Polar Bear at Macy’s. A final goodbye?

Auntie Linda died that same month. Over time, more names connected to the film would follow. Pa. Dad. Grandma. Uncle Bill. More than almost any other production, Bud the Hobo & Lou the Bear ended up carrying those people with it. Not by design, just by accident.

That’s the risk, and maybe the gift, of putting your real life on camera. It starts as a puppet movie. It just doesn’t stay that simple.