News & Events
Street Gang Doc Wins Emmy for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary
The HBO documentary that came out of Michael Davis’s Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street has been nominated and won the Emmy for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary!
Getting to Sesame Street
This story is about how a television show made to represent New York City neighborhoods – like Harlem and the Bronx – has sustained its mark in educating children in a divided country. Click on this post to listen to the NPR Production.
Getting NC writer’s ‘Sesame Street’ book made into a movie? Not as easy as 1, 2, 3.
“It’s kind of a pinch-me experience for me this week,” says Michael Davis, author of “Street Gang: The Complete History of ‘Sesame Street.’” “We’ve been working on this for so long. And to have this day finally arrive after a year of just real uncertainty about what was gonna be with the film, it’s a tremendous relief, mixed with tremendous excitement.” – Michael Davis, Author of Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street
HBO DOCUMENTARY FILMS SLATES SESAME STREET DOC FOR 2021
HBO Documentary Films will look back on the first two decades of beloved PBS children’s program Sesame Street in the new feature documentary Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, premiering on HBO and HBO Max in 2021.
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street: Interview with Michael Davis
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street on November 11, 2009 and its 41st season kickoff on September 27, 2010, Michael Davis takes us behind the scenes of the innovative and definitive children's TV show on PBS.
‘Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street’ - New York Times Review
Even those resistant to easy nostalgia will find plenty to think about. As told here, the show’s strategy — using television’s methods for teaching children beer jingles to teach them the alphabet instead — could only have come together through a combination of figures: Joan Ganz Cooney (a creator of the show and the first executive director of the Children’s Television Workshop); Jim Henson, who brought Muppets and just the right amount of irreverence; and the workhorse director-writer-producer Jon Stone, whose daughters say he treated the show as his third child. The show required the input of educators and psychologists and owed some of its freedom to experiment to federal investment.
Read more at The New York Times (may require subscription)
New York Times: ‘Street Gang’ - Excerpt
Prologue
Joan Ganz Cooney walked toward the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 112th Street, lost in a fog of grief. Ahead were the crenelated parapets that crown the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a Gothic Revival glory on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Black limousines lined the curbside, clogging the street, as NYPD officers wave their arms in a futile effort to get the vehicles moving. The sidewalks were overrun by pedestrians, hundreds of them, all moving toward the cathedral steps. Cooney walked alongside mothers and toddlers clutching Ernie dolls, students playing hooky from school, executives in crisp suits, Midtown secretaries in heels, Latinas in scoop-necked tops, and bohemian types sporting jeans, running shoes, and long ponytails.
Read more at The New York Times (may require a subscription)
New York Times: How Oscar Got Grouchy
Recent DVD collections of early “Sesame Street” episodes were called “Old School” and came with a peculiar warning: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” That warning is a measure of how the series has changed in the nearly four decades since its debut in 1969. The old episodes not only have a handmade, anarchic charm that underscores the show’s debts to “Laugh-In,” the Marx Brothers and vaudeville, but they also are blessedly free of the uptight, sunnily upbeat, politically correct tone that has crept into more recent incarnations.
Read more at The New York Times (subscription may be required)
“Sesame Street” debuts
On November 10, 1969, “Sesame Street,” a pioneering TV show that would teach generations of young children the alphabet and how to count, makes its broadcast debut. “Sesame Street,” with its memorable theme song (“Can you tell me how to get/How to get to Sesame Street”), went on to become the most widely viewed children’s program in the world. It has aired in more than 120 countries.