So by that point Sesame Street was already legendary. So were you out by the time you joined the staff?
Well, itโs more levels. I already had my life partner, the love of my life. We werenโt living together. All our friends knew, but I donโt think I was professionally out.
[Saltzman pauses in thought. I donโt have to ask why. The โlove of his lifeโ was acclaimed editor Arnold Glassman, who edited films like Frailty and The Celluloid Closet. The two were together more than 20 years before Glassmanโs death in 2003.]
I think I was cautiously out. I remember not inviting Arnie to the first Christmas parties, you know. But then I have memories of bringing him to beach house parties with everybody. I think during Sesame Street was when I came completely out. By โ86 we had an apartment together. My father knew. There was no hiding it.
Ok, so we have to addressโthatโs the big question, right? In the writerโs room, youโre all adults. Were you thinking of Bert & Ernie as a gay couple? Did that question ever come up?
I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked โare Bert & Ernie lovers?โ And that, coming from a preschooler was fun. And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. I didnโt have any other way to contextualize them. The other thing was, more than one person referred to Arnie & I as โBert & Ernie.โ
Thatโs telling.
Yeah, I was Ernie. I look more Bert-ish. And Arnie as a film editorโif you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldnโt that be perfect? Bert with his paper clips and organization? And I was the jokester. So it was the Bert & Ernie relationship, and I was already with Arnie when I came to Sesame Street. So I donโt think Iโd know how else to write them, but as a loving couple. I wrote sketchesโฆ Arnieโs OCD would create friction with how chaotic I was. And thatโs the Bert & Ernie dynamic.
So youโre saying that Bert & Ernie became analogs for your relationship in a lot of ways?
Yeah. Because how else? Thatโs what I had in my life, a Bert & Ernie relationship. How could it not permeate? The things that would tick off Arnie would be the things that would tick off Bert. How could it not? I will say that I would never have said to the head writer, โoh, Iโm writing this, this is my partner and me.โ But those two, Snuffalupagus, because heโs the sort of clinically depressed Muppetโฆyou had characters that appealed to a gay audience. And Snuffy, this depressed person nobody can see, thatโs sort of Kafka! Itโs sort of gay closeted too.
The secret friendโฆbecause at that point Snuffy was Big Birdโs secret friend. It was later on he out and everyone realized he actually existed.
That happened while I was there, yeah. But they havenโtโฆthe New Yorker cover was kind of vindication, but thereโs not a Bert & Ernie float in the Pride Parade.
We wish!
And because it was always diversity, diversity, itโs a shame [Sesame Steet] wasnโt leading the charge. Hereโs a story about pushing the gay envelope of Sesame Streetโฆ
