Memorializing Pop Icons with Puppets

Sisters Amy and Nancy Harrington have made a career based on their love of pop culture. Their positive entertainment content — including interviews, articles and trivia challenges — has been syndicated to Yahoo, OMG!, Examiner, Screenpicks, Fox.com and many more.

They have conducted over 1,200 interviews including more than 50 one-on-one oral histories for the Television Academy's Archive of American Television — including in-depth interviews with Danny DeVito, Ed O’Neill, Tom Bergeron and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

They were handpicked by OWN to be part of the VIP digital press corps covering Oprah’s Lifeclass during Winfrey’s tour of the U.S. and Toronto. And through their work as MediaMine’s Creative Directors they helped to create the Official Hollywood Walk of Fame App, a thousand-question Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson trivia game, a Don Rickles Zinger App and more.

Most recently, they launched their own line of hand-crafted pop culture themed puppets that have paid tribute to legendary icons like David Bowie, Bernie Sanders, Freddy Krueger, Prince and Carrie Fisher.

DW: As women who are passionate about all things pop culture, what made you want to memorialize celebrities? Was 2016 and all the celebrity death the impetus?

The idea for the puppets actually came before the concept of memorializing celebrities. Several years ago we had worked for a company and we created a few sock puppets for a video segment we were trying out there. The company folded and we turned our attention to conducting interviews for our blog and the Television Academy and working on pop culture related projects like creating the Official Hollywood Walk of Fame app for one of our clients. But about a year ago we started talking about how we both wanted to do something more creative. We remembered how much fun we had making the sock puppets and decided we wanted to express our love of all things pop culture this way. We did our Emmy predictions through sock puppets in the Fall, followed by Halloween and election puppets. At the end of the year, we decided that so many sock puppet worthy celebrities had passed, that the best way to end 2016 was to immortalize them in a way that they probably hadn't been honored before.

DW: Why sock puppets?

We think part of it is that it brings us back to being two little kids doing endless crafts together growing up in Braintree, Massachusetts. Our parents were artistic and always encouraged us to be as well. So, we would spend hours making fake stained glass out of crayon shavings and wax paper. We were in heaven when we could waste an afternoon doing anything with papier-mâché. And now, even though we're grown ups, we can do something that reminds us of those early days squirreled away together having fun and making each other laugh.

DW: Any chance they will be displayed in public or is this strictly an online memorial?

Our goal for 2017 is to have a gallery exhibit and accompanying book this time next year. The exhibit will be a tribute to the greatest pop culture icons of all time. We're going to nail down the list and start construction after the first of the year so that we have plenty of time to get things just right and find the perfect location. And, throughout the year, we'll continue to post new pieces. We have an Oscar fashion retrospective planned for February.

DW: What celebrity death hit you the hardest this year?

For Nancy, it was David Bowie. While I have a deep passion for many musicians and entertainers, David Bowie has always been my kindred spirit. His message of individuality and non-conformity shaped my views at a very young age and led me down a path of carving out my own life in the way I want to lead it, not the way society dictated. In fact as a teenager, my hair style very much resembled the yarn hairdo you see on our puppet! His music touches me deep in the soul and his loss was extremely profound for me. 

For Amy, the loss of Carrie Fisher was a huge hit. Seeing "Star Wars" as a nine year old basically changed the course of my life. Not only did I love the movie and saw "The Empire Strikes" back over 100 times but the franchise is one of the major reasons I moved to Hollywood to get into entertainment and why my love of pop culture is so deep. More importantly, Princess Leia and later Carrie Fisher herself represented the pinnacle of what it meant to be an independent woman with a take no prisoners attitude — strong but flawed, sarcastic but not pessimistic. 

DW: Has making these puppets been therapeutic?

It certainly has helped in terms of the In Memoriam puppets. Each one was made with complete love and admiration. We feel like the details are critical to making each puppet work. So, it was fun to stop, reexamine each person in their prime — their hair, their clothes, their accessories and, most crucially, their attitude. It was a nice way to reconnect with what we loved or admired about each of the people that we lost this year. And, in general, it makes us happy that people are finding joy in the puppets when they see them. It feels like, for us and for the growing number of people who are connecting to them, they like them because seeing these people in this way just makes them happy rather than dwelling on the sadness of the loss. 

DW: There has been a lot of discussion and arguments on social media about people grieving celebrities, as if it is ridiculous. What do you think about that?

We have stepped back a couple of times this year and thought, "Why are we so sad to lose someone we never met?" And we certainly wouldn't begin to pretend that our suffering in any way compares to that of these people's family and friends. But people like Bowie, Carrie Fisher, Gene Wilder and Garry Shandling made a significant impact on our lives through their work. They shaped our points of view, our humor, our sense of style. They were always there for us when we needed to be entertained by them. So how could we not be sad to see them go? In our own very small way, these puppets were meant to be our way to carry on their legacies and thank them for all they meant to us.

DW: Thank you so much Nancy and Amy for sharing your puppets on my blog. I love them and can't wait to see then on display. If you want to see more of these puppets, you can like their Facebook Page or follow them on Twitter @PCPassionistas.

Monday Mourning: The Sudden Death of a Friend

Today on the blog I have Edie Mackenzie. Edie is a published author, traveler, dog lover, and tortoise enthusiast. Passionate about what she does, her books provide people a firm grounding in the dog breed and their unique characteristics with a nice touch of humor.

The dates, names and places have been changed due to an ongoing criminal investigation.

DW:  Who was the person who died?

EM:  Our friend Sarah was the victim of a hit and run driver.

DW:  How old were you at the time?

EM:  This happened in the spring of 2015 and I was 56 years old.

DW:  How old was the person?

EM:  Sarah was a youthful 52 years old. In 1998 my husband and Sarah worked at the same company. One day he came home and said I had to meet this cool woman he’d met at work. He said he knew we would be friends. He was right. We were friends for close to 20 years.

DW:  Was it a sudden death or did you know it was going to happen?

EM:  Both. Sarah was hit by a car while walking home after an evening with friends. The person who hit her never stopped. Never called police. Has not been caught. EMT’s took her to a trauma hospital, where they put her on life-support. (They did not have access to her DNR at the time. Only when they were able to locate her family were her wishes made known.) I got a call two days later telling me what had happened. My husband and I were devastated. 

The family informed me they were, in accordance with her written directives, taking her off life-support in a couple of days. I made arrangements to fly to Atlanta to say goodbye to her.

Friends and family came from all over the country. While all of this was so horrific, we found solace in sharing our Sarah stories. And there were many, many stories told! Sarah was a very social person with an adventurous spirit. She always had a trip on the horizon and dinner with friends on the calendar.

To have an opportunity to see her and say goodbye was wonderful. I spent two days, off and on, at the hospital. Her large group of friends and family took over part of the ICU waiting room and we all took turns going to her room to talk to her. We weren’t sure she could hear us, so maybe it was just for our benefit, but we each wanted her to know she was not alone and we loved her.

Then it was time. Again, in accordance with Sarah’s directives, surgical transplant teams prepped patients to receive her organs. Surrounded by family and a few close friends, Sarah was removed from life-support and left us. But she lives on in the lives she saved with her organ donation. And she lives on in the hearts of all of us who shared laughs, tears, adventures, and life with our beloved Sarah.

DW:  Had you experienced other deaths in your personal life before this person died?

EM:  Yes. I’ve had many people die during my life, some expected, some even hoped for so their pain would end. Others, so sudden it took my breath away. However, Sarah’s death was the first time I’d had someone taken away by the actions of another person. Someone yet to be held accountable for killing my friend. And that makes her death so different from all the others. It makes it much harder to find closure and peace. It took much longer to extricate myself from the soul wrenching sadness which accompanies death.

DW:  Were people supportive of your grief or did they shy away from you when you were grieving?

EM:  Being an introvert, I shy away from people when I am grieving; my natural inclination is to curl into a protective cocoon. That said, those I did share Sarah’s death with were quite supportive.

DW:  Is there anything you wish you’d done differently with Sarah?

EM:  Yes and no. No, because when we talked and when we were together, we were our authentic selves. We had great conversations. We agreed to disagree. We laughed until our sides hurt at the stupidest of jokes. We went on adventures together. We ate fantastic food and drank amazing wine together. The best part was she was a dear friend of both myself and my husband, so all of the above was times three, not just two. And I am not alone in my sorrow; my husband’s heart also still aches for our friend.

The only thing I would do differently is to do more. More emails. More text. More phone calls. More adventures. And, most especially, many more evenings in the princess chairs, wearing our plastic tiaras while my husband and her special friend David poured us wine and created culinary masterpieces for us to enjoy. Much, much more of that.

DW:  Was Sarah buried or cremated?

EM:  According to her directives, she was cremated after her organs were donated.

DW:  Did you learn anything about the grieving process you’d like to share?

EM:  I’ve lived far from my family and friends for much of my adult life. When someone died, my husband was supportive, but since he didn’t know them as well, he did not grieve as I did. Sarah’s death was different in that we grieved together. We cried together. We still share our memories of her and laugh together. We are both still affected by our long enduring friendship with her and the tragedy of having her ripped away by a nameless, faceless person.

DW:  Were any songs played at the memorial service that were important to this person?

EM:  We were unable to attend the memorial service, but I can guarantee there were more than a few songs by Prince played. Sarah loved life and she loved Prince. I’m sure she greeted Prince and is dancing the cosmos with him. And he’s loving it. 

DW: Thank you so much for sharing your experience with me on the blog. 

Question for my readers? Do you have an advance directive? If not, what are you waiting for? Here's the link to get one.