The Puppetry and Violence of Casper Kelly’s Killer Mascot ‘Buddy’ [Sundance Interview]

The filmmaker behind twisted sitcom parody “Too Many Cooks” is back with another dark voyage into the absurd underbelly of familiar television fare: Buddy.

Writer/Director Casper Kelly takes aim at kids’ shows, blending Barney with Pee-Wee, with a dash of Howdy Doody and Dora the Explorer, in a horror-comedy with a cuddly but murderous mascot.

“The end for me was the idea of living in the world of the show,” Kelly tells Bloody Disgusting at the Sundance premiere. “As a child, I would watch a show and think they lived in that world. I would think about things like, how come we never see the bathrooms? Where do they sleep? What happens if they don’t want to do the storyline that day? Are they forced to do it? You know what I mean? I thought that was life. That becomes a metaphor for other things in our lives.”

Buddy employs a unique structure designed to place viewers directly in the unsettling but seemingly wholesome set of the mascot’s television series. So much so that it maintains a wholesome facade, only revealing the cracks slowly.

Kelly strikes a delicate balance, not tipping the scales too far into absurdity too early. The filmmaker established this with one key rule: “Don’t make it satirical. Play it as straight as humanly possible. There was an earlier incarnation of Buddy where his eyes looked crazy, like he looked like a crazy person. I’m like, ‘No. He needs to look comforting, just like a real show.’ If you’re going to have a show and then start messing with it, I, personally, that’s my taste, is play it very straight of what the show, a real show.”

As for Buddy himself, it took a talented crew to bring him to life on screen. Three mascot suits, many of which get put through the bloody wringer here, inhabited by suit actor Sergey Zhuravsky.

Kelly has endless praise for Zhuravsky’s physical performance, and looked to one beloved kids’ show, in particular, as an example when addressing Buddy’s dialogue.