David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

[StingX]

Hey LazyTown fans,

GetLazy will soon be doing an interview with David Matthew Feldman, the puppeteer and voice for Mayor Milford Meanswell! He was part of the original television cast and has been portraying the Mayor since the very beginning. David is also known for his work on the PBS show Between the Lions and for his original series, Oh Noah!, also on PBS. It is up to you, the GetLazy community, to come up with the questions that will be asked during the interview!

Please submit your questions for him to answer by replying to this thread. You can ask him anything that you would like, whether about LazyTown, his other work, or anything else you can think of, as long as the question is appropriate and not overly personal. I will try to cover all of the questions asked, but I can not guarantee that we will have the time to answer everything. David will have the opportunity to reject any questions that he does not want to answer, but that has never been a problem. We plan to conduct the interview on July 8th, so please have your submissions in by Friday, July 3rd.

This time around, I will be doing an experiment with how the questions are presented to the interviewee. If you would like, you have the option of recording yourself asking your question(s), which will be delivered to David instead of me delivering it. So if you want to do that, send your recordings to me via a private message, but also make sure to still post the questions in the thread so that others can see it. I want to emphasize that this is only an experiment, and it may not end up happening.

David has done some text based interviews about LazyTown before, so you can check those out to learn more about him or to use them as a springboard for your own questions.
Interview with LazyTownPoint
Interview with Mark Valenti

[LT-Fan]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

I have some questions here:
How did he got the role of the Mayor?
Who created the voice of the Mayor? Was he told to do so by Magnus or was it his idea to make his voice sound like this?
What does he like about LazyTown in general?
When the mayor is displayed with whole body, is someone else assisting during that shot?
Did he ever had any experience with voice acting? I know he did "Between the Lions" etc. where he was a puppeteer.
How is the filming process done? Is he doing the voice first and is playing the puppet after? Or the other way around? Is he playing while someone else is talking his lines which were spoken over later?
What would he do if he was a mayor?
Maybe someone else had this questions too.
Thank you in advance.

[katyamariette]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

I have a question: What is your favorite moment as Mayor Meanswell and what is your plans for the future?

[SollaMega]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

Questions:
1. Do you like your job with Mayor?
2. When did you start work with LazyTown and how?
3. Do you want to make new Lazy Town episodes?
4. What episodes was hard to you with playing MM?
5. Do you like sing some of LT songs?
6. What kind of shows are harder "Lazy Town" or "Between The Lions"?
Thanks! Parviz from Tajikistan!

[LazyDolly]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

I love the Mayor! Hes one of my favorite characters! Hes kinda goofy but has a lot of heart.

Questions:

1) What puts you in the mood to do the mayors voice. Is he a combination of people / characters you know ?

2) The Mayor is one of the biggest puppets on the show so is he very heavy? Has your arm ever hurt holding him up for long periodes of time?

3) The Mayor much like the other puppets on Lazytown seem to be made out of some type of Rubbery / Silicone rubber material. Have you ever been working with the puppet and found that the rubber is starting to crack / break down around the mouth or edges? Do you know how often they replace the puppets per season ?

4) Since they are Silicon rubber puppets do you find this type of material easier to work with when it comes to getting more expressions from the characters face vs an old school traditional foam Muppet.

5) Do they ever let you keep some of the puppets you work with and if not do you wish they would have given you a Mayor puppet to keep?

[Sportastephanie]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

:majorhouse:

[Glanni's Girl]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

Before I forget to ask ANOTHER cast member,

If he remembers, what was the last ever scene or last ever episode shot? or I guess what was the last scene he shot?

Was there a goodbye party? I mean, they must have known the studio was up for sale.
Ever seen anyone go as the Mayor for Halloween?

[LazyPooky]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

I have a few questions here:

- What is the normal weight of the Mayor as a full puppet (head/body)
- Do you train your arms to lift and work with the Mayor or other puppets
- What is/was the maximum time you can work in a consecutive period of time (probably a few minutes) on the set, playing the Mayor
**already asked in a sort of the same way by LazyDolly ;)

- It looked so uncomfortable working on the set, laying on the ground, did you ever hurt your back or neck
- Did you ever felt the urge to dress up as the Mayor
- You seem like a nice guy, are you any different during the work on the set. Are you hard to direct, do you want to take control when you have to do an important part of the script
- Were the (mostly silly) jokes the Mayor made already written in the script or did you have any influence on that and also added during the work on the set
- If they asked you to do two more LazyTown seasons of 13 epsiodes each, starting next year, would you do it?
- Do you still have contact with most of the people from LazyTown, or only a few
- The actor/pupperteer crew was almost the same except the ones for the role of Stephanie and Trixie. Did they fit well according to you?
- Was there a hugh difference working with Chloe compared to Julianna?
- Did you ever wanted to sing a song on the episodes too, as the Mayor? what was the reason this never happened?

[Frances]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

Seems like my posts always get taken down :(. I'm justa guy who finds stuff and lets you know about it...but I'll try to redeem myself with a nice question for Mr Feldman. Okay, Can you give a breif history of puppeteering in America? Did it have roots in vaudville or further back in time?

[StingX]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

Update: The deadline for question submissions will be Friday, July 3rd, so please have your questions posted by then!

[StingX]

David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

Just as a quick reminder, the submission period will close tomorrow, so now is your chance to post your questions. It will close when I get home from work at approximately 10:00pm MT

[StingX]

Re: David Matthew Feldman Interview with GetLazy (Submissions)

The submissions are now closed; thanks for participating!

There is a bit of an unusual circumstance with this interview that I want you to be aware of. You asked many questions related to the puppets of LazyTown, which I think is great. However, I want to to have interviews done with more puppeteers in the future, and want them to have some questions to answer as well. What I am going to do is make sure to ask all of the questions related directly to the Mayor puppet as well as some other puppet ones that were posted, but I am going to be saving some for other times. Basically, don't take it personally if some of your questions aren't asked.