SNOOK THE THREE TOED TREE SLOTH & CO.

By Julia Nasser

“So are you ready for the master plan?” asked an effervescent Mitchell Kriegman when I met him for an early evening cocktail last week. “Ready?” I scoffed, “I already have my pen out.”
For anyone who hasn’t heard already, this man Kriegman, who arrived in shorts and carrying his shoes, is the mastermind behind the locally produced hit television show, “It’s a Big Big World.” It’s a playful program that takes place in the Amazon in the largest tree on earth, airs 2700 times across the nation each week and stars Snook, a benevolent three-toed tree sloth and his eccentric crew of jungle companions.
Mitchell, who started off his career at “Saturday Night Live,” is also responsible for some of my old favorites in kid’s television (“Clarissa Explains It All,” “Ren and Stimpy” and “Doug”), as well as Emmy Award winning programs like “Bear in the Blue House.” Within the techie world, he’s known for inventing a cutting edge technology known as Shadowmation, in which live bunraku style puppetry is combined with computer generated animation.
Recently, after years in New York, he moved out here and built a blue-screen production facility in an old airport hangar in Wainscott and began shooting. A year later, it’s one of the top ten children’s television shows in the world. PBS has signed on for a second series (40 episodes) and a post production house at Stony Brook University is in the works, where he hopes to innovate a game-engine type technology to his ever evolving Shadowmation process.
Kriegman also has plans to expand the facility in Wainscott, as well as his staff.
“We built it. We proved it. Now I just want to invite people to, well, to join the party,” he said with an explosive chuckle. This was his purpose when he placed an ad in Dan’s Papers recently, one of the moves that sparked our third interview this year. Hoping to appeal to wary Labor Day city dwellers reluctant to return to their cubicles, the ad calls for all writers, producers, editors and creative types to join this creative empire.
“I want to get the idea out to people in the industry, locals and perhaps some people with houses out here who don’t want to get back to the city come Labor Day……to encourage them to cross that line, think outside the box……I wanted to say, hey, come join us.”
During our meeting, he also discussed two new projects in the works, also to be produced in Wainscott Studios, including a musical children’s series about a band of indeed rocker puppets for PBS. Kriegman will help write the music. They will be like the Monkeys,” he continued. “And what a better way to bridge a generational gap than music?”
The second project, which is less concrete at this point, is a feature film targeted at teenagers, which he likened to a cross between Sin City and Heathers. At this point during our meeting, Kriegman abruptly shifted subjects. What he wanted to talk about that day was the bigger picture. Something he calls the Third Wave. This is how I understand it.
The Third Wave refers to a new era in the Hamptons community. The First Wave were the farmers, people who lived and worked off the land here and had real ties to the area. The Second Wave were affluent summer people, who built up this place, put in a ton of money each summer and leave by winter.
Now comes the Third Wave, which consists of people who have moved out here from the city with creative ideas and “sustainable, respectful, Third Wave businesses.” He sees this as a way to bridge the gap between these distinct groups and hopes to use Wainscott Studios for this purpose.
Kriegman also has big plans for Snook which entail an environmental outreach programs on a local level and through PBS. This gentle sloth, whom Kriegman describes as “an aware, sensitive creature, a surfer type, the kindergarten teacher from Mendocino County,” will lead an all-inclusive kids club, an outreach program in schools, and a pilot program to educate kids about the environment in simple ways. Snook will also host a special on Earth Day with a live tour through our community, and work with local forward thinking environmental organizations.
“There’s no Smokey The Bear character around today when we need him most. And who would be better to fill this spot than a slow-thinking sloth?
“I imagine it like An Inconvenient Truth for children, a way to teach basic environmental ideas……Non-political and positive stuff that no one’s going to argue with. Simple stuff that’s about easy change rather than sacrifice.”
Besides this, Kriegman plans to add two new characters to the crew of “Big Big World,” a polar bear and a whale, thus adding the Arctic region to his now jungle-based setting.
“Little by little we’re going to build the whole world.” Kriegman told me.
“I would expect no less, ” I answered.
“I work backwards,” Kriegman said of his process. “It’s kind of like reverse engineering. My process is finding the problems I have solutions for. Starting with the ideal, then finding the needs that they would serve…… I find a little niche, I make a home and then I expand it……Unconventional ideas are awarded at the fringes and applied to the center.”
And that is surely what he is doing — building this ever expanding creative empire and as I expected, it’s going to be phenomenal. So, in a year or so, perhaps a few months, you’ll likely hear from me again. Because there’s something about the Kriegman brain that keeps me interested. “If I could see the lines, I would color inside them,” he said later.
At this point, the sunny late August afternoon had shifted into a chilly evening, and a fall breeze settled in. So after we jabbed a bit and he wavered between lighthearted small talk and his philosophical ruminations, we began to pack up.
“That all sound great,” I said as we wrapped up our meeting, “now I just have one more question……”
“Sure,” he said, eager to tell me about his plans for a new invention, or starting a restaurant, or a character he dreamed up while I was in the restroom.
“What if you run out of ideas?” I ask.
Kriegman looked out over the water, a bit pensive, then snapped his attention back towards me with a mischievous grin.
“That won’t ever happen. It’s my saving grace.”