Behold, The Many Tragedies Of Being Big Bird

It’s hard out here for a Bird.

A new documentary about everyone’s favourite Sesame Street resident (deal with it, Elmo) has revealed the many burdens that come with personifying a giant yellow bird.

In I Am Big Bird, 81-year-old puppeteer Caroll Spinney shares his tear-jerking experiences from behind that big-beaked mask, the New York Post reports.

The tears came as depression struck in the midst of his divorce and during the funeral of legendary Muppet creator Jim Henson.

Spinney also reportedly recounts in the documentary how difficult it is for him to interact with the other cast members, on account of his huge, isolating suit.

The puppeteer does have a message of inspiration though: "“No matter how black a day, if you can just hold on, the sun will eventually come out for you,” he says in the doco.

Here’s a particularly bizarre nugget from I Am Big Bird: Spinney was supposed to travel on the doomed Space Shuttle Challenger as Big Bird, in order to make the children of America aware of NASA’s exploits, but the suit was too big to fit onboard. Instead, schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe took his place. The shuttle exploded 73 seconds after take-off.

Oh, and apparently Spinney and Barack Obama are ninth-cousins, twice removed.

We’ve got to see this documentary.

It premieres in America next week, with an official Australian release to hopefully follow in the near future. (It played the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2014.)

In the meantime, if you want to similarly weep like Big Bird, here's Spinney's rendition of "It's Not Easy Bein' Green" from Henson's memorial.