So by that point Sesame Street was already legendary. So were you out by the time you joined the staff?
Well, it’s more levels. I already had my life partner, the love of my life. We weren’t living together. All our friends knew, but I don’t think I was professionally out.
[Saltzman pauses in thought. I don’t have to ask why. The “love of his life” was acclaimed editor Arnold Glassman, who edited films like Frailty and The Celluloid Closet. The two were together more than 20 years before Glassman’s death in 2003.]
I think I was cautiously out. I remember not inviting Arnie to the first Christmas parties, you know. But then I have memories of bringing him to beach house parties with everybody. I think during Sesame Street was when I came completely out. By ’86 we had an apartment together. My father knew. There was no hiding it.
Ok, so we have to address—that’s the big question, right? In the writer’s room, you’re all adults. Were you thinking of Bert & Ernie as a gay couple? Did that question ever come up?
I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked “are Bert & Ernie lovers?” And that, coming from a preschooler was fun. And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them. The other thing was, more than one person referred to Arnie & I as “Bert & Ernie.”
That’s telling.
Yeah, I was Ernie. I look more Bert-ish. And Arnie as a film editor—if you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldn’t that be perfect? Bert with his paper clips and organization? And I was the jokester. So it was the Bert & Ernie relationship, and I was already with Arnie when I came to Sesame Street. So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them, but as a loving couple. I wrote sketches… Arnie’s OCD would create friction with how chaotic I was. And that’s the Bert & Ernie dynamic.
So you’re saying that Bert & Ernie became analogs for your relationship in a lot of ways?
Yeah. Because how else? That’s what I had in my life, a Bert & Ernie relationship. How could it not permeate? The things that would tick off Arnie would be the things that would tick off Bert. How could it not? I will say that I would never have said to the head writer, “oh, I’m writing this, this is my partner and me.” But those two, Snuffalupagus, because he’s the sort of clinically depressed Muppet…you had characters that appealed to a gay audience. And Snuffy, this depressed person nobody can see, that’s sort of Kafka! It’s sort of gay closeted too.
The secret friend…because at that point Snuffy was Big Bird’s secret friend. It was later on he out and everyone realized he actually existed.
That happened while I was there, yeah. But they haven’t…the New Yorker cover was kind of vindication, but there’s not a Bert & Ernie float in the Pride Parade.
We wish!
And because it was always diversity, diversity, it’s a shame [Sesame Steet] wasn’t leading the charge. Here’s a story about pushing the gay envelope of Sesame Street…
EXCLUSIVE: Are Bert & Ernie a couple? We finally have an answer…
Amber 