Boxed In

One look at Paul Fusco’s IMDB page makes clear that he has not worked on anything but ALF since the early 1990s. He has essentially played one character for most of the past 40 years.

It’s a good character, and given my elder millennial status, one that I remember fondly. I was one of the millions of people who loved ALF back in the late ’80s. But at what point do you realize, holy crap, you’ve backed yourself into a snarky alien corner?

A recent video from the channel Treehouse Detective put an interesting spin on this TV classic, that it reflects the work of a creative person who was only willing to serve up his skills in one specific way. ALF must not be treated like a puppet, and it cannot be clear that Fusco is hiding under the weird creature he created.

This high standard led to years of tension on the ALF set, as everyone needed to make way for Mr. Gordon Shumway, but it also made the production significantly more difficult, thanks to a set full of trap doors and an insanely long production process for a TV sitcom. The importance of keeping up the illusion meant that ALF was stuck in this house, and couldn’t appear in other settings. That ultimately stifled the show, killed its ratings, and led to its cancellation—a cancellation that, mind you, likely wouldn’t have happened if Fusco was willing to be more of a team player.

It also limited career opportunities for Fusco’s alien. Andrew Price, the mind behind the channel, described how Fusco’s exacting standards meant that he unwittingly turned down career opportunities for his creature. This Saturday Night Live anecdote, shared by Price, lays things out perfectly:

Fusco said he’d only do it if the studio audience couldn’t see the puppeteers, and they built a trench on the SNL stage to maintain the illusion throughout the taping. Can you imagine that? The SNL crew would need to build a bunch of tunnels underneath the sound stage. And then ALF would have to be off the magic trick to make it seem like he was a real guy, all for one single episode.

It’s pretty obvious if you look at it from a distance: Fusco didn’t turn them down; instead, he was so unwilling to lower his standards that he forced open doors to slam shut.

For those not familiar with the history of ALF, the TV show ended up being a huge hit, but its ratings dropped off sharply during its fourth season, which led the show to get canceled on a cliffhanger. And not just any cliffhanger, either—one in which ALF was taken away by the government just before he’s about to leave Earth, traumatizing a generation of school-age ALF fans.

By the time Fusco got the chance to close the loop with Project ALF, a TV special that aired on ABC six freaking years after NBC dumped the show, the dream of ALF was already dead.

In the years since, Fusco has only been able to bring it back as a nostalgia ploy, most recently in 2023 when Ryan Reynolds acquired rights to the show as a sponsorship play. Not exactly dead, but not quite the cultural force it seemed like Mr. Shumway was on his way to becoming in 1987.

This is not like an unknown story in the history of television, and ALF’s arc is not unique, especially to the ’80s, where gimmicky characters like Pee-Wee Herman, Ed Grimley, Ernest P. Worrell, and Mr. T dominated the zeitgeist. But Fusco’s tendency to encase his character in amber and pretend that he wasn’t a puppeteer holding a puppet at the end of the day? That stands out.

Framing can be a really useful tool to think about your own approach to creativity, and I found myself thinking bigger-picture after watching Price’s video. As a creative person, I have often taken the philosophy of saying no more than I say yes, and that has led me to a lot of interesting times that I’ve said no.

I’ve never done a podcast or really played seriously in video, for example, and I’ve avoided paywalling my content for the most part. When lots of creators found success with social media or big platforms, I’ve largely stayed die-hard indie. Other creative folks, I’m sure, have their own version of this, the lines they won’t cross out of fear they might stifle or destroy their vision.

But there’s being passionate about a vision, and there’s letting that vision get in the way of what you’re actually trying to do.

It’s worth noting that Fusco himself has said that, no, all the horror stories about ALF’s production weren’t as bad as everyone says they were. As he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012, amid hints of a revival that never came to pass:

It was just the nature of the beast. There was no way we could have made it go any further or any faster. So no, I think it was frustrating that it would take so long, but people got paid for what they did. Despite what people thought, that there was a lot of tension on set, there really wasn’t.

(The late Max Wright, who played the put-upon Willie Tanner and who once reportedly got into a fist-fight with the character, might have disagreed with that sentiment.)

I think there’s a universe where one might be too close to their creation and cannot look at it objectively, and that causes the creation to ultimately turn on its creator. Or maybe it makes it so our successful work doesn’t have a sustainable economic upside.

In a world where successful people are always looking for paths to success that are never guaranteed, we should not have so much pride in our work that we make that work difficult for others to latch onto.

That makes it way too easy to dismiss.