Story Time With Mr. Crocket

Ever reminisced about a children's TV show you loved as a kid, gone back to watch an episode, and suddenly realized that the whole thing is nothing but raw nightmare fuel?

Writer/director Brandon Espy (We Follow You) said he was inspired by his eldest son. "He's obsessed by kids' shows," he said, and obsessed is no understatement. "I couldn't break his stare when he was watching them. It was almost like he was trapped in this other world." One day, like all parents, he lost his temper and yelled at his son, “and then I went to sleep and then had a dream that was, oh boy, what if that kids’ show host whupped my ass in my sleep?”

That's how he came up with Mr. Crocket, the Mister Rogers-esque host of an old TV show, Mr. Crocket's World, who is so devoted to looking after abandoned kids that even the grave won't stop him – and woe betide any adult who doesn't learn a lesson about parental responsibility.

For the look of the show within the movie, he was inspired by favorites from his own childhood – Reading Rainbow, Picture Pages, and the old McDonaldland. Much as he loved it all as a kid, "when you look back at that now, everything looks pretty creepy," Espy said. That may be perfect for a horror movie setting, but he quickly realized that his menace couldn't simply be a monster. "For a parent to bring this VHS into the home, it couldn't just be a creepy-looking person. He has to teach them lessons, and he has to seem like he's safe in general."

That definitely applies to Elvis Nolasco. Best known for gritty performances in equally gritty shows like Godfather of Harlem and American Crime, he was immediately attracted to the nuances of Mr. Crocket, as well as how much fun the part could be to play. “I wanted to make sure that there was always this quality, this understanding that everything he's doing has a lot of meaning and purpose for Mr. Crocket, and that he wasn't just doing it for the hell of it.”

That made playing opposite Mr. Crocket a very different experience for the kids and adults in the cast. Kristolyn Lloyd (The Bold and the Beautiful) plays Rhonda, a woman desperately trying to retrieve her son from Mr. Crocket's tender clutches, while Ayden Gavin (Big George Foreman) plays Major, his latest play pal. Gavin explained, “I didn't really have to do much, because I'm already a joyful person. ... I always thought of him as a dad in the script.”

Lloyd definitely couldn't say the same for her character. “Watching my husband get mutilated, Crocket is a form of insanity for me.” However, she found Rhonda to be the anti-Crocket. “I like that there’s this pure agenda behind her – not just to get her son, but to save other kids.”

Nolasco praised the script by Espy and Carl Reid for giving all the characters space to be rounded and complex. However, he found many of the contradictions of Mr. Crocket in his costume, as designed by Espy: a warm, fuzzy vest, a yellow shirt with oversized collars and a messy bow tie, and slacks hiked up to his bellybutton. “It really just put me in the world, and I couldn't see myself fitting in any other world. Even if I was just going to grab a cup of coffee on the set, I felt that I need to get back to the stage.” Yet no wardrobe item connected him to Mr. Crocket quite as much as his white shoes. “Shoes mean a lot to a lot of folks,” he said. “They certainly mean a lot to me [and] there was something about putting on those white shoes that was, 'This is the ground. This is where he's grounded.' Having the right, specific shoes really brought everything that was above together.”

Mr. Crocket is streaming on Hulu now.

Mr. Crocket

USA, 2024, 88 min.
World premiere

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