This weekend’s word that Sesame Street-style characters–and specifically, the Sesame Muppet called Elmo–will be enlisted by the U.S. State Department to fight extremism in Pakistan would probably be welcome news to Arthur E. Benjamin. Benjamin’s a wealthy, slightly eccentric L.A. businessman who was a big-time sponsor of the just-completed Dallas International Film Festival. Strolling the festival’s red carpet with Peter Fonda and Larry Hagman Friday night, Benjamin paused to say that he and his gal pal (her name is Sundays Hunt) couldn’t decide whether the festival’s best flick was Elevate or Being Elmo.
Seeing Elmo, it seems, had a major impact on Benjamin (whose uncle had a hand in turning around United Artists in the 1960s). In fact, Benjamin explained, he’s been fashioning his own “Muppet” out of a pocket square ever since the screening–he calls his little guy “Quentin”–and occasionally communicating with Sundays with it. To demonstrate, he pulled a purple handkerchief out of his suit coat and showed what he did after a DFW cop stopped him for “running a yellow light” that the cop thought was red. “I asked him, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ” Benjamin recalled in a strange pinched little voice, making “Quentin” talk. The cop let him skate, I think Benjamin said–maybe because it was just all too weird.
