Out of This World: An Oral History of ALF

[Ubiquitous]

At any other time, NBC president Brandon Tartikoff might not have been
inclined to meet with an unknown magician and puppeteer named Paul
Fusco about a television series. Along with partner Tom Patchett (The
Bob Newhart Show), Fusco was pitching ALF, a sitcom about an alien from
the planet Melmac who crashes into the garage of the suburban Tanner
family and proceeds to ingratiate himself into their lives.

On the surface, it was a primetime puppet series, a genre that had
never been handled with any grace beyond Jim Henson’s The Muppet Show.
But NBC had recently made history—all nine of their 1983-84 season
pilots (including Manimal) had failed, a first for any network—and
executives needed to prove their worth to their corporate parents at
General Electric.



Fusco won their trust. Sort of. "I didn’t sell the show," he tells
mental_floss. "ALF did.'

While ALF won over a conference room at NBC, critics had a mixed
response: ALF was alternately referred to as "a Teddy Ruxpin bear that
[looks like he] was horribly disfigured by a revolving door" and an
"alien puppet dog." But viewers were captivated by Fusco’s performance
and ALF became a cultural phenomenon. Dolls, backpacks, toothbrushes,
and other licensed material rang up hundreds of millions in sales; the
show reached the top 10 in the Nielsen ratings; the puppet took up a
semi-permanent residence on Hollywood Squares.

But ALF’s ascension into sitcom history was not without its bumps. The
cast was forced to navigate a set that contained trap doors for Fusco
to work in while operating the puppet, turning the family’s living room
into a war zone. NBC, which quickly understood ALF’s appeal to
children, grew concerned that a beer-drinking, cat-eating alien might
be a bad influence; Max Wright, a classically trained theater actor who
portrayed the beleaguered Willie Tanner, became so disenchanted with
the role that he was prone to storming off the set and later referred
to his experience as "very grim."

Despite the difficult production, ALF continues to be a pop culture
standard. In honor of the show’s 30th anniversary, mental_floss asked
Fusco and other cast and crew members to discuss the show’s
complicated logistics, the on-set rules for guest actors, and perhaps
the greatest achievement of all: outselling Bon Jovi posters.

I: ALIEN LIFE FORM

A communications major, Paul Fusco worked his way through college by
taking on engagements involving magic, puppetry, and ventriloquism.
Believing television was made for puppetry—the screen acts as the
stage, with the margins cutting off the illusion-breaking presence of
human performers—Fusco made a deal with Showtime in the early 1980s for
a series of specials. Coming out of their development was a character
Fusco decided to set aside for later use—a rancorous, beady-eyed alien
he dubbed ALF.

Paul Fusco (Co-Creator, ALF): I had the idea for the show and Disney
wanted to buy it. If you worked for Disney, they owned everything. They
owned you, lock, stock, and barrel. I couldn’t deal with something
called Walt Disney’s ALF, so I turned them down.

Tom Patchett (Co-Creator, Writer, ALF): I had worked on a show called
Buffalo Bill with Dabney Coleman. The lead character was like ALF in
terms of being brazen. My manager told me a puppeteer named Paul Fusco
wanted to meet me because he liked the show. I had worked on two Muppet
movies already, and I thought, "Gosh, I don't know."

Fusco: Buffalo Bill was in line with my sense of humor. We partnered
and formed Alien Productions. It really came down to: Do you want to
bet on yourself or not?

Patchett: I remember meeting Paul in [manager] Bernie Brillstein's
offices. Bernie didn't know Paul at the time. This was before. He got
very upset. "What's this f*cking puppet doing here?" He represented Jim
Henson and didn't want any other puppets around. Then he saw ALF and
said to me, "Tom, I have one word for you: Merchandising." That's show
biz.

Fusco: I would drag him out at parties for friends and family, working
on him. Once I went to a comedy club in New Haven just to test him out.
The response would be remarkable. I knew the character was working.

Patchett: The ALF I saw was very close to the one we wound up with. He
nailed it right out of the box. I've worked with Henson and Frank Oz,
who was particularly brilliant. I've seen the best, and I think Paul is
right up there.

Fusco: ALF’s humor came out of him not knowing any better. He wasn’t
politically correct, but he was like Sophia on The Golden Girls—the
remarks came out of honesty. That was always the premise. He was never
mean.

Steve Lamar (Associate Producer): Bernie managed Tom and also Jim
Henson. Paul needed someone who was TV-savvy. I think if you knew Tom’s
history in sitcoms, he knew where to take it. Paul knew what the puppet
could and couldn’t do.

Patchett: I would say Paul created the character and I created the
show. I was fortunate enough to have worked with the Muppets and knew
what it would take to make it believable.

Fusco: We pitched ALF to a lot of companies for two or three years. I
was working in Los Angeles and went to meetings in my spare time. We
didn’t want it to be saccharine. It had to have a certain sensibility.

After failing to arrive at a deal with other studios, Patchett,
Brillstein, and Fusco took their idea to NBC, which was still smarting
from a dire fall season and a string of failures. Thanks to Patchett,
they got an audience with president Brandon Tartikoff, the man who
brought Cheers, Family Ties, and other blue-chip programs to the
station. It did not go as planned.

Patchett: I had a commitment for a pilot at NBC, so I took Paul over
there with this idea for a series we had thrashed out.

Fusco: We set up a meeting with the VIPs at NBC. It was Brandon, Leslie
Lurie, and Warren Littlefield. I walked in carrying a brown garbage bag
with ALF in it, but I didn’t tell them that. I asked where I could do
my laundry.

Lamar: It was probably a Hefty bag.

Patchett: You can't pitch a primetime show where the lead is a puppet
unless you see it.

Fusco: We go into this conference room and sit at this long table. I
threw the bag under it. Brandon was at the head and I was next to him,
with Tom next to me. We go into the pitch—alien crashes into this
house, lives with the family, it’s funny. And I could see in their eyes
that we’re losing them. Bernie whispers to me, "Take him out."

Patchett: There's no way you can look at what Paul does with the
character and not laugh.

Fusco: I pull him out and sit him next to me. People were just silent.
They didn’t expect it. Bernie said, "Listen, before you guys pass on
the show, we wanted you to meet ALF."

Patchett: That was absolutely the thing that put it over the top.

Fusco: So ALF is sitting there and not saying anything. He looks around
the room, sizing everyone up. He looks at Brandon, picks his nose, and
wipes it on Brandon’s jacket. The room went crazy.

Patchett: He just started raining insults at people.

Fusco: Brandon started talking to ALF and making eye contact. That's
when I knew I had him. He was asking me, "Why should we put you on our
network?" I said, "Your network is falling apart!" They had done
Manimal, Supertrain—ALF just tore him a new one.

With a green light from Tartikoff, ALF shot its pilot episode in the
spring of 1986.

Fusco: The premise was essentially the house guest who wouldn’t leave.
He’s a lonely person who can’t go back home. You had to have some sort
of feeling for him.

Patchett: We talked about a lot of different ideas. Should he be with a
senator? You can't have him out in public. He'd be captured or killed.

Fusco: Tom got Max Wright from Buffalo Bill. He was the perfect choice.
ALF and Max had great chemistry onscreen.

Patchett: Max absolutely made you forget ALF was a puppet.

Lamar: I sat in on a lot of the casting sessions. Paul would be there
as ALF. One woman who came to read for Kate Tanner, he kind of verbally
sparred with her. As an actor, you had to be able to give it back to
him, and this woman couldn’t. Anne Schedeen [Kate Tanner] could, and
that’s why she was cast.

Patchett: Casting is always about throwing things in the air. We talked
about seeing if John Candy was available, but ultimately ALF was the
show. He was the funniest one.

Lamar: I’m not sure if anyone else has said this, but Brandon Tartikoff
was going to pass on the show after we shot the pilot. But his
daughter, who was three or four at the time, loved it. That’s what made
him say, "Okay, let’s give it a chance."

Almost immediately, the logistical issues of a single-puppet, multi-
camera sitcom began to present themselves. Fusco was fiercely
protective of preserving ALF’s integrity as a real character.

Fusco: We tried to do one or two episodes in front of a live audience,
and it just didn’t work. There was so much delay between set-ups that
we just couldn’t do it.

Dean Cameron (Actor, "Robert Sherwood"): I did three episodes as the
daughter’s boyfriend. When I got there, I got this little handout, this
little sheet. At the top it said, "Call him ALF. Do not call him a
puppet."

Lisa Bannick (Supervising Producer): It was old-school magician stuff.
We were told, "ALF is from the planet Melmac." And that’s what we’d say
to press.

Benji Gregory (Actor, "Brian Tanner"): He was super-protective of ALF’s
image. If anyone in the cast was asked, he wanted us to seriously say,
"He’s an alien.'

Fusco: It goes back to my magic background, not to give away secrets.
It’s not rocket science, but people didn’t always know how it was done.
I’d get mail saying, "Hi, ALF, my dad says you’re not real, but I know
you are." They want to believe, so I did it for the kids.

Victor Fresco (Staff Writer): I think it’s the same way you don’t talk
about the existence or non-existence of Santa Claus. You don’t want to
burst a childhood bubble.

Lamar: Early on, we had an actor, Michu Meszaros, who was a little
person in an ALF suit. He was just in the pilot and in a couple of
other episodes, but not as much as people seem to remember.

Cameron: Watching them do it was pretty amazing. There were three
people—one did the head and arm, the other did the other arm, and then
there was a guy who did the remote control for the eyebrows. They were
just masters.

Lamar: A lot of times, his feet would be propped up on the coffee
table, and sometimes I would be the one controlling them, making them
wiggle via radio control. It gave you the impression of a full body.

Gregory: Paul’s wife, Linda, her job was to look at all the monitors
and make sure you couldn’t see anyone’s arms.

Lamar: Lisa Buckley and Bob Fappiano were the other two. They were
amazing. We once did a Risky Business take-off with ALF sliding in
frame in a white T-shirt. It’s really, really hard to do that with two
people right next to one another.

Tom Fichter (Art Director): They had to be like Siamese twins. I think
Lisa and Bob wound up getting married.

Paul Miller (Director): The set was full of trenches. You’d have to
open and close them so Paul could get underneath. Every time the script
said, "ALF crosses the room," you’d go, "Oh, god, there’s an hour."

Lamar: There were certain places where the trenches lived, like behind
the couch, but you’re always adding and subtracting. We eventually just
wore the stage out.

Gregory: One time, Anne came out of the kitchen and fell right into one
of the holes. She got pissed.

Fichter: People fell in them all the time. We’d name a hole after every
person who fell into it.

Miller: We actually shot it in a converted warehouse in Culver City
because of the fact they had to build the floor up four or five feet
for the trenches.

Bannick: We shot right next door to The Wonder Years.

Lamar: There was a whole world under that stage. The stagehands had
everything under there except a 7-Eleven. Snacks, mini-fridges, little
beds.

Fusco: It was uncomfortable, but there were no repetitive injuries.
There was no Chronic ALF Syndrome.

Patchett: I do remember getting a message from Steven Spielberg after
we shot the pilot. He wanted to see it to make sure there wasn't any
big resemblance to E.T. Apparently, he was satisfied.

II: OUT OF THIS WORLD

Airing opposite MacGyver and Kate & Allie, ALF premiered on September
22, 1986 and was immediately singled out for its distinctive approach
to the sitcom—one in which the lead character was literally not of this
earth.

Fusco: Critics were rough on it because we were on at 8 o’clock. It was
kind of, "What’s NBC thinking, putting on a puppet show at 8?" After
four or five episodes, a few of them started to say, "Listen to what
this thing is saying. It’s pretty funny."

Patchett: It was like, "Is this a joke?" It's a big primetime slot. But
it got its own following. Thanksgiving, Monday Night Football, whatever
it was, it held its own.

Fusco: I was very against anything sci-fi in the show. I didn’t want
people to buy into anything other than ALF being real.

Al Jean (Staff Writer): That was a rule I thought worked. [It] makes
ALF unique.

Fusco: Those episodes were constantly being pitched. One time, someone
floated the idea of ALF finding a ray gun, zapping Willie, and ending
up in another dimension.

Fusco: "La Cucaracha" was as far as we pushed it. It was kind of
believable—this bug hidden away in a bag of food.

Lamar: The giant cockroach episode, right. That was one Jerry Stahl
wrote.

Bannick: We can figure out where that one came from.

Fusco: We did an episode, "I’m Your Puppet," which gave ALF a puppet of
his own. That was written by Al Jean and Mike Reiss [The Simpsons], and
their original script was very dark, almost Twilight Zone-ish. It kind
of creeped people out.

Mike Reiss (Staff Writer):The dummy was made to look just like Paul
Fusco.

Jean: The puppet was certainly intended to be self-referential.

Reiss: Everyone seemed to realize this except Paul. He kept saying,
"This looks like someone. Jamie Farr?"

Fusco: I think people are reading into things a little. We did an
episode about ALF’s addiction to cotton. It wasn’t a reference to
anyone having an addiction on the show.

Lamar: We were not a huge hit, but we were winning our time slot. It
was different, and it was getting a lot of attention.

Fusco: Once we finished the first season, we got on a roll.

With ALF appealing to multiple demographics, it became apparent that
some of the character’s habits—ALF enjoyed a cold beer every so often,
and considered cats to be a delicacy—would have to be softened.

Fusco: In the pilot, ALF drinks a beer. He’s 200-something years old.
We got flak about that. "He’s a role model. He can’t be drinking beer."

Fresco: ALF was kind of your raunchy uncle.

Fusco: We did an episode where ALF was electrocuted when he tried to
turn the bathtub into a Jacuzzi. The following week, they made us do a
disclaimer. "Last week, we did a show … don’t try this at home." They
were just worried about liability.

Lamar: He was blow-drying his hair in the tub or something. We re-shot
it with an egg beater.

Fusco: Kids were duplicating what ALF was doing. It was kind of sad in
a way. Some kid put his cat in a microwave because ALF tried to do that
once. We had to be real careful.

Bannick: NBC left us alone for the most part. They had other problems.
But occasionally we’d get notes whenever we had an act break where ALF
was in some kind of peril. They’d say, "Kids will think ALF is dead.
You can’t do that." Look, he’s in TV Guide next week. They’re not going
to think he’s dead!

Fusco: The worst note I ever got was from Warren Littlefield, who
wanted ALF to be more Webster-like. What does that even mean?

Bannick: We shot one scene on the stage where ALF and Willie are
driving home in the car. And I got a phone call from someone at NBC
saying, "You can’t use that. We can see Jesus’s face in the folds of
Willie’s jacket." You could see something, but whether it was a beaver
or Groucho Marx—we did not reshoot it.

To help with the tedium of long shooting days, Fusco would often ad-lib
between takes while in character as ALF.

Fusco: I enjoyed doing it. It made him real in the moment.

Fresco: It takes about 30 seconds to fall into the idea that this
creature is real.

Gregory: Paul had everyone rolling all the time. He was hilarious.

Miller: You get used to the idea of directing a puppet.

Lamar: People would talk to ALF. "ALF, turn this way, turn that way."

Miller: Whenever he had the puppet, he was the character.

Fichter: The most difficult thing was when ALF had to reach across the
table for something, because there was no length of arm.

Lamar: Paul had a puppet just for rehearsal we called RALF, or
Repulsive Alien Life Form. He was kind of old and wrinkly.

Fichter: No one really brushed his fur. He was kind of wild-looking. He
really had a different personality. He’d look up actresses’ dresses and
get this shocked look on his face.

Jean: Paul would cut loose and the tattered puppet seemed like a
burned-out celebrity. It would make a great show now.

RALF wouldn't have cut it for the character's lucrative licensing
ventures. His poster outsold one featuring the rock band Bon Jovi, a
heady accomplishment in the mid-1980s. All told, ALF-related
merchandise rang up well over $250 million in sales in 1987; Coleco
sold $85 million dollars’ worth of plush ALFs alone.

Fusco: I turned down any kind of endorsement where ALF would be telling
someone to go out and buy beer or hamburgers. I turned down General
Mills, which wanted to do an ALF cereal.

Al Kahn (Then-Executive Vice President, Coleco): We did a billboard on
Sunset Boulevard to help raise awareness for the show.

Fusco: Budweiser wanted ALF. This was prior to Spuds MacKenzie.

Kahn: We had other categories besides plush—swimming pools, ride-ons.
He was a wise-ass with a sense of humor and it appealed to kids.

Cameron: They had an ALF pinball machine on the set. That was actually
a lot of fun.

Patchett: You can say it was a $100 million or whatever number, but we
got a fraction of that. Part of the advance for the merchandising
helped pay to produce the show.


Fusco: I turned down a lot of things, but there were some oversights in
the international market. Someone made an ALF wind sock. In Germany,
there was an imitation mayonnaise. Sometimes things slip through the
cracks.

With success came demands for ALF to appear as a guest for a variety of
shows and appearances, many of which proved problematic for Fusco and
his insistence on preserving the illusion.

Fresco: I do remember Paul doing phone calls for Make-a-Wish. He’d call
them at the hospital and talk to them as ALF.

Fusco: NBC wanted ALF to host Saturday Night Live. The home audience
wouldn’t have seen me, but the studio audience would have. They
couldn’t hide me, so I turned them down.

Patchett: People would be baffled. "Why can't you just bring him in and
do it?" Because it's more complicated than that. It would've been great
for ALF to do Saturday Night Live, but there's no way he could have.

Fusco: I turned down David Letterman because I didn’t think he was
going to go along with it. He’d have magicians on his show and kind of
egg them on.

Patchett: It was best for him to be behind things, like a desk.

Fusco: Jim Henson was a big fan of ALF and wanted him to do a Muppet
Show—the John Denver Christmas Special. He wanted to do something with
Kermit and Miss Piggy. It would’ve given me an opportunity to perform
with Jim and Frank Oz, but I turned it down because I didn’t want ALF
to be perceived as a Muppet.

Bannick: Paul hated Muppets. ALF was a little raggedy, and his worst
fear was people thinking he was part of Fraggle Rock.

Fusco: NBC was always after us to do these fall preview shows, these
awful specials. ALF Loves a Mystery. They were just tedious. I did do a
Matlock.

Patchett: ALF got invited to the White House by Nancy Reagan for the
1987 Christmas party. We set it all up so there was a special podium.
Afterward, Paul told me President Reagan said ALF was his favorite
show, which of course made me worry more about him.

III: ALIENATED

As ALF matured into a ratings success, it became increasingly difficult
to open up his limited world. He was an alien in hiding, which meant
minimal interaction with anyone outside of the Tanner family.

Fusco: It was very much a contained show. We would bring in characters
like Jody, who was blind, or a relative to try and expand it.

Fresco: It’s a very hard show to do. Your lead cannot interact with
anyone in the world but the four regulars.

Fusco: We were constantly looking for ways to not violate the rules of
the show but still meet other people. So one time, he met someone who
was drunk. And maybe they just hallucinated him. I think we got some
kind of award for that as a Very Special Episode.

Jean: I thought the biggest hurdle was that no one new could see ALF.
So once we did a Gilligan’s Island dream show and a show with a blind
person befriending him. We were already desperate for ideas.

Bannick: Paul and I co-wrote an episode featuring Willie’s brother with
the idea that might be a direction for a spin-off or another season.

Fusco: He was housebound, if you really think about it.

Gregory: How many scripts can you write with ALF stuck in the Tanners’s
house?

Bannick: When Anne Schedeen got pregnant, I got bombarded with ideas.
"What if ALF has to drive Kate to the hospital? What if ALF has to
babysit?" No, that’s ridiculous. Kate is not going to let an alien who
can’t walk across a room without breaking a lamp take care of her
child.

With a tedious production and few opportunities to explore their
characters outside of reacting to ALF’s antics, the cast was reportedly
not the happiest on television. That was especially true of Max Wright,
who found his tenure as a second banana to the furry lead character
increasingly tiresome.

Cameron: By the time I got there, the cast was over it.

Jean: The cast, I later heard, found it a very difficult experience
because of the danger of the open trenches that ALF moved around in.

Bannick: If they were unhappy, they sure were professional, because I
never heard about it.

Lamar: I think there were a lot of laughs early on, and as things
continued, it became more tedious.

Cameron: Max was this theater guy who probably thought, "Sure, I’ll do
this pilot and I’ll be back on stage in three weeks." Four years later,
he’s still the dad on ALF.

Miller: Max’s character was exasperated with ALF, and that was real.

Bannick: Let me tell you about Max: Writing for Max was like playing a
synthesizer. He would play every single comma, ellipsis, or dash you
put in. You type it in and he gives you exactly what you wanted.

Miller: I might get a note from Paul asking me to ask Max to pick up
the pace. I would dread that because it would usually cause a problem.

Gregory: We were rehearsing a script where Max makes kind of a cage for
ALF and I get locked up in it. And I flubbed a line and Max flipped out
on me. I’m nine years old and he’s screaming. I’m bawling.

Fusco: He was a classically trained theater actor. I think maybe he
would’ve rather been doing theater instead of television, but you take
the jobs that come along. I can’t speak for him, but it’s possible he
might have felt trapped the longer the series went on.

Patchett: When it came down to doing year three or four, I'm sure he
had had enough. Max is brilliant on the stage. Working in television
might be anathema to his instincts.

Cameron: This is one of my favorite show biz stories: They’re blocking
a scene and Anne Schedeen says, "Do I really need to be in this scene?"
And then someone else asks the same thing. Max was a very hard worker
trying to do the show. He started saying, "I’m here to work. Are you
here to work?"

Pretty soon they’re all screaming at each other and the set clears. As
he’s walking off, Max starts screaming. "Put us all on sticks! We’re
the puppets here! We’re the puppets!"

Fusco: Max is a complicated man.

Cameron: I respected Max. He worked hard. I felt for him.

Miller: Paul was a very driven guy and a perfectionist who could get
impatient with people.

Bannick: Paul was also a guy who was in a trench for five or six hours
with his arm up in the air and then he’d go into his office, shut the
door, and make calls to Make-a-Wish kids. He was completely drained.

Fusco: It absolutely was a tough, grueling schedule. But no one was
manhandled or terribly treated. And the actors were paid significant
amounts of money.

Miller: Paul wanted scenes to move along. And sometimes they’d say, "I
don’t see it that way." I don’t recall Paul ever yelling at anyone as
ALF, no. He could be sarcastic, but that was the character.

Cameron: I did a sitcom once that ran 20-odd episodes and cannot
imagine being on a show every single week where all the best lines are
given to a f*cking puppet.

IV: THE PUPPET MASTER

With the show's ratings in decline, NBC decided to move the show to
Saturday evenings—television's version of a hospice. On March 24, 1990,
viewers were left hanging when ALF appeared to have been discovered by
military forces. It was a cliffhanger that would take six years to
resolve.

Fusco: We were going to go another season. If not, NBC said we could at
least finish up with an hour finale or a movie.

Miller: We knew fairly soon after the last episode. I asked someone
from NBC if the rumors were true and they said, "Yeah, it’s not coming
back.'

Fresco: I thought there was a 50-50 chance we were coming back. If we
knew for sure we weren’t, we would’ve wrapped it up definitively.

Bannick: ALF does not have the same kind of shelf life as Cheers or
Taxi. The premise gets tired easily.

Fusco: If we had gone a fifth season, the idea was going to be ALF on a
military base. He’s incarcerated there in some kind of detainment camp.
The family would be allowed to visit him. It would’ve opened up his
world more. He would’ve been like Sergeant Bilko, essentially. Selling
bootleg items, gambling.

Lamar: If it did come back, it needed to be something different.

Fresco: We had exhausted the family dynamic already. It would’ve given
us something new.

Bannick: My idea for a series finale would have been to have ALF be
discovered and become a celebrity. And he becomes so famous he has to
go back into hiding.

Fusco: By that point, Brandon had left and Warren Littlefield had taken
over, and he did not make good on Brandon’s promise.

But ABC did. In 1996, the network aired Project: ALF, which pursued
Fusco’s idea of ALF on a military base. Intended to be a backdoor pilot
for a new series, it failed to gain any traction. Instead, Fusco
pursued a short-lived chat session on TV Land—2004's ALF’s Hit Talk
Show—and resurrected the character in a series of unexpected cameos.
Most recently, he appeared in the Emmy-winning USA series Mr. Robot.

Fusco: I like when ALF shows up in unlikely places. Bill O’Reilly, The
Love Boat, Meet the Press. Who expects that?

Patchett: Right now we're in the final stages of a script for a movie.
We're determined not to do a kids' movie. Kids will like the character
anyway. We want to do the movie for the 35- to 40-year-olds who
remember watching it.

Fusco: We were actually going to do a movie in 1987. We had a script
ready to go, but the studio saw it as a low-budget matinee movie for
kids. It never took off. But I think it would’ve been great. It took
place in space and explained ALF’s journey to Earth. It was a prequel,
basically. But the budget we needed and what we were offered were so
far apart it would’ve been horrendous.

Patchett: It would be a mixture of Paul and CGI. We showed ALF's full
body a few times in the series, but we were never happy with it.

Fusco: We’re just waiting for the right moment to come back.

Whether or not ALF makes it back to the screen in some kind of hybrid
CGI epic is probably beside the point. For a generation of viewers, he
was a very simple but very effective visual effect. To this day, Fusco
is reluctant to talk too much about ALF as an object.

Fusco: I don’t want people to think he’s sitting in a box somewhere, or
living in an efficiency apartment with Scott Baio.

Lamar: ALF could come back at any time. He’s like KISS.

Reiss: At the time it was considered a silly family show, but its
reputation has rightfully risen over the years. Al and I got to write
the show just the way we later wrote The Simpsons—silly, smart, and
subversive.

Bannick: I’d love to have a new generation discover it. There was such
a personality to the way Paul played the role. ALF’s facial expressions
were many times funnier than the lines.

Patchett: It's huge in Germany. I'm doing a play there and it's all
anyone wants to talk about. They seem to appreciate the critique of the
Americans.

Gregory: Every now and again, I’ll throw in the DVD. The puppet still
holds up. I’m not sure about some of the lines.

Reiss: One of the most famous Homer lines, "What's the number for 911?"
was actually first uttered by ALF. [Writer] Steve Pepoon came up with
the line years before [Simpsons writer] George Meyer thought of it
independently.

Fusco: He’s probably a little more tainted, a little angrier. The world
is a different place. It’s gotten a lot crazier since 1990. We might
need ALF more than ever.

Gregory: I’m still kind of pissed at Max for yelling at me.

: Jake Rossen is a writer, editor, and curator of fine comic
: strip art. (Except Garfield.) His byline can be found within
: the pages of The New York Times, ESPN.com, Wired.com and a
: slew of health and fitness-related publications.


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The liberal media's agenda is to make Trump as hated and distrusted as
they are.