Voting Station

Paul Fusco

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Puppeteer

The Resume

    (January 29, 1953- )
    Born in New Haven, Connecticut
    Creator/Voice of ALF
    Co-creator of Alien Productions (est. 1988)
    Portrayed the title character on the television show ALF (1986-1990)

Why he might be annoying:

    He turned down endorsement deals from Coca-Cola, Burger King, and Budweiser.
    He created the original Alf template as a means of annoying his family and friends.
    He has been described as difficult to work with, often insisting that his puppet receiving 'diva' treatment (e.g. insisting that all the funny lines in episodes go to ALF).
    He remains in denial about any tension existing on the 'Alf' set, despite all principal cast members attesting to it.
    He produced another live action-puppetry show through his production company, called 'Space Cats,' but it was cancelled after only 13 episodes.
    His eccentric demands for the Alf puppet got to be so bad that Tina Fey told Conan O'Brien that the hardest part about filming producer of NBC's 75th anniversary special was dealing with 'Alf's people.'
    According to Fey, Fusco would only would only allow ALF to appear on the show if the puppeteers were kept 'hidden from everyone else' (after Alf's cameo with Michael Gross and David Hasselhoff, the puppet disappeared through a hole in the riser, was stuffed into a case, and immediately removed from the building).
    Blooper footage surfaced of him 'in-character' as ALF dropping the N-word repeatedly and making sexually explicit jokes towards Andrea Elson (2010).

Why he might not be annoying:

    His early work was featured on the Disney Channel's 'Dumbo's Circus' show.
    He was good friends with Jim Henson, even playing poker at his house a week before his death.
    He is reportedly still on good terms with the principal cast members of ALF, despite the (alleged) discord on the set.
    Pitching his show idea, he won over skeptical NBC execs by donning Gordon Shumway to have him chide Brendan Tartikoff for signing off on Manimal (they laughed hysterically and gave it the green-light).
    He said in an interview that the most fun part about filming 'ALF' was the joke-writing process, and figuring out what would/wouldn't 'make it past the NBC censors.'
    He was able to expertly promote ALF long after the series' end, building a mini-empire in merchandising off of the character (not bad for a hand-made puppet he created to terrorize his neighbors!)
    He was involved with the Make A Wish Foundation, frequently speaking to terminally ill children ('in-character' from a satellite feed) whose dying wish was 'to meet ALF.'
    The blooper reel-in question, he was actually parodying a then-recent episode of L.A. Law which depicted a racist with Tourette syndrome (producer Steve Lamar defended him, saying the footage 'was from an era when things were not so ridiculously PC').
    He joked: 'When I used to write an episode and couldn’t come up with a line for ALF, I needed something really funny, I would actually ask ALF ... I would actually put the character on, and the character would just tell me what the line was.'

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 38 Votes: 7.89% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 16 Votes: 68.75% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 7 Votes: 57.14% Annoying