Amherst, N.Y. (WBEN) - It is a much-anticipated premiere on Wednesday at AMC Maple Ridge theatre as Butterfly in the Sky, a documentary showcasing the history and popularity of the PBS children's series Reading Rainbow. It is set to be showcased for the first time since its original showing at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022.
The original premiere in Western New York was set for Sunday, however, WBEN has learned a communication glitch has pushed the premiere back to Wednesday.
It was a project that co-directors Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb embarked on about a year-and-a-half prior to its original premiere after having both grown up watching the show as kids.
"It was this thing that was always in the back of our minds, kind of a memory that laid dormant growing up watching the show, watching it in class, sometimes watching it at home. And it was always a thing we remember very fondly, the song, obviously, and LeVar Burton and everything," said Thomason in an interview with WBEN. "One day, Brett came to me and said, 'Has anyone done a Reading Rainbow documentary?' We did some research and found that not only had no one done a documentary, but there was very little information on the development of the show and how it came to be. So once we realized that all the individuals involved who helped bring the show to life were so passionate about what they had done, we just decided we had a story on our hands and set out to make it."
What makes Reading Rainbow, perhaps, more significant locally is the popular kids show was created in Buffalo in 1982, which included the airing of episodes for test audiences.
"WNED, they were right there at the very beginning and helped get everything going with Reading Rainbow," Thomason said. "This was a show that was developed in Buffalo and in Nebraska in the earliest days, and all the book review kids came out of Buffalo, and so much of the early research and work was being done in Buffalo. There'd be no Reading Rainbow if it weren't for WNED in Buffalo."
One of the book review kids from Buffalo at the show's inception happened to be none other than WBEN's own Tom Puckett, who also took part in the Butterfly in the Sky documentary that premiered Sunday.
"I have been looking forward to seeing the final product since I was interviewed almost three years ago for this movie," said Puckett prior to the screening. "I finally got to see a couple of clips on Instagram and saw the trailer - 8-year-old me is in the trailer, which is really cool. I have been waiting alternately impatiently and patiently waiting to see this come out. I'm just excited to finally see the finished product."
At the time Puckett filmed his two book reviews as an 8-year-old, nobody knew what to expect from the Reading Rainbow program. He says it was his school nurse, Rose Buttino - mother of co-creator of the show Tony Buttino - who had alerted his family about open auditions for Reading Rainbow.
"My mom sat me down and asked me about it and I said, 'Sure, I'll do it.' And we went down a couple days later to Channel 17 and did my audition, and thought nothing of it," Puckett recalled. "A couple of weeks later, we got a phone call saying, 'Can you come down to the studio to do a book review?' I said sure, and they gave me a book, I read through it a couple times, went to the studio and pretty much spent a lot of that day waiting for my turn. But when I went out there, they put me in a holding area so I looked at the book one more time and really just got my thoughts together. A producer was with me, and then the associate producer let me be in the waiting room by myself to get all my final thoughts together. As I said in the movie, when I was taping, no script, no cue cards, no coaching. And looking back on it - I didn't mention this in the movie - no pressure from the producer or the director. Just relax, take as many takes as you need and have at it."
The first book review Puckett did on Reading Rainbow was "Max", which he taped in November of 1982 and was featured on the third aired episode.
However, Puckett says the one that everybody sees and remembers was his book review of "The Terrible Thing That Happened at Our House", because it was the first aired book review on the first aired episode.
"That's the one that everyone seems to look at associate with me on Reading Rainbow. And we did that in January of '83," Puckett said. "For whatever reason, I was asked to do a second book review. Did the same thing, same process. It was a very mild winter, and on Saturday afternoon, went back to the Channel 17 studios on Burton Street and did pretty much the same thing. I was just pleasantly surprised when we saw the preview. I was invited to go to a premiere party in New York City, they had a preview showing the premiere aired episode, and there I was."
When Thomason was working on some of the first interviews for the documentary with some people from Buffalo, he says Puckett's name kept coming up for discussion for an interview.
"'You've got to connect with Tom Puckett, because he was on the very first episode and on another episode, and he was just so energetic and so fun. And he's still on the radio.' His name kept coming up, so he was relatively easy to find, actually. And that was great, because once we watched his clips - we kept calling him a kid, but he's a grown man now - 'We've gotta get this guy in the movie,'" Thomason recalled.
And when Puckett got the initial invite for a chance to interview about Reading Rainbow, he said it was an opportunity he wanted to pounce on.
"They contacted me through my work email, as a matter of fact. I was surprised to hear about this, and I just jumped at the chance," he said. "We were back-and-forth on setting up a filming date, and on a Sunday morning in May, I was in a home they rented in Allentown and spent an hour talking about my time on Reading Rainbow."
Surprisingly, Puckett says in the 40-plus years after the filming and airing of his two book reviews for Reading Rainbow, it only came up maybe once every 10 years.
"It just wasn't a big thing," Puckett said. "Now, for me, it was a nice thing to be on national TV and on to the next thing. I grew up wanting to be the voice of the Buffalo Sabres, but it was nice to get some broadcasting chops in at age 8, airing it when I was 9. But I think, honestly, it really didn't take off. I didn't have agents calling the house saying, 'Oh, we liked this kid,' because, again, it was Buffalo. The segments were done in Buffalo. They were a small part of a national show, where LeVar Burton, the host, was traveling all over the country, all over the world. That's where the biggest piece of the pie was."
With the premiere of Butterfly in the Sky at the AMC Maple Ridge theatre now set for Wednesday, Thomason is hopeful people will be able to re-live some of their childhood memories through this documentary, as they got a chance to in its production.
"There's something really special about Reading Rainbow, because of just how much good it did and how important it has remained to so many people," Thomason said. "For us, all we ever wanted was to put this film and to put this film's message - the importance of reading, the love of reading, things that are important to us - in front of as many people as possible. As we do get ready to premiere it at AMC this coming weekend and next week, and then it will find its way to streaming and things like that, we're just really excited for people to watch it."
As for Puckett, he's planning on attending the premiere on Wednesday. While he hopes for a wider release ahead of its on-demand release in late April, Puckett is hopeful the documentary will shed some light on the impact Buffalo had on Reading Rainbow's rise to prominence.
"I think it's just a fun experience of how Reading Rainbow came about. Not just the Buffalo connection, but how it turned out nationally," he said. "We talk about how this was going to grow, I didn't know in 1982 I was going to be a part of a show that would win a couple-dozen Emmy Awards for the work that it's done. And I didn't know that it was going to click with kids to get them to try a couple books to read that they wouldn't have otherwise known about because of the show."