‘I Don’t Think This Is A True Crime Documentary Whatsoever’-Director Tommy Avallone On His Barney The Dinosaur Doc ‘I Love You, You Hate Me’

“I Love You, You Hate Me,” the documentary series about the history of the folks who bash 90s-era kid catnip, Barney the Dinosaur does have “elements of crime,” says Barney documentary director Tommy Avallone, but he hopes viewers look deeper.

“It’s a buzzy word and it’s a buzzy box to be put in, you know? People love true crime,” says Avallone of the series that does – at points – delve into content more troubling than viewers hating an imaginary dinosaur. “But I think we’re different and a little bit more nuanced than that right now. We probably spend 15 minutes of a two-hour series on it, you know?”

I know.

The series actually offers a larger examination of the intersection of a time of ironic Gen X zeitgeist paired with the story of a teacher—turned-purple dinosaur mogul and the worldwide family of fans that followed. That said, when you blend the happy outlook of Barney with a society whose viewing tastes at the time catapulted Jerry Springer Show fights into the limelight, you get the makings of excellent, nostalgic TV.

But when you ask Avallone why exactly I Love You, You Hate Me was able to showcase several examples of literal pseudo lynchings of a puffy imaginary creature, Avallone points right back to his two-part series, which premieres this week on Peacock.

“I had a whiteboard list of different reasons why,” explains the director, who has already snagged an inflatable Barney costume to wear for Halloween. “I mean, I don’t think there was generally one bucket reason why people dislike Barney. I think for each person it hit different sorts of things.”

But was it the soft purple costume? Maybe. According to the documentary, some people assigned sexuality to the dinosaur and were angry that a T-rex was declawed and made “cute.” Was it the endless happy music? Perhaps. In the documentary, the pianist for the show lovingly plays the song but also recoils from it. Or was it the family scandals, which came after showing how Barney creator Sheryl Leach’s husband discussed leaving his job to become a stay-at-home dad to a son – Patrick Leach – who grew up and eventually wound up serving jail time after shooting a neighbor in the chest.

Everyone from the actors who first portrayed Barney to Bill Nye the Science Guy to Al Roker to Springer producer Burt Dubrow to the Leach family babysitter were consulted and had plenty to say in Avallone’s series. In fact, the director had so many interviews in the can – nearly 50 – that many of the interviews from folks later in the series or who were part of the traveling Barney show were unable to make the final cut. This is normal for a good documentary, but what’s interesting here is that so many people were willing to come out and talk about the phenomenon of that purple dinosaur backlash.

“I mean, one of the first people I spoke to was Bob West, the voice of Barney, and he was great,” says Avallone. “Barney came out early internet, right? Yeah. So his email got leaked. And he told me he got a death threat from a nine year old on his email. And I was like, ‘Ah, maybe, maybe there’s something here.’”

The series was born. It was pitched in 2020 and filmed during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. It wrapped just about a month ago and was quickly sold to Peacock, which is owned by NBC Universal, which in early 2021 closed its own Barney’s World Showcase at Universal Studios. So, there was a natural relationship there, adds the director.

Key interviews in the series include an interview with David Joyner, who was the second actor to play Barney after the first was conscripted by the Army. Joyner brought a physiucality to the role that mesmerized children in the live shows. In later years, media made a big deal out of Joyner being a tantric sex specialist. The documentary details that Joyner had always been a practitioner, and had disclosed that prior to being hired by Leach. In fact, he had to sign an NDA promising not to talk about his link to tantric practices while playing Barney.

“Barney and sex don’t go together,” Joyner says in the series.

Avallone delved into that.

“Whatever the word sex is used, especially around a character like Barney, people get worried,” says Avallone. “But the way he explained this! He never – he was never doing it as Barney. He didn’t really have [that] business until later in life. What he was doing before Barney was all more about meditation, energy work and all that sort of stuff. And honestly, the way he talks about it, he was trying to bring up his energy and put it right through the television. And as weird as that might sound? It worked. He really connected in a way with these kids that was unreal.”

As for the wide reach of the interviews, like the Leach babysitter?

“Lori? She’s actually married to Dean Wendt, who is the other voice of Barney after Bob West left.”

The web of Barney fellowship is clearly deep. Many of the kids who were in the film became like family. Some went on to great fame, like Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato.

Because nothing exists in a vacuum, the series also examines the overall cultural movements of that time period, from the creation of the Jerry Springer Show and our addiction to those fights to the irony-popularity of Beavis and Butthead and our national embrace of Nirvana. But those key, formational Gen X years were the same years that a new generation became the first in the nation to have a show geared specifically at them: pre-school children. Barney targeted two and three year olds and when kids got around four-years-old? They aged out. Barney and Friends existed in a space that not even Electric Company and Sesame Street could claim – as those shows worked with children from preschool on up to grade school.

The older kids didn’t understand Barney or didn’t want to. (Of course, Barney was only happy, as opposed to other kids shows that had different characters with varying emotions, like Oscar the Grouch.) Still, the juxtaposition makes for good TV.

“I found this video online. It was the University of Nebraska’s Barney bashing event,” Avallone says. “It was a 1993 news broadcast. At the end, the newscasters were like, That’s the future of our country right there. And I thought, what if we explored love and hate? I mean, we’re living in that future now, you know?”

Avallone wants viewers to really think about why we collectively buy into a culture of irony that turns into dislike, that then turns into a culture of gleefully injuring others.

“You know, it’s like you look at someone and think of the face value. It’s like they created a successful character,” he says. “It’s all about joy and happiness, but behind closed doors, you just never know what’s going on. There’s just so much shade of gray, you know? And for [Sheryl’s] family to be struggling with some of the fame was unfortunate.”

And for the nation to continue to struggle with the fame of Barney was unfortunate as well.

“It’d be great for people to watch this and go, you know, he’s kind of silly. Why do I not like the things I don’t like. What does that say about me?” Avallone says. “It’s made me think: When I’m driving around with my son, I don’t wanna listen to Blippy in the car, you know? There’s that part of your brain that wants to [say] let’s turn this crap off. But… well what does that say? That shows [my son] that I don’t like this thing he likes, so now he has to question the things he likes. So [making the documentary] has made me really, really question the things I say and the way I feel about certain things.”