Here’s what you do: You eat yourself some mushrooms and then you go on down to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in downtown LA and have yourself a magical little experience. Or fine, skip the mushrooms part—you probably don’t even need them because the puppet shows themselves are surreal enough, like taking a time machine back to an eerie world of childhood innocence that probably never even existed—a sparkly world full of floating fairy princesses and rollerskating teddy bears and creepy clowns aplenty.

The theater was established in 1961 by Bob Baker, a puppetry and stop-motion-animation pioneer who has done stuff for about a million movies and TV shows, ranging from to . He had his own TV puppet show in the 50s called , he was head animator for George Pál’s , and a young Liza Minnelli once hugged him and said, “I love you, puppet man!”

We visited him in his historical workshop, where over 3,000 hand-crafted puppets lay smiling and dormant in the daylight and then come to life at night to murder you in your dreams. We assume. Vice: When did you first know that you wanted to be a puppeteer?

Bob Baker: Wow, that’s dedication. Wizard of Oz. So you were a successful puppet master before you even hit puberty.
You were an inspiration for Walt Disney and you’re the only authorized puppet maker for Disney to this day. How did you meet him? Dumbo Which is your favorite puppet character? Some of your marionettes are wearing my dream outfits! Where do you get the materials? The Poseidon Adventure I love the glow-in-the-dark sequences that you do. You were the puppet specialist for Elvis’s movie GI Blues, in which he sings a duet called “Heart of Wood” with a girl puppet that you made. What was he like?
What do you envision for the future of this theater?

How would you sum up the experience to someone who has never been to a theater and never heard of a marionette?