April 26, 2025 • 42 mins
We've already recorded an episode on The Muppets, but Jim Henson was such a neat guy we delved into him even further. Learn all about the man behind the Muppets who was so much more than just a master puppeteer in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning everyone. I hope you are watching Saturday Morning
Cartoons or maybe the Muppets, because this one is all
about Jim Henson. I'm often asked what our favorite episodes
are when we do the Q and A at live shows,
and many, many times I go back to the ones
on the Muppets and Jim Henson because he was just
(00:21):
one of the best. This is from January sixth, twenty fifteen,
how Jim Henson worked American Hero. That's not part of
the title. That's just me. Welcome to stuff you should
know a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W Chuck Bryant. How do you and Jerry for
the last time this year? Yes, just informed us and
she's all smiles. She is not very nice, Jerry.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
How'd you like that presentation earlier?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
The sensitivity training?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
It was great.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yes, people, Because we worked for a corporation, we have
things like sensitivity trainings.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
And in those trainings you get shown video examples of
various forms of harassment and they are the best, most
fun things to watch.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Ever, they're pretty overt.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, I could watch those all day. Long.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I was wondering how much that production company made from that. Yeah,
you know they did, but like five little vignettes. They
I'm sure they paid the actors like literal peanuts.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
They were bad actors.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
They were like, kid, there's the peanut bucket over there,
you can pay yourself.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, the old The one that really got me was
the Actually they were all really funny, but the one
with the old guy in the uh in the factory
loading boxes like a shipping warehouse, right, and they were
giving the old man a hard time about everything because
he was old. Yeah, because he's old, and you know,
they were given a hard time. So he and he
was out of work for a while and they had
(02:02):
to cover for him. The old man, and he had
the back brace on. Did you notice that? And he
just looked on his face. He just kept getting a
little more like Poudy the whole time. Yeah. I was like, dude,
that's good acting. Stick up for yourself. Tell these young
kids you know what to do.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
The back brace prevents him from it.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Anyway. I just had to bring that up because I
just think that stuff is so funny. And what's funny
is people really do some of that stuff that you're like, what,
there's some creeps out there. That was a really weird
setup for Jim Henson, because he's the least harassing guy
he was probably ever.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, he certainly comes across that way.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
He's a genuinely good dude. It's not one of these
stories you hear about, like maybe some of your favorite
children's books writers or cartoonists or something, maybe we're kind
of bad people.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
No, apparently not at all. Yeah, he was not. Only
so there's a lot of in this article. John No, John,
I thought John Strickland wrote it. It turns out that's
not the case. I'm surprised because he's friends with or
down with at least one of Jim Henson's kids I
believe lives here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And but in this article, it's one of those things
where everybody who compliments Jim Henson, who worked with him,
they they go to the trouble of complimenting him in
a way that's not just like, oh, he was such
a great guy. They all back up just a little
bit because they're cognizant that that doesn't get it across sure,
(03:37):
and they want you to understand that they're talking about
more than just the great guy. Like, oh, he's dead
and I'm not gonna speak ill of the dead. And
he was a great guy. And that's a really thoughtless, polite,
inoffensive thing to say. Sure, So, like frank Oz said
something like he was a he was a great guy.
(03:57):
But at the same time, you know, he was a human,
but he was still a really great guy, right, So,
like what you're thinking of is a great guy. Get
rid of that and actually replace it with a genuine
human great guy.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, because as a filmmaker, he's a puppeteer obviously, but
he was a filmmaker first and foremost, which a lot
of people kind of forget about. Yeah. Oh yeah, that's
a tough, tough job, super stressful, and you and I
have seen it can make good guys and good ladies
be real jerks and yell under stressful situations. You know,
(04:32):
it's it's it's a tough thing. There's a lot of
money on the line each day, and uh.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
It's like everybody, relax, it's just millions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
But frank Oz, I think that's the point he was making,
Like even when he would get frustrated and stress like that,
it was he was still a good guy behind it all.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, and I read I read an I guess it
was a book review of a biography about him that
that showed that it was all somebody said it was
all just play to him. Yeah, like work was play.
Even though he worked really hard, he was able to
commit himself like that to his work because to him,
(05:10):
he was having the time of his life all the time.
And apparently like there was just there was no line
between work and play, which now that we've seen that
sensitivity training could have gotten him in a lot of
big you know, a lot of trouble. But he he
just enjoyed the life that he had from what I understand,
love cars. Yeah, he had like a lotus that was
the same color as Kermit the Frog. He had a
(05:32):
Rolls Royce early on from his work. Yeah, let's talk
about let's talk about the guy.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, I mean, if you haven't, I just need to
go ahead and say, if you haven't listened to the
episode on the Muppets, this is a what I consider
just a more in depth part two on the man himself.
But that's one of our favorite all time episodes and
from feedback, one of the great all time fan episodes.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, it was a great episode.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, it was just a lot of fun. And so
I hope this augments that one. I hope we do
it justice.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So that's actually one of the reasons why we can
do this episode, because we already did a Muppets episode and.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
They tweeted about us. Do you remember the Henson Company did? Yeah,
they did, which was they approve huge. It got their
actual approval. That's right, man, that was something the Muppets
episodes its own thing. It's about Muppets.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
This is about Jim Henson, and it's appropriate that we're
doing this because he was more than just the Muppets.
Even though everybody pegs him with the Muppets and like
that is a huge thing. He was more than that.
And like you said, he was a filmmaker but originally
started out as a puppetsier, but kind of a reluctant one.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah. He was born in nineteen thirty six September twenty fourth,
James Mauri Henson m A U R Y in Mississippi,
and his grandmother, maternal grandmother was a painter and a
quilter and a needle worker, and apparently it was a
big inspiration to him to seek out the creative in life, right,
(07:02):
which is pretty great.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, and one of the one of the things he
got into. Well, he was originally a kind of a
fan of ventriloquism a little bit, but he said later
on in life that he was never he was never
like obsessed with puppets or anything like that like you
would have expected him to be. And as he went
to college, I think in Maryland, he he got into
(07:29):
He started out as a studio artist, that's what he
was studying.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, he loved television above all else, right, from the
time he was a little kid. He was just transfixed
by the tube.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
He almost kind of made himself destined to be on
television by being obsessed with it. Yeah, but he kind
of stumbled into puppetry in college, and he started out
as a studio art major and ended up graduating with
a homech degree because homech was the only degree that
(07:59):
offered puppet making courses.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, he majored or he took a puppetry course at first,
and then a bunch of textiles and crafts courses, which
is a great way to you know, start building and
making your own puppets. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
So, but he graduated with a home ch degree, but
by the time he graduated, he was already extremely successful.
The Rolls Royce that I mentioned he bought in time
to drive to his college graduation. Yeah, because he'd already
created successful shows in his town.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah. I think he was in high school. He was
on the local TV station doing little guest spots, and
then in nineteen fifty five, the show Salmon Friends debuted,
and that you know, he also did work on the
side making money with them. I think he did some
of the like really cool concert posters of the day,
really colorful silk screen posters, and Salmon Friends did really well,
(08:58):
but he still wasn't quite sure, Like I still don't
know if I want to. You know, my filmmaker, I
did these short films, really sort of weird, abstract short films, live.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Action, experimental, so totally experimental. Did you see the time Piece?
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, that one was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
It was great in its way.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And did you see the Cube? I watched parts of
the Cube that was Did you see the end? No, Oh,
you've got to see the end. I skipped the middle
because I was like, Okay, I get where you're going
with this.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, well we should just set it up real quick.
The Cube was a show on NBC. It was a
one hour.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Show in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
The name of the show NBC did was called uh
Experiment in Television and it was a different thing each week.
And he had one week's installment called The Cube, which
was a guy just stuck in a white room but
other people could come in and out of the room,
but he could not, right.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yes, okay, and he starts to go kind of crazy,
and it has the look and feel of a color
TV ad, like all lots of over acting in like
Carol Burnett esque characters and stuff like that. But yeah,
the sentiment behind it and like that, everything behind it
is really neat and it really gives you a good,
(10:14):
an eye opening example of like what Jim Henson was
capable of, but also like what he was into, because
you know, when you think of him, you think of
muppets in Sesame Street in particular.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Sure, and these are weird abstract art films, not unlike
you know, you watch like a Jim Morrison art film
from film school and it's kind of the same style.
You know, that was what was going on back then. Yeah,
and he actually got nominated for an Academy Award for
time Piece.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
I think Jim Hooinson, Jim Henson had Jim Morrison beat
by a mile as far as experimental films went.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, I agree with you there. So, like I said,
he wasn't quite convinced that puppetry was his future because
he was a filmmaker and he was like, puppets are
still kind of kids. But post college he did the
Old Tour of Europe, and in Europe, puppeteering is a
whole different business. It was a lot more serious and
(11:08):
a lot more I guess it was.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Treated as art.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, exactly, and he said, you know what, I Am
going to give this a shot. Came back to the US,
married Jane, and even though he and Jane separated, they
never divorced.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Oh really I thought they did.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
No, they never fulfilled the divorce. They just stayed separated.
And then he started making TV commercials and formed his
own company in nineteen sixty three with I don't know
if he formed it with Frank Oz, but he hired
Frank Oz and Jerry Jewel, who ended up being obviously
legendary puppeteers.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And lifelong collaborators of his.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, But he started out making a basically a puppet
based commercial ad agency in New York, Yes, in nineteen
sixty three.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah, and they weren't making funny commercials back then. So
he was really pretty revolutionary right time.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
And they, I mean, they did pretty well for themselves.
And one of the smartest moves he made early on
was all of his contracts said that he retained the
rights to any of the creations he made for these companies. Yeah,
so he was creating what some of the things that
would later become famous muppets, Like the Cookie Monster was
originally made for a chip maker. It was this puppet
(12:24):
that couldn't get enough of these chips.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah. He was the wheel stealer and he stole cheese wheels.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, Okay, that's what it was. Yeah, and he ended
up being the Cookie Monster. And the reason he ended
up being the Cookie Monsters because Jim Henson retained the
rights to that creation.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
That was he was a very savvy business guy too.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, and he was he was using somebody else's dime,
these advertisers, yeah, like budgets to kind of hash out
and form and make his muppets. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Rocked the Dog started out on Purina commercials and was
later a sidekick on the Jimmy Dean Show in nineteen
sixty three.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Which I remember that from the Muppets episode Rolf was
the first big Muppet. Then he's such like a bit
character now, yeah that you know, it's just mind boggling
to think he was the one that started it all,
even before Kermit, before Big Bird. It was Rolf.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Kermit kind of stole the show.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I think, Yeah, we'll talk a little more about Kermit
and where he came from right after this.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
All right, So it's nineteen sixty nine and a very
very big thing happens to Jim Henson. He was invited
to be on the pilot of a show created by
the Children's Television Workshop called Sesame Street. Not created, some
people think he did, but he did make his mark
(14:05):
by creating most of the iconic characters. And if you
were a fan of the old Sesame Streets back then,
all not all, but many of those little short films,
the little claymation ones or the live actions. He directed
those as well. Yeah, which is pretty cool. I never
knew that.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I think I knew that, did you. Yeah? He was
he was our Russ Vict, you know, he was their
Russ Vic.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Russ Vic is ours, That's right, So, Chuck, the whole
thing that changed everything for him was Sesame Street. Yeah,
he's not a He wasn't a creator of Sesame Street.
They hired him on and they actually kind of won
him over because remember, one of the things that Jim
Henson always struggled with his whole career was he wanted
(14:49):
to explore places that puppets had never really gone to,
in themes that they hadn't gone to, at least not
in the modern age. Sure, but he was fighting against
them not being taken seriously.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, it wasn't like he was anti puppet by any
means he was or anti kids because one of the
big reasons he signed on with Children's Television Workshop was
their goal to educate kids meant a lot to him.
But like you said, I think to merge those worlds
successfully was a big part of his goal and struggle
for a little while.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Russ Vick, by the way, made the little interstitial things
for the stuff you should know, televisions, Yeah, the animations,
which is why I reference him.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
So the Children's Television Workshop, which is now called the
Sesame Workshop. Yeah, from what I understand, they won them
over big time. He makes all of these characters from
like Big Bird, and I think Kermit came before Sesame
Street and he started out I think we talked about
this in The Muppet episode two. He started out looking
really weird, Yeah, like a lizard on this Yeah, not
(15:55):
cool at all, like really kind of freaky.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, which is something.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
That I now that I know a little more about
Jim Henson, I think maybe he might have even been
going for. But one of the things that Sesame Street
allowed him to do was to really kind of explore
something that he'd long been obsessed with, which was television
and where it converged with puppets, which was all new territory,
(16:22):
and Jim Henson was at the bleeding edge of it
because if you think about it, when you go to
a puppet show live, you know, you're you're looking at
what's essentially a mechanism for hiding the human and there's
just a little area that the puppet can move.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Around in tiny fixed age.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah. Yeah, So Jim Henson stepped back and said, Okay,
the television is that little tiny area that the puppet
can stay, can move around in, but it also opens
up the whole world for a puppet because you're using
camera angles and there's editing and it's not in person.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Just frame out the people.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
So and again we talked about this in the Muppet episode.
He created something called platforming up, Yeah, to where the
puppeteers no longer had to like crouch down and to
maneuver the puppets.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, because he was a tall guy.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, tall and lanky man. He was skinny.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Oh, those running shots and time piece exactly because he
was in it. They were hysterical.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, and he weighs about seventy pounds somehow, big lanky legs.
But so Yeah, the performers could stand up, which was
a huge weight off.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
But at the same time, because you're working with cameras
and stuff like that, and they have the whole universe
to move around in and Jim Henson wanted him to
move around as much as possible. It also put him
in some weird positions.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, if you ever well, some people might think it's
like kind of ruining the thing, but I think it's
really neat. If you just look up on Google images Muppets,
Muppet Show behind the scenes pictures, yeah, and it'll show
the stage sets you know, like six feet off the ground, right,
all the people standing beneath. I think it's awesome to
(18:03):
look at. But some people don't, like you know, they
want to keep that illusion alive. So depending on what
kind of person you are, either seek that out or don't.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And we gave that warning in the Muppets episode too,
did we. Yeah, Yeah, I think they're really cool pictures.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
I agree, because you know, a lot of times they're
looking at uh, they're looking at video monitors standing there
contorted using both hands right. Like the way puppeteers work together,
to me is just a miracle because they're acting as
the puppets, but they're moving still moving among one another
(18:38):
as humans right underneath, which can be really complicated. In fact,
we know some really really talented puppeteers here in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, the Center for Puppetry Arts is yeah, I think
the nation's largest puppet puppeteer organization.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yep. And that is where we had our TV show
debut party, premiere party. Yeah, Like it was a really
cool experience. Like Auto in the Gang are right there
on display. I think the Hinson and Kermit cut the
ribbon for the grand opening back when it opened and
ended up donating like five hundred puppets and muppets to
(19:12):
the Center for Puppetry Arts. So if you ever visit Atlanta,
people always email us and say what should we do?
I highly recommend going and checking out the Center for
Puppetry Arts.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, because they have a museum with, like you said,
Emmitt otderxy stuff, like a full sized life size sketchy
yeah behind glass, scary as you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, But I was talking about Raymond Carr, our friend
who I hate to keep bringing up the TV show,
but it all kind of overlaps. He was a production
designer for Stuff you Should Know on Science Channel, and
he and his friends Brandon and the gang are amazing
puppeteers and they're doing some really really leading edge, like
cool stuff here in Atlanta. Yeah, like these giant puppets
(19:51):
operated like, you know, fifteen foot tall puppets operated by
like six and eight people. Have you ever seen the
spaceman that they do. No, man, it's unbelievable. It's really cool.
It's like, I don't know how tall he is, he
seems like he's twenty feet tall. And they know do
these at parades and stuff, and it's just really really
cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, but Henson is a huge inspiration to them obviously.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Oh yeah. I think anybody who works even remotely in
puppets has gotta be inspired by Jim Hinton. One of
the other things that he came up with was that
was based on putting muppets or puppets on TV. Was
using softer materials. Yeah, everything else was like up to
that point, stiff Wood, Marionette's Ventriloquist dummies, that kind of stuff, right.
(20:35):
He used like foam, and it allowed the puppets themselves
to have more expressive faces, which was great for close
up on TV. Yeah, absolutely, And it also I mean
now looking back, you just are like, well, yeah, of course,
it's what puppets do.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
That's what I know.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
But that was Jim Henson that came up with that,
and it changed everything because it took something like, I mean,
imagine Howdy Doty. He was like, yeah, it's cool, you know,
it's Howdy doty or whatever. But yeah, whether close up
or far away, he looked exactly the same. It was
like a woodhead with like a moving lower jaw. And
you know, he gave you nightmares with Kermit the Frog
(21:15):
or something like that. The fact that he could have
different expressions and react differently, and his emotions could be
shown on his face. That made him that much more popular,
that much more approachable, sure to people who were into
him absolutely, which is everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, yeah, show me someone who doesn't like Muppets in
any form. I get it. If you don't like it anymore, maybe,
but your heart is cold and dead inside for a while.
And this is something I don't think I knew. He
dabbled on Saturday Night Live in season one. Lord Michael's
got him a deal to perform some sketches, and ultimately
(21:54):
it wasn't a huge success, and it wasn't the greatest marriage,
but it was pretty cool that he was seeking out,
you know, different avenues to get those puppets on television.
It was, And his big break came in nineteen seventy five.
He wanted to make The Muppet Show and he had
a lot of trouble in the US still, yeah, even
though he had his various successes on commercials and stuff.
(22:18):
So he had to go to London and a TV
producer named Lord lou Grade gave him a deal with
grades ATV Studios. Said, you know what, you can make
your show. And the Muppet Show was born, Oh yeah
about it being about a boom.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
That was it. That was it. And you can really
see Jim Henson's love of variety shows and just kind
of well, just the stage in The Muppet Show, because
if you think about it's set the whole thing set
backstage at a variety show.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
It's such a great idea. When you look back at it,
it's like we take it for granted a little bit
because we were kids, but now as an adult, it's like,
what a perfect way to frame this world. It's basically
like thirty rock or thirty Rock was the Muppet.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Show right with the Muppet Show started all that? Yeah,
I don't know if Carol Burnett was before the Muppet Show.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah it was before, was it?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah? So she did a lot of backstage stuff, didn't
she U. I wonder who started that.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
I don't know. Hers was more sketch, Yeah, but some.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Of it was like backstage, was it? I believe? So
I don't remember that. Thus I'm hallucinating right now.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
They need to have a good old fashioned variety show again.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, they don't have those anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Those were big back in the day, you know, like
the host comes out and then there's sketches and singing.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And remember our cabaret, No, it wasn't cabaret. What was
it the episode we did?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Oh uh burlesque?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Burlesque? Yeah, yeah, how that started out in vaudeville and
burless cad that's where stand up comedy came from. That
was an interesting episode.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah. I miss those variety shows though, like the Kenny
Rogers and Dolly Parton and yeah Cal Burnett all that,
the band.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Sisters, Although Kenny and Dolly could just sit on a
couch and stare at the camera for an hour and
I'd watch that. Yeah, jer the best great entertainers. Yeah,
I love those two.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
All right, So where are we in our timeline?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Well, Chuck, the Muppet Shows just hit.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Things are going pretty well. They happened going pretty well
already for Henson. Apparently in nineteen seventy, Rubbert Ducky hit
number sixteen on the Billboard charts. And for those who
don't know, Ernie is voiced by Jim Henson. So Jim
Henson sang a song Rubbert Ducky that made it to
number sixteen on the Billboard charts, and that was nineteen seventy, a.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Year after The Cube, before.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
The Muppet Show even happened, before Sesame Street even right,
Nomestreet was sixty nine out. Okay, yeah, same year as
The Cube. Wow, that's great, Sey. That the new touchstone
for his life. The Cube.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Yeah, PC and BC. So the Muppet Show it was
a huge hit. It won, you know, a lot of awards,
It garnered critical praise and won the hearts of children
all over the world.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
But it was also for adults too. Oh yeah. I
think that's why he was able to pull it off
in Great Britain, because they have better senses of humor.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yeah. And speaking of adults, he got into some more
serious themes with his next great show, Fragle Rock. Yeah,
in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I never saw a second of that show. Oh man,
really it wasn't it on HBO?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah. It was one of the first HBO original series.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We either had showtime or we didn't have.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
It was awesome. Fragle Rock was great. And the idea
there is you had the fragle Gang and then you
had well, you had three different groups. You had the
Home of Doc who was an inventor, and his dog's Sprocket.
You had the Fraggles who shared caves underground of Fragle
Rock with their neighbors, the Doozers and the Gorgs and
(25:58):
these gigantic creatures that are in Gorg's garden, And the
whole point of that show was to show how different
types of people can live together and work together in peace. Right.
It was really cool. Didn't know it at the time
when I was, you know, twelve years old, but what
I was learning about was acceptance. And he won three
(26:18):
kble Ace Awards five International Emmys in frag O Rock
was one of the first big hits for HBO as
far as TV goes. Yeah, great, great show, lots of
great songs that I mean, he had every kind of
like reggae, rock, country, bluegrass. Really he was all over
the map with the music on Fragle Rock.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And he I mean he wrote a lot of songs too.
I think he wrote Rubbert Ducky. I'm sure he wrote
a lot of the stuff on Fragle Rock. It was
just yet another thing he did was.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Right music renaissance Man.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
The other show that he came out with in the eighties,
in the mid eighties that I was big time intwo
was Muppet Babies.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I never saw one second of that.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Man, I love that show.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, we're just enough of part in age where like
certain things I saw you I was you were too
young for, and then certain things I was too old for.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
You know, it's weird, though, I'm just gonna say this.
So you, me and I are the same age. Her
sister is like five years younger than us. U and
I used to love Muppet Babies. Yeah, you and me's
sister used to watch Muppet Babies, so you may was like,
why were you watching Muppet Babies if my younger sister was.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Watching babies and Yummy didn't watch Muppet Baby.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
No, she watched like Donahue or something like that. I
watched Muppet Babies, And I'm not ashamed anymore to say.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Well, when was that nineteen eighty four. I was thirteen,
so yeah, I was just I was starting to be
a teenager. Muppet Babies didn't appeal.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I think it was on for like four or five seasons,
so maybe I was watching it at the beginning of
the series. Anka was watching it. That's what I've been
telling you.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Me and eighty four, you would have been what eight, Oh, yeah,
that's perfect age for Muppet Babies.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So I think I think we just saw it on
different ends of the series, is what it was? Is
that what it is? But have you ever heard of
Ron Funches, Uh yeah, the comedian. Yeah, yeah, he has
a little bit about Muppet babies. It's pretty hilarious. Really,
he's awesome. I love that guy. Yeah, we saw him live.
He's just a beautiful human being.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Muppet Babies was cartoon though, right right, it was not
live puppets correct at all.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
No, it was cartoon.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
It was so cute.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Were they just the regular muppets as babies? Yes, Oh
well I have to watch that sometime.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, and they like us their imagination, Like Gonzo had
a thing for Indiana Jones, so he was frequently like
exploring caves and like swinging on vines with the Indiana
Jones fedoran and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Well, see, I would probably enjoy that, now you would, Yeah, definitely.
All right, I'm gonna go get Muppet Babies, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
He did even more TV that we'll talk about in
a second. Okay, okay, okay, and we're back and we're
(29:08):
still in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
That's right. And you were talking about other TV, as
we said, the man loved television and filmmaking, and so
he got away from the Muppets and puppets every now
and then collaborated with Raymond Scott, who was an electronica pioneer,
actually on shorts called Ripples and Wheels that Go, and
he did that for the Montreal Expo in sixty seven
(29:31):
and I know we're jumping around in time, but we're
just trying to paint the full picture here, not going
necessarily in order. And then he also did this cool
thing called the Floating Face, which was a sketch that
was on the Tonight Show, on the Mike Douglas Show
in the sixties, which did you see any of.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
That a little bit?
Speaker 1 (29:47):
It was a little weird. It was like two eyes
and a mouth and there were like these invisible wires
and background images. It was definitely a little more on
that surreal tip, the hints and surreal tip, not kid
oriented necessarily. But he got into the movies with the
Muppet Movie, which was a big hit, so good it
(30:08):
still holds up, man, it's still so great.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
If you want to know more about that movie into
some of the cool facts from it, go again listen
to the Muppet episode Yeah, as a matter of fact,
pause this, go listen to the Muppet episode and then
come back to this one. Yeah, well it will probably
enhance your experience. Agreed, Or listen to them both at
the same time.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
But he followed the Muppet in nineteen eighty two, he
made The Dark Crystal, Yeah, which was puppets and it
was based on some drawings by fantasy artist Brian Froud,
And there were no humans. It was all puppets. And
I don't think it holds up as well, but it
still looks pretty good.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Well, yeah, I think it actually is probably better received
now than it was originally.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
I think critics appreciated it, but it didn't do so
well at the box office. But now it's become like
a kind of a cult classic for sure. And one
of the reasons why it didn't do that well at
the box office because audiences didn't quite know what to
make of it. They heard Frank Oz who co directed it,
Jim Henson and puppets, and I think they went expecting
(31:16):
the Muppet movie this is nineteen eighty two, and they
got The Dark Crystal instead, which is really dark. A
lot of the like the theme is, you know, good
versus evil, and it's the evil in it.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Is really really evil yea.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And the stuff that happens to some of the puppets
is including really cute puppets, is really horrifying. And I
read this awesome quote by Frank Oz and basically he says,
like Jim thought it was okay to scare kids. As
a matter of fact, he thought it wasn't healthy for
kids to never be scared, so like he purposefully was
(31:53):
trying to scare kids, and he wanted to take the
tradition back to like grim Tales, which were very very dark.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
That's what he was going for with the Dark Crystal. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I think it was ahead of its time for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, if you look at some.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Of these, like some of the CGI movies today, I
think that Dark Crystal was a precursor to a lot
of those. Then he went on to make the movie
The Labyrinth with Bowie, right, Yeah, David Bowie in a
very young Jennifer Connelly. Now that was a legend.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Oh okay, good movie.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
But this was written by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame,
and then rewritten a bunch by a bunch of other people.
Including executive producer George Lucas. Labyrinth was okay, not bad again,
not a huge hit for Hnson though as far as
movies go. But he was still out there exploring these
cool fantastical worlds and fantasy.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Worlds, and he still had a lot of crid even
in the late eighties. If you think about it, his
heyday was the late seventies early eighties with the Muppet
Show the Muppet Movie, and then after that it was like, yeah,
I'll try this with Jim Henson. I'll try this with
Jim Henson. Yeah. And even still he had like a
(33:08):
he was on a pretty great streak. And at the
end of the eighties he had two TV shows on
The Jim Henson Hour Yeah, and Storyteller This Storyteller.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yeah, the Jim Henson Hour. He was always pushing the boundaries.
The Storyteller looking Back Now, I'm sorry, Jim Henson Hour
looking Back was really different from what you were getting
at the time because it was it was all over
the map. You had certain shows that were like, you know,
four or five sketches in one and then three of
the episodes were full on one hour little mini movies.
(33:38):
Oh really, Yeah, from beginning to Louis. Yeah, that's a
good point. Actually, one of the little mini movies was
called Dog City, which was great. It was narrated by
Rolf and it was I remember watching this. It was
like a film noir gangster thing with puppet dogs. Yeah,
and the main character, Acu, was the guy who did Elmo.
(34:01):
Kevin Clash did the character of Acu, and that was fantastic.
I think Dog City went on to be a TV
show in its own right. Took for a little while,
but it was really good. I mean it's total like
gangster crime film noir, but it's you know, Rolf, the
dog right the gang I love. It's really cool.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
The storyteller I hadn't seen before. I was, I guess
aware of, but I don't know why I wasn't watching
it because it would have been like right there for me, Yeah,
because I would have been twelve in nineteen eighty eight.
But I watched one today and it was really good.
It's like human puppet interaction, yeah, which is and it's
just seamless. Like there's one of the things from studying
(34:39):
this that I've realized is like we take for granted
and expect our puppet human interactions to be so seamless
that we don't even realize that we're looking at puppets
right then. And the reason why we expect that is
because of Jim Henson and the people he worked with
and inspired to work so hard at creating illusion.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Well, yeah, the illusion that these are living, breathing things.
He would go I remember Kermit as guest on talk shows.
He wouldn't go out as Jim Henson. He would go
out as I mean, he did those appearances as well,
but Kermit the Frog would be a guest on The
Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or host or host the
guest host The Tonight Show and Larry King. Yeah, and
(35:22):
it was all a part of this goal of making
these real people, right, or real living things not people.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah. Apparently somebody who was working with Jim Henson was
I guess a director of the Muppet Show would be
giving Jim notes on Kermit, and Jim would just respond like,
let Kermit respond, freaking And the director said, eventually you're
just sitting there, You turn and you address Kermit like
he just forced you in, like interacting with the puppet
(35:52):
even during a note session.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah, and probably without feeling silly or stupid or anything.
You know, it probably seemed like a totally normal to do.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Eventually once he forced you to do it.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
He also pioneered the Hintson Performance Control System and won
an Academy Award for that, and that was a remote
control system that helped puppeteers out. So he was always
pushing technical, visual, stylistic, thematic boundaries as far as he could,
(36:23):
and they didn't always work. You know, the movies weren't
aside from them up at movie they weren't the biggest hits.
The TV show a couple of you know, neither one
of those lasted very long. But I think he was
just intent on doing something different.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, and he did too. And he died in nineteen
ninety of a staff infection. Organ failure brought on by
a staff infection. Did you know that?
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yeah? I think pneumonia had something to do with it too,
didn't it.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Not that I saw, Really, I saw organ failure caused
by a group a strep infection. I'm sorry that staff.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Very sad. And if you're ever in the mood for
a good cry, watch the Jim Henson memorial where Big
Bird sings It's not easy being green, Yeah, tough stuff people,
his children. His legacy lives on through nineteen ninety three, Jane,
his wife, formed founded the Jim Henson Legacy to preserve
(37:22):
his contributions, share him with the public. And like I said,
he donated five hundred puppets to the Center of Puppetry Arts.
And there is also the Jim Henson Memorial and Muppup
Museum and traveling exhibits. And his sons and daughters help
run his foundation, and some of them are publicing companies
themselves and run the company. The company has changed hands
(37:45):
a lot. I have sort of the boring history. When
he was still alive, he was going to sell it
to Disney for one hundred and fifty million.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Ye, because apparently he believed in Disney's commitment to the characters,
so he thought like that would be a good place
for them muppets to live.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah, and Disney went he bought it, but he did
not get that deal finished. But it turns out one
hundred and fifty million with chump change because in two
thousand his children sold the entire company, including the Sesame
Street characters, to a German media company for six hundred
and eighty million and then I believe that company fell
(38:22):
in hard times and they bought it back in two
thousand and three for eighty four million. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Wow? The Henson children are smart.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
And in between all that, there are various exchanges of
percentages of stakes with other companies and rights of certain characters.
It's a little dull to go over all of that,
but needless to say, they made up pretty well. And
eventually Disney now does they do own all the Muppet studio?
Speaker 2 (38:50):
They own the Muppets. That apparently the Henson Company sold
the rights to the Sesame Street characters to Sesame Street,
which is pretty cool. Yes, and the Jim Henson Creature
Shop still builds the Sesame Street puppets and Muppets.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, it says they sold the rights to the Muppets
and Bear in the Big Blue House characters, which I'm
not familiar with that one, nor am I, but Disney
wanted to. I guess that's sort of the player to
be named later that's included in the baseball trade.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Man proud of the Henson kids.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, they're great, and I hope we get tweeted about
this one from them. You seem pretty great, Brian and
Cheryl and the gang. He seemed like they're doing right
by the dad. And there's other siblings too, and I
think they're all involved. Yep, super involved. And sadly Jane
passed away I think in twenty thirteen at the age
of seventy eight. I would have loved to have seen
(39:42):
what kind of work he did later in his life.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Oh yeah, the fact that he died in nineteen ninety
still had like a couple of TV shows going, I
mean fifty three years old. Yeah, he had a lot
of art left in. If you want to know more
about Jim Henson, go listen to our Muppets episode. And
while you're looking that up, you can also search Jim
Henson on the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com and
(40:06):
I'll bring up this great article. And since I said
search part, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
This is I'm gonna call this sophomore smart sophomore. Hey guys,
my name is Matt and I'm a sophomore in high school. Sophomore,
smart sophomore. I'm a newer fan of the show and
I listen while I do everything, I just want to
say the Dark Ages were only dark in Europe. The
life expectancy in the Dark Ages is actually a little
longer than before, but mostly because there were smaller wars.
But things were certainly brighter in the Islamic world. In fact,
(40:37):
people in the Middle East were really enlightened during this time.
Within about one hundred years, they conquered a lot of
new land, including Spain. Also, the Arabic language grew to
be the language of philosophy, medicine, and poetry, and Baghdad
became the world center of scholarship. They translated almost all
of the famous Greek philosopher's work into Arabic. Muslim Muslims
(40:58):
developed algebra to amplify inheritance laws, and they made important
strides in trigonometry to help people find a way to Mecca.
Architecture grew too. The Great Mosque and Spain only took
roughly a year, while medieval cathedrals took hundreds of years
to build. Wow, So the Dark Ages weren't that dark,
and the Enlightenment came earlier than most think. And that
(41:18):
is from Matt.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Thanks Matt.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
That is enlightening stuff, my friend.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah, our numerals are Arabic.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yeah, it's true. We should hit on some more Middle
Eastern topics.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Let's do it man. Yeah. In the meantime, if you
want to suggest some Middle Eastern topics for us, you
can send us an email to Stuff podcast at House
stufforks dot com and, as always, hang out at our
beautiful home on the web, Stuff Youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Good morning everyone. I hope you are watching Saturday Morning
Cartoons or maybe the Muppets, because this one is all
about Jim Henson. I'm often asked what our favorite episodes
are when we do the Q and A at live shows,
and many, many times I go back to the ones
on the Muppets and Jim Henson because he was just
(00:21):
one of the best. This is from January sixth, twenty fifteen,
how Jim Henson worked American Hero. That's not part of
the title. That's just me. Welcome to stuff you should
know a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W Chuck Bryant. How do you and Jerry for
the last time this year? Yes, just informed us and
she's all smiles. She is not very nice, Jerry.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
How'd you like that presentation earlier?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
The sensitivity training?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
It was great.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yes, people, Because we worked for a corporation, we have
things like sensitivity trainings.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
And in those trainings you get shown video examples of
various forms of harassment and they are the best, most
fun things to watch.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Ever, they're pretty overt.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, I could watch those all day. Long.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I was wondering how much that production company made from that. Yeah,
you know they did, but like five little vignettes. They
I'm sure they paid the actors like literal peanuts.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
They were bad actors.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
They were like, kid, there's the peanut bucket over there,
you can pay yourself.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, the old The one that really got me was
the Actually they were all really funny, but the one
with the old guy in the uh in the factory
loading boxes like a shipping warehouse, right, and they were
giving the old man a hard time about everything because
he was old. Yeah, because he's old, and you know,
they were given a hard time. So he and he
was out of work for a while and they had
(02:02):
to cover for him. The old man, and he had
the back brace on. Did you notice that? And he
just looked on his face. He just kept getting a
little more like Poudy the whole time. Yeah. I was like, dude,
that's good acting. Stick up for yourself. Tell these young
kids you know what to do.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
The back brace prevents him from it.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Anyway. I just had to bring that up because I
just think that stuff is so funny. And what's funny
is people really do some of that stuff that you're like, what,
there's some creeps out there. That was a really weird
setup for Jim Henson, because he's the least harassing guy
he was probably ever.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, he certainly comes across that way.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
He's a genuinely good dude. It's not one of these
stories you hear about, like maybe some of your favorite
children's books writers or cartoonists or something, maybe we're kind
of bad people.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
No, apparently not at all. Yeah, he was not. Only
so there's a lot of in this article. John No, John,
I thought John Strickland wrote it. It turns out that's
not the case. I'm surprised because he's friends with or
down with at least one of Jim Henson's kids I
believe lives here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And but in this article, it's one of those things
where everybody who compliments Jim Henson, who worked with him,
they they go to the trouble of complimenting him in
a way that's not just like, oh, he was such
a great guy. They all back up just a little
bit because they're cognizant that that doesn't get it across sure,
(03:37):
and they want you to understand that they're talking about
more than just the great guy. Like, oh, he's dead
and I'm not gonna speak ill of the dead. And
he was a great guy. And that's a really thoughtless, polite,
inoffensive thing to say. Sure, So, like frank Oz said
something like he was a he was a great guy.
(03:57):
But at the same time, you know, he was a human,
but he was still a really great guy, right, So,
like what you're thinking of is a great guy. Get
rid of that and actually replace it with a genuine
human great guy.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, because as a filmmaker, he's a puppeteer obviously, but
he was a filmmaker first and foremost, which a lot
of people kind of forget about. Yeah. Oh yeah, that's
a tough, tough job, super stressful, and you and I
have seen it can make good guys and good ladies
be real jerks and yell under stressful situations. You know,
(04:32):
it's it's it's a tough thing. There's a lot of
money on the line each day, and uh.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
It's like everybody, relax, it's just millions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
But frank Oz, I think that's the point he was making,
Like even when he would get frustrated and stress like that,
it was he was still a good guy behind it all.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, and I read I read an I guess it
was a book review of a biography about him that
that showed that it was all somebody said it was
all just play to him. Yeah, like work was play.
Even though he worked really hard, he was able to
commit himself like that to his work because to him,
(05:10):
he was having the time of his life all the time.
And apparently like there was just there was no line
between work and play, which now that we've seen that
sensitivity training could have gotten him in a lot of
big you know, a lot of trouble. But he he
just enjoyed the life that he had from what I understand,
love cars. Yeah, he had like a lotus that was
the same color as Kermit the Frog. He had a
(05:32):
Rolls Royce early on from his work. Yeah, let's talk
about let's talk about the guy.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, I mean, if you haven't, I just need to
go ahead and say, if you haven't listened to the
episode on the Muppets, this is a what I consider
just a more in depth part two on the man himself.
But that's one of our favorite all time episodes and
from feedback, one of the great all time fan episodes.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, it was a great episode.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, it was just a lot of fun. And so
I hope this augments that one. I hope we do
it justice.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So that's actually one of the reasons why we can
do this episode, because we already did a Muppets episode and.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
They tweeted about us. Do you remember the Henson Company did? Yeah,
they did, which was they approve huge. It got their
actual approval. That's right, man, that was something the Muppets
episodes its own thing. It's about Muppets.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
This is about Jim Henson, and it's appropriate that we're
doing this because he was more than just the Muppets.
Even though everybody pegs him with the Muppets and like
that is a huge thing. He was more than that.
And like you said, he was a filmmaker but originally
started out as a puppetsier, but kind of a reluctant one.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah. He was born in nineteen thirty six September twenty fourth,
James Mauri Henson m A U R Y in Mississippi,
and his grandmother, maternal grandmother was a painter and a
quilter and a needle worker, and apparently it was a
big inspiration to him to seek out the creative in life, right,
(07:02):
which is pretty great.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, and one of the one of the things he
got into. Well, he was originally a kind of a
fan of ventriloquism a little bit, but he said later
on in life that he was never he was never
like obsessed with puppets or anything like that like you
would have expected him to be. And as he went
to college, I think in Maryland, he he got into
(07:29):
He started out as a studio artist, that's what he
was studying.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, he loved television above all else, right, from the
time he was a little kid. He was just transfixed
by the tube.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
He almost kind of made himself destined to be on
television by being obsessed with it. Yeah, but he kind
of stumbled into puppetry in college, and he started out
as a studio art major and ended up graduating with
a homech degree because homech was the only degree that
(07:59):
offered puppet making courses.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, he majored or he took a puppetry course at first,
and then a bunch of textiles and crafts courses, which
is a great way to you know, start building and
making your own puppets. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
So, but he graduated with a home ch degree, but
by the time he graduated, he was already extremely successful.
The Rolls Royce that I mentioned he bought in time
to drive to his college graduation. Yeah, because he'd already
created successful shows in his town.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah. I think he was in high school. He was
on the local TV station doing little guest spots, and
then in nineteen fifty five, the show Salmon Friends debuted,
and that you know, he also did work on the
side making money with them. I think he did some
of the like really cool concert posters of the day,
really colorful silk screen posters, and Salmon Friends did really well,
(08:58):
but he still wasn't quite sure, Like I still don't
know if I want to. You know, my filmmaker, I
did these short films, really sort of weird, abstract short films, live.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Action, experimental, so totally experimental. Did you see the time Piece?
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, that one was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
It was great in its way.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And did you see the Cube? I watched parts of
the Cube that was Did you see the end? No, Oh,
you've got to see the end. I skipped the middle
because I was like, Okay, I get where you're going
with this.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, well we should just set it up real quick.
The Cube was a show on NBC. It was a
one hour.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Show in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
The name of the show NBC did was called uh
Experiment in Television and it was a different thing each week.
And he had one week's installment called The Cube, which
was a guy just stuck in a white room but
other people could come in and out of the room,
but he could not, right.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yes, okay, and he starts to go kind of crazy,
and it has the look and feel of a color
TV ad, like all lots of over acting in like
Carol Burnett esque characters and stuff like that. But yeah,
the sentiment behind it and like that, everything behind it
is really neat and it really gives you a good,
(10:14):
an eye opening example of like what Jim Henson was
capable of, but also like what he was into, because
you know, when you think of him, you think of
muppets in Sesame Street in particular.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Sure, and these are weird abstract art films, not unlike
you know, you watch like a Jim Morrison art film
from film school and it's kind of the same style.
You know, that was what was going on back then. Yeah,
and he actually got nominated for an Academy Award for
time Piece.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
I think Jim Hooinson, Jim Henson had Jim Morrison beat
by a mile as far as experimental films went.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, I agree with you there. So, like I said,
he wasn't quite convinced that puppetry was his future because
he was a filmmaker and he was like, puppets are
still kind of kids. But post college he did the
Old Tour of Europe, and in Europe, puppeteering is a
whole different business. It was a lot more serious and
(11:08):
a lot more I guess it was.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Treated as art.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, exactly, and he said, you know what, I Am
going to give this a shot. Came back to the US,
married Jane, and even though he and Jane separated, they
never divorced.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Oh really I thought they did.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
No, they never fulfilled the divorce. They just stayed separated.
And then he started making TV commercials and formed his
own company in nineteen sixty three with I don't know
if he formed it with Frank Oz, but he hired
Frank Oz and Jerry Jewel, who ended up being obviously
legendary puppeteers.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And lifelong collaborators of his.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, But he started out making a basically a puppet
based commercial ad agency in New York, Yes, in nineteen
sixty three.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah, and they weren't making funny commercials back then. So
he was really pretty revolutionary right time.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
And they, I mean, they did pretty well for themselves.
And one of the smartest moves he made early on
was all of his contracts said that he retained the
rights to any of the creations he made for these companies. Yeah,
so he was creating what some of the things that
would later become famous muppets, Like the Cookie Monster was
originally made for a chip maker. It was this puppet
(12:24):
that couldn't get enough of these chips.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah. He was the wheel stealer and he stole cheese wheels.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, Okay, that's what it was. Yeah, and he ended
up being the Cookie Monster. And the reason he ended
up being the Cookie Monsters because Jim Henson retained the
rights to that creation.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
That was he was a very savvy business guy too.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, and he was he was using somebody else's dime,
these advertisers, yeah, like budgets to kind of hash out
and form and make his muppets. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Rocked the Dog started out on Purina commercials and was
later a sidekick on the Jimmy Dean Show in nineteen
sixty three.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Which I remember that from the Muppets episode Rolf was
the first big Muppet. Then he's such like a bit
character now, yeah that you know, it's just mind boggling
to think he was the one that started it all,
even before Kermit, before Big Bird. It was Rolf.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Kermit kind of stole the show.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I think, Yeah, we'll talk a little more about Kermit
and where he came from right after this.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
All right, So it's nineteen sixty nine and a very
very big thing happens to Jim Henson. He was invited
to be on the pilot of a show created by
the Children's Television Workshop called Sesame Street. Not created, some
people think he did, but he did make his mark
(14:05):
by creating most of the iconic characters. And if you
were a fan of the old Sesame Streets back then,
all not all, but many of those little short films,
the little claymation ones or the live actions. He directed
those as well. Yeah, which is pretty cool. I never
knew that.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I think I knew that, did you. Yeah? He was
he was our Russ Vict, you know, he was their
Russ Vic.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Russ Vic is ours, That's right, So, Chuck, the whole
thing that changed everything for him was Sesame Street. Yeah,
he's not a He wasn't a creator of Sesame Street.
They hired him on and they actually kind of won
him over because remember, one of the things that Jim
Henson always struggled with his whole career was he wanted
(14:49):
to explore places that puppets had never really gone to,
in themes that they hadn't gone to, at least not
in the modern age. Sure, but he was fighting against
them not being taken seriously.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, it wasn't like he was anti puppet by any
means he was or anti kids because one of the
big reasons he signed on with Children's Television Workshop was
their goal to educate kids meant a lot to him.
But like you said, I think to merge those worlds
successfully was a big part of his goal and struggle
for a little while.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Russ Vick, by the way, made the little interstitial things
for the stuff you should know, televisions, Yeah, the animations,
which is why I reference him.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
So the Children's Television Workshop, which is now called the
Sesame Workshop. Yeah, from what I understand, they won them
over big time. He makes all of these characters from
like Big Bird, and I think Kermit came before Sesame
Street and he started out I think we talked about
this in The Muppet episode two. He started out looking
really weird, Yeah, like a lizard on this Yeah, not
(15:55):
cool at all, like really kind of freaky.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, which is something.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
That I now that I know a little more about
Jim Henson, I think maybe he might have even been
going for. But one of the things that Sesame Street
allowed him to do was to really kind of explore
something that he'd long been obsessed with, which was television
and where it converged with puppets, which was all new territory,
(16:22):
and Jim Henson was at the bleeding edge of it
because if you think about it, when you go to
a puppet show live, you know, you're you're looking at
what's essentially a mechanism for hiding the human and there's
just a little area that the puppet can move.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Around in tiny fixed age.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah. Yeah, So Jim Henson stepped back and said, Okay,
the television is that little tiny area that the puppet
can stay, can move around in, but it also opens
up the whole world for a puppet because you're using
camera angles and there's editing and it's not in person.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Just frame out the people.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
So and again we talked about this in the Muppet episode.
He created something called platforming up, Yeah, to where the
puppeteers no longer had to like crouch down and to
maneuver the puppets.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, because he was a tall guy.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, tall and lanky man. He was skinny.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Oh, those running shots and time piece exactly because he
was in it. They were hysterical.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, and he weighs about seventy pounds somehow, big lanky legs.
But so Yeah, the performers could stand up, which was
a huge weight off.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
But at the same time, because you're working with cameras
and stuff like that, and they have the whole universe
to move around in and Jim Henson wanted him to
move around as much as possible. It also put him
in some weird positions.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, if you ever well, some people might think it's
like kind of ruining the thing, but I think it's
really neat. If you just look up on Google images Muppets,
Muppet Show behind the scenes pictures, yeah, and it'll show
the stage sets you know, like six feet off the ground, right,
all the people standing beneath. I think it's awesome to
(18:03):
look at. But some people don't, like you know, they
want to keep that illusion alive. So depending on what
kind of person you are, either seek that out or don't.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And we gave that warning in the Muppets episode too,
did we. Yeah, Yeah, I think they're really cool pictures.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
I agree, because you know, a lot of times they're
looking at uh, they're looking at video monitors standing there
contorted using both hands right. Like the way puppeteers work together,
to me is just a miracle because they're acting as
the puppets, but they're moving still moving among one another
(18:38):
as humans right underneath, which can be really complicated. In fact,
we know some really really talented puppeteers here in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, the Center for Puppetry Arts is yeah, I think
the nation's largest puppet puppeteer organization.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yep. And that is where we had our TV show
debut party, premiere party. Yeah, Like it was a really
cool experience. Like Auto in the Gang are right there
on display. I think the Hinson and Kermit cut the
ribbon for the grand opening back when it opened and
ended up donating like five hundred puppets and muppets to
(19:12):
the Center for Puppetry Arts. So if you ever visit Atlanta,
people always email us and say what should we do?
I highly recommend going and checking out the Center for
Puppetry Arts.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, because they have a museum with, like you said,
Emmitt otderxy stuff, like a full sized life size sketchy
yeah behind glass, scary as you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, But I was talking about Raymond Carr, our friend
who I hate to keep bringing up the TV show,
but it all kind of overlaps. He was a production
designer for Stuff you Should Know on Science Channel, and
he and his friends Brandon and the gang are amazing
puppeteers and they're doing some really really leading edge, like
cool stuff here in Atlanta. Yeah, like these giant puppets
(19:51):
operated like, you know, fifteen foot tall puppets operated by
like six and eight people. Have you ever seen the
spaceman that they do. No, man, it's unbelievable. It's really cool.
It's like, I don't know how tall he is, he
seems like he's twenty feet tall. And they know do
these at parades and stuff, and it's just really really
cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, but Henson is a huge inspiration to them obviously.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Oh yeah. I think anybody who works even remotely in
puppets has gotta be inspired by Jim Hinton. One of
the other things that he came up with was that
was based on putting muppets or puppets on TV. Was
using softer materials. Yeah, everything else was like up to
that point, stiff Wood, Marionette's Ventriloquist dummies, that kind of stuff, right.
(20:35):
He used like foam, and it allowed the puppets themselves
to have more expressive faces, which was great for close
up on TV. Yeah, absolutely, And it also I mean
now looking back, you just are like, well, yeah, of course,
it's what puppets do.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
That's what I know.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
But that was Jim Henson that came up with that,
and it changed everything because it took something like, I mean,
imagine Howdy Doty. He was like, yeah, it's cool, you know,
it's Howdy doty or whatever. But yeah, whether close up
or far away, he looked exactly the same. It was
like a woodhead with like a moving lower jaw. And
you know, he gave you nightmares with Kermit the Frog
(21:15):
or something like that. The fact that he could have
different expressions and react differently, and his emotions could be
shown on his face. That made him that much more popular,
that much more approachable, sure to people who were into
him absolutely, which is everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, yeah, show me someone who doesn't like Muppets in
any form. I get it. If you don't like it anymore, maybe,
but your heart is cold and dead inside for a while.
And this is something I don't think I knew. He
dabbled on Saturday Night Live in season one. Lord Michael's
got him a deal to perform some sketches, and ultimately
(21:54):
it wasn't a huge success, and it wasn't the greatest marriage,
but it was pretty cool that he was seeking out,
you know, different avenues to get those puppets on television.
It was, And his big break came in nineteen seventy five.
He wanted to make The Muppet Show and he had
a lot of trouble in the US still, yeah, even
though he had his various successes on commercials and stuff.
(22:18):
So he had to go to London and a TV
producer named Lord lou Grade gave him a deal with
grades ATV Studios. Said, you know what, you can make
your show. And the Muppet Show was born, Oh yeah
about it being about a boom.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
That was it. That was it. And you can really
see Jim Henson's love of variety shows and just kind
of well, just the stage in The Muppet Show, because
if you think about it's set the whole thing set
backstage at a variety show.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
It's such a great idea. When you look back at it,
it's like we take it for granted a little bit
because we were kids, but now as an adult, it's like,
what a perfect way to frame this world. It's basically
like thirty rock or thirty Rock was the Muppet.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Show right with the Muppet Show started all that? Yeah,
I don't know if Carol Burnett was before the Muppet Show.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah it was before, was it?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah? So she did a lot of backstage stuff, didn't
she U. I wonder who started that.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
I don't know. Hers was more sketch, Yeah, but some.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Of it was like backstage, was it? I believe? So
I don't remember that. Thus I'm hallucinating right now.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
They need to have a good old fashioned variety show again.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, they don't have those anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Those were big back in the day, you know, like
the host comes out and then there's sketches and singing.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And remember our cabaret, No, it wasn't cabaret. What was
it the episode we did?
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Oh uh burlesque?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Burlesque? Yeah, yeah, how that started out in vaudeville and
burless cad that's where stand up comedy came from. That
was an interesting episode.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah. I miss those variety shows though, like the Kenny
Rogers and Dolly Parton and yeah Cal Burnett all that,
the band.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Sisters, Although Kenny and Dolly could just sit on a
couch and stare at the camera for an hour and
I'd watch that. Yeah, jer the best great entertainers. Yeah,
I love those two.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
All right, So where are we in our timeline?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Well, Chuck, the Muppet Shows just hit.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Things are going pretty well. They happened going pretty well
already for Henson. Apparently in nineteen seventy, Rubbert Ducky hit
number sixteen on the Billboard charts. And for those who
don't know, Ernie is voiced by Jim Henson. So Jim
Henson sang a song Rubbert Ducky that made it to
number sixteen on the Billboard charts, and that was nineteen seventy, a.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Year after The Cube, before.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
The Muppet Show even happened, before Sesame Street even right,
Nomestreet was sixty nine out. Okay, yeah, same year as
The Cube. Wow, that's great, Sey. That the new touchstone
for his life. The Cube.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Yeah, PC and BC. So the Muppet Show it was
a huge hit. It won, you know, a lot of awards,
It garnered critical praise and won the hearts of children
all over the world.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
But it was also for adults too. Oh yeah. I
think that's why he was able to pull it off
in Great Britain, because they have better senses of humor.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yeah. And speaking of adults, he got into some more
serious themes with his next great show, Fragle Rock. Yeah,
in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I never saw a second of that show. Oh man,
really it wasn't it on HBO?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah. It was one of the first HBO original series.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We either had showtime or we didn't have.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
It was awesome. Fragle Rock was great. And the idea
there is you had the fragle Gang and then you
had well, you had three different groups. You had the
Home of Doc who was an inventor, and his dog's Sprocket.
You had the Fraggles who shared caves underground of Fragle
Rock with their neighbors, the Doozers and the Gorgs and
(25:58):
these gigantic creatures that are in Gorg's garden, And the
whole point of that show was to show how different
types of people can live together and work together in peace. Right.
It was really cool. Didn't know it at the time
when I was, you know, twelve years old, but what
I was learning about was acceptance. And he won three
(26:18):
kble Ace Awards five International Emmys in frag O Rock
was one of the first big hits for HBO as
far as TV goes. Yeah, great, great show, lots of
great songs that I mean, he had every kind of
like reggae, rock, country, bluegrass. Really he was all over
the map with the music on Fragle Rock.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And he I mean he wrote a lot of songs too.
I think he wrote Rubbert Ducky. I'm sure he wrote
a lot of the stuff on Fragle Rock. It was
just yet another thing he did was.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Right music renaissance Man.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
The other show that he came out with in the eighties,
in the mid eighties that I was big time intwo
was Muppet Babies.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
I never saw one second of that.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Man, I love that show.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, we're just enough of part in age where like
certain things I saw you I was you were too
young for, and then certain things I was too old for.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
You know, it's weird, though, I'm just gonna say this.
So you, me and I are the same age. Her
sister is like five years younger than us. U and
I used to love Muppet Babies. Yeah, you and me's
sister used to watch Muppet Babies, so you may was like,
why were you watching Muppet Babies if my younger sister was.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Watching babies and Yummy didn't watch Muppet Baby.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
No, she watched like Donahue or something like that. I
watched Muppet Babies, And I'm not ashamed anymore to say.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Well, when was that nineteen eighty four. I was thirteen,
so yeah, I was just I was starting to be
a teenager. Muppet Babies didn't appeal.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I think it was on for like four or five seasons,
so maybe I was watching it at the beginning of
the series. Anka was watching it. That's what I've been
telling you.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Me and eighty four, you would have been what eight, Oh, yeah,
that's perfect age for Muppet Babies.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So I think I think we just saw it on
different ends of the series, is what it was? Is
that what it is? But have you ever heard of
Ron Funches, Uh yeah, the comedian. Yeah, yeah, he has
a little bit about Muppet babies. It's pretty hilarious. Really,
he's awesome. I love that guy. Yeah, we saw him live.
He's just a beautiful human being.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Muppet Babies was cartoon though, right right, it was not
live puppets correct at all.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
No, it was cartoon.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
It was so cute.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Were they just the regular muppets as babies? Yes, Oh
well I have to watch that sometime.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, and they like us their imagination, Like Gonzo had
a thing for Indiana Jones, so he was frequently like
exploring caves and like swinging on vines with the Indiana
Jones fedoran and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Well, see, I would probably enjoy that, now you would, Yeah, definitely.
All right, I'm gonna go get Muppet Babies, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
He did even more TV that we'll talk about in
a second. Okay, okay, okay, and we're back and we're
(29:08):
still in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
That's right. And you were talking about other TV, as
we said, the man loved television and filmmaking, and so
he got away from the Muppets and puppets every now
and then collaborated with Raymond Scott, who was an electronica pioneer,
actually on shorts called Ripples and Wheels that Go, and
he did that for the Montreal Expo in sixty seven
(29:31):
and I know we're jumping around in time, but we're
just trying to paint the full picture here, not going
necessarily in order. And then he also did this cool
thing called the Floating Face, which was a sketch that
was on the Tonight Show, on the Mike Douglas Show
in the sixties, which did you see any of.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
That a little bit?
Speaker 1 (29:47):
It was a little weird. It was like two eyes
and a mouth and there were like these invisible wires
and background images. It was definitely a little more on
that surreal tip, the hints and surreal tip, not kid
oriented necessarily. But he got into the movies with the
Muppet Movie, which was a big hit, so good it
(30:08):
still holds up, man, it's still so great.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
If you want to know more about that movie into
some of the cool facts from it, go again listen
to the Muppet episode Yeah, as a matter of fact,
pause this, go listen to the Muppet episode and then
come back to this one. Yeah, well it will probably
enhance your experience. Agreed, Or listen to them both at
the same time.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
But he followed the Muppet in nineteen eighty two, he
made The Dark Crystal, Yeah, which was puppets and it
was based on some drawings by fantasy artist Brian Froud,
And there were no humans. It was all puppets. And
I don't think it holds up as well, but it
still looks pretty good.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Well, yeah, I think it actually is probably better received
now than it was originally.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
I think critics appreciated it, but it didn't do so
well at the box office. But now it's become like
a kind of a cult classic for sure. And one
of the reasons why it didn't do that well at
the box office because audiences didn't quite know what to
make of it. They heard Frank Oz who co directed it,
Jim Henson and puppets, and I think they went expecting
(31:16):
the Muppet movie this is nineteen eighty two, and they
got The Dark Crystal instead, which is really dark. A
lot of the like the theme is, you know, good
versus evil, and it's the evil in it.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Is really really evil yea.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And the stuff that happens to some of the puppets
is including really cute puppets, is really horrifying. And I
read this awesome quote by Frank Oz and basically he says,
like Jim thought it was okay to scare kids. As
a matter of fact, he thought it wasn't healthy for
kids to never be scared, so like he purposefully was
(31:53):
trying to scare kids, and he wanted to take the
tradition back to like grim Tales, which were very very dark.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
That's what he was going for with the Dark Crystal. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I think it was ahead of its time for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, if you look at some.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Of these, like some of the CGI movies today, I
think that Dark Crystal was a precursor to a lot
of those. Then he went on to make the movie
The Labyrinth with Bowie, right, Yeah, David Bowie in a
very young Jennifer Connelly. Now that was a legend.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Oh okay, good movie.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
But this was written by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame,
and then rewritten a bunch by a bunch of other people.
Including executive producer George Lucas. Labyrinth was okay, not bad again,
not a huge hit for Hnson though as far as
movies go. But he was still out there exploring these
cool fantastical worlds and fantasy.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Worlds, and he still had a lot of crid even
in the late eighties. If you think about it, his
heyday was the late seventies early eighties with the Muppet
Show the Muppet Movie, and then after that it was like, yeah,
I'll try this with Jim Henson. I'll try this with
Jim Henson. Yeah. And even still he had like a
(33:08):
he was on a pretty great streak. And at the
end of the eighties he had two TV shows on
The Jim Henson Hour Yeah, and Storyteller This Storyteller.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yeah, the Jim Henson Hour. He was always pushing the boundaries.
The Storyteller looking Back Now, I'm sorry, Jim Henson Hour
looking Back was really different from what you were getting
at the time because it was it was all over
the map. You had certain shows that were like, you know,
four or five sketches in one and then three of
the episodes were full on one hour little mini movies.
(33:38):
Oh really, Yeah, from beginning to Louis. Yeah, that's a
good point. Actually, one of the little mini movies was
called Dog City, which was great. It was narrated by
Rolf and it was I remember watching this. It was
like a film noir gangster thing with puppet dogs. Yeah,
and the main character, Acu, was the guy who did Elmo.
(34:01):
Kevin Clash did the character of Acu, and that was fantastic.
I think Dog City went on to be a TV
show in its own right. Took for a little while,
but it was really good. I mean it's total like
gangster crime film noir, but it's you know, Rolf, the
dog right the gang I love. It's really cool.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
The storyteller I hadn't seen before. I was, I guess
aware of, but I don't know why I wasn't watching
it because it would have been like right there for me, Yeah,
because I would have been twelve in nineteen eighty eight.
But I watched one today and it was really good.
It's like human puppet interaction, yeah, which is and it's
just seamless. Like there's one of the things from studying
(34:39):
this that I've realized is like we take for granted
and expect our puppet human interactions to be so seamless
that we don't even realize that we're looking at puppets
right then. And the reason why we expect that is
because of Jim Henson and the people he worked with
and inspired to work so hard at creating illusion.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Well, yeah, the illusion that these are living, breathing things.
He would go I remember Kermit as guest on talk shows.
He wouldn't go out as Jim Henson. He would go
out as I mean, he did those appearances as well,
but Kermit the Frog would be a guest on The
Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or host or host the
guest host The Tonight Show and Larry King. Yeah, and
(35:22):
it was all a part of this goal of making
these real people, right, or real living things not people.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah. Apparently somebody who was working with Jim Henson was
I guess a director of the Muppet Show would be
giving Jim notes on Kermit, and Jim would just respond like,
let Kermit respond, freaking And the director said, eventually you're
just sitting there, You turn and you address Kermit like
he just forced you in, like interacting with the puppet
(35:52):
even during a note session.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah, and probably without feeling silly or stupid or anything.
You know, it probably seemed like a totally normal to do.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Eventually once he forced you to do it.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
He also pioneered the Hintson Performance Control System and won
an Academy Award for that, and that was a remote
control system that helped puppeteers out. So he was always
pushing technical, visual, stylistic, thematic boundaries as far as he could,
(36:23):
and they didn't always work. You know, the movies weren't
aside from them up at movie they weren't the biggest hits.
The TV show a couple of you know, neither one
of those lasted very long. But I think he was
just intent on doing something different.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, and he did too. And he died in nineteen
ninety of a staff infection. Organ failure brought on by
a staff infection. Did you know that?
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yeah? I think pneumonia had something to do with it too,
didn't it.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Not that I saw, Really, I saw organ failure caused
by a group a strep infection. I'm sorry that staff.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Very sad. And if you're ever in the mood for
a good cry, watch the Jim Henson memorial where Big
Bird sings It's not easy being green, Yeah, tough stuff people,
his children. His legacy lives on through nineteen ninety three, Jane,
his wife, formed founded the Jim Henson Legacy to preserve
(37:22):
his contributions, share him with the public. And like I said,
he donated five hundred puppets to the Center of Puppetry Arts.
And there is also the Jim Henson Memorial and Muppup
Museum and traveling exhibits. And his sons and daughters help
run his foundation, and some of them are publicing companies
themselves and run the company. The company has changed hands
(37:45):
a lot. I have sort of the boring history. When
he was still alive, he was going to sell it
to Disney for one hundred and fifty million.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Ye, because apparently he believed in Disney's commitment to the characters,
so he thought like that would be a good place
for them muppets to live.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah, and Disney went he bought it, but he did
not get that deal finished. But it turns out one
hundred and fifty million with chump change because in two
thousand his children sold the entire company, including the Sesame
Street characters, to a German media company for six hundred
and eighty million and then I believe that company fell
(38:22):
in hard times and they bought it back in two
thousand and three for eighty four million. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Wow? The Henson children are smart.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
And in between all that, there are various exchanges of
percentages of stakes with other companies and rights of certain characters.
It's a little dull to go over all of that,
but needless to say, they made up pretty well. And
eventually Disney now does they do own all the Muppet studio?
Speaker 2 (38:50):
They own the Muppets. That apparently the Henson Company sold
the rights to the Sesame Street characters to Sesame Street,
which is pretty cool. Yes, and the Jim Henson Creature
Shop still builds the Sesame Street puppets and Muppets.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, it says they sold the rights to the Muppets
and Bear in the Big Blue House characters, which I'm
not familiar with that one, nor am I, but Disney
wanted to. I guess that's sort of the player to
be named later that's included in the baseball trade.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Man proud of the Henson kids.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, they're great, and I hope we get tweeted about
this one from them. You seem pretty great, Brian and
Cheryl and the gang. He seemed like they're doing right
by the dad. And there's other siblings too, and I
think they're all involved. Yep, super involved. And sadly Jane
passed away I think in twenty thirteen at the age
of seventy eight. I would have loved to have seen
(39:42):
what kind of work he did later in his life.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Oh yeah, the fact that he died in nineteen ninety
still had like a couple of TV shows going, I
mean fifty three years old. Yeah, he had a lot
of art left in. If you want to know more
about Jim Henson, go listen to our Muppets episode. And
while you're looking that up, you can also search Jim
Henson on the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com and
(40:06):
I'll bring up this great article. And since I said
search part, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
This is I'm gonna call this sophomore smart sophomore. Hey guys,
my name is Matt and I'm a sophomore in high school. Sophomore,
smart sophomore. I'm a newer fan of the show and
I listen while I do everything, I just want to
say the Dark Ages were only dark in Europe. The
life expectancy in the Dark Ages is actually a little
longer than before, but mostly because there were smaller wars.
But things were certainly brighter in the Islamic world. In fact,
(40:37):
people in the Middle East were really enlightened during this time.
Within about one hundred years, they conquered a lot of
new land, including Spain. Also, the Arabic language grew to
be the language of philosophy, medicine, and poetry, and Baghdad
became the world center of scholarship. They translated almost all
of the famous Greek philosopher's work into Arabic. Muslim Muslims
(40:58):
developed algebra to amplify inheritance laws, and they made important
strides in trigonometry to help people find a way to Mecca.
Architecture grew too. The Great Mosque and Spain only took
roughly a year, while medieval cathedrals took hundreds of years
to build. Wow, So the Dark Ages weren't that dark,
and the Enlightenment came earlier than most think. And that
(41:18):
is from Matt.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Thanks Matt.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
That is enlightening stuff, my friend.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah, our numerals are Arabic.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yeah, it's true. We should hit on some more Middle
Eastern topics.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Let's do it man. Yeah. In the meantime, if you
want to suggest some Middle Eastern topics for us, you
can send us an email to Stuff podcast at House
stufforks dot com and, as always, hang out at our
beautiful home on the web, Stuff Youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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