August 27, 2009 • 32 mins
Jim Henson's Muppets, including the beloved Kermit the Frog, first came to life in the mid-1950s. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the history and nitty gritty details of the world's most famous puppets in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House stuff Works dot Com about rainbow and what
(00:22):
a Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Hey,
Chuck Bryant, Hey Josh Clark. It's a beautiful day here
at How Stuff Works, Hunt it is. I have a
question for you, Jy. Have you ever been half sleep?
And have you heard voices? Chuck? Josh, I've heard them
calling my name? Is that the sweet sound that calls
(00:45):
a young sailor? Oh? I can't remember the next line.
It might be one and the same. I think it
is one and the same. Yes, clearly we were speaking
of none other than top hit Academy Award nominated song
Rainbow Connection is performed by a certain philosophizing frog in
(01:07):
a swamp at the beginning of the Muppet movie. Huh,
we're gonna be talking about how the Muppets work today.
I know Josh is like rocking in his chair right now.
He's so excited. I love the Muppets. Who doesn't love them? Uppet? Everybody?
You show me someone that doesn't love the Muppets, and
you know they've got a butt kicking coming to them
via me. Yeah, Chuck's the Muppet enforcer, Muppet love enforcer. Um,
(01:29):
I think we should probably give a disclaimer, Chuck. If
anybody is really attached to illusion and doesn't really want
to know, like the nitty gritty details of how muppets
are made and moved about, they should probably not listen
to this one, right, People that don't even want to
acknowledge that they are puppets. Yeah, the lovers, the dreamers
and me. Yeah that's awesome. Yeah. So um, Chuck, let's
(01:53):
start at the beginning. Let's start back in. Gotta start
with Jim Henson. Yeah, well, yeah, there are no ups
without Jim Henson and even says it right there in
the article how Muppets Work, which you can find on
how stuff Works dot com. Right right, Uh, Washington, d
C has a local TV station and uh, and I
think the winner of nineteen fifty five, Um, a young
(02:15):
college freshman, Jim Henson. Dude, until probably had no idea
that this went back that far. No, this guy was
starting something huge at this time, right, I mean it's puppets,
Like puppets were relegated to what children's birthday parties, stuff
like that. This guy's bringing them on the TV. Exactly huge.
And what what what was kind of surprising is that
(02:35):
this show Sam and Friends, Right, that was his first show,
the one on the local Washington d c UH television station,
was for adults. Absolutely, it was I believe there was
some satire involved, correct, a ted political satire parody. They
parodied other television shows and it ran for six years
(02:56):
and got him on Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show. Yeah,
and actually this is where um, a little lizard like
creature who came to be known as Kermit debut. Should
I do it? Yeah? Hi? Who Kermit d Frog? Here?
That is wonderful, Chuck revealed before the the UM, I
guess the real, the real that's run by a hamster
(03:18):
started rolling. Um that he started with Kermit. That was
your first voice, first voice? What else do you get?
My voices are mediocre at best, But I still like
doing him. I gotta tell you, Nail Kurmit, but I've
been doing Kermit since I was like six km. Yeah,
well you've got him. I'm trying to get a ya
out of Chuck, but have a limited range. Well, Kermit
(03:39):
lizard like Kermit, as we'll call him Um. It was
joined by some other wonderfully named puppets that weren't quite
called muppets yet these are still puppets in Henson's mind.
You had Sam Yorick Harry the Hipster, one of my favorites,
Professor Magcliff. I'm surprised it wasn't a hippie rob. No
(04:00):
hippie rob yet give it another decade. Mush Melon and
Chicken Liver was part of the regular cast, and basically
it was Henson and a classmate of his um named
Jane Nabel, who later became Jane Henson. They met up
and she kind of assisted him early on. They fell
in love. They did fell in love, and she was
(04:23):
actually replaced when they got married and had kids by
one frank Oz. Frank a nineteen year old Frank Oz,
and he was originally um hired just to be the
right hand literally of Rolf the Dog. Right they call
that technique right handing. We'll get into that, which we'll
get into and Rolf actually fun fact, Rolf the dog
with the big floppy ears, who's performed with the likes
(04:46):
of Liberacci among others, was actually created specifically to sell
Purina dog food. Yeah. After he did Salmon Friends, he
produced TV commercials for a while with the early muppets,
a bunch of them. So this is a clearly we've
we've transitioned into the era where there were muppets. We
went from Salmon Friends and now muppets are starting to
(05:08):
come about. Ralph Kermits now Frog. He's made that sexual
transition from lizard to frog, that right of passage that
every lizard has to go through. Um, and uh, there's
still no TV show. We're in the sixties and everyone's
getting to be aware of the muppets, Chuck, Like you said, Uh,
they were on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Jimmy Dean Show,
(05:30):
which you should have been in the green room for
that one sausage everywhere. Um. He did create some pilots,
but they never took no one ever, bottom up No.
And he got really close with ABC, but they walked
on a deal. Um. What really kind of catapulted him
into a possible TV deal was the formation of kids
show called Sesame Street, the children's television network started by
(05:53):
Joan and Coney Right and Jim Henson always kind of
thought of his puppets and then muppets as um uh
for adults, like this is adults stuff like you can
even today there's um puppet Up Uncensored. It's a live
improv muppet puppet show for adults. It's carried on by
(06:14):
his son Brian. And that's very much in the tradition
of Jim Henson's original idea, which is these are puppets,
but they're for adults. Like there's just that kind of
ironic twist that these puppets are cursing, you know. But
apparently somewhere along the way he came to figure out
that um children could be a very sophisticated audiences a
quote in the article, So he went along with Sesame Street, right, yeah,
(06:37):
and that's really where it blew up. Everyone who grew
up in the United States and probably elsewhere watch Sesame
Street as a kid and may still and that's where
we were introduced to uh, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird
and Burton Ernie Cookie Monster. Doesn't get any more classic
than that. Grower's my favorite Sesame. Yeah. I did little
(07:00):
video one time with a Grover Finger puppet. Did you
This is back in like the old VHS days where
you could edit like I literally had to edit it
all in camera as I shot it, and I used
like a ween song and I Grover finger Puppet. He's
pretty fun. So this had nothing to do with Karate Chuck. No, no, no,
these are just my early filmmaking days. It's fun. So okay,
So Sesame Street takes off and still going today. I mean,
(07:21):
this has got to be one of the longest running
television shows of all time. Yeah, I think sixty Minutes
has a beat. Maybe General Hospital. You know General Hospital
has been on since the mid fifties. Who cares. Yeah,
but dude, that's a really long time for a single
television show to run. That's a lot of crap, it
is They just shovel it on nothings. Yeah, back to
the goodness of the Muppets though. So he's almost there,
(07:43):
He's so close. He's been shooting pilots. None of them
were getting taken up. ABC's Walked Um and a little
show called s Live starts up in nineteen Yeah. I
did not know this until I read this article. I
didn't either. I'm a big fan. I'm trying to sound
like I did know this, alright. Um, the the first
season and included sketches Um called The Land of Gorge,
(08:04):
which were larger muppets, and the SNL writers said, we're
not writing for puppets. Yeah, in fact they're I think
they're head writer is famously quoted saying I don't write
for felt, which I thought was kind of was that
Al Franken? Now what now Franken? I can't remember his name,
but Senator Al Franken, Senator Al Francin is so crazy.
Um so that was very short lived. Finally, Henson strikes
(08:28):
a deal with UM I t C and they start
shooting The Muppet Show in London and syndicating it out
at CBS. And this is Yeah, the pilot, though I
thought was interesting. I should mention was the name of
the pilot was called Sex and Violence. They actually UM
I was watching it earlier and um, one of the
muppets comes out, not when I could identify by sight.
(08:50):
Uh comes out and there's this huge thing carved out
of stone. It's a sex and violence and uh, the
announcer says, and now the end of sex and violence
on TV. And the Muppet presses a dynamite plunger and
blows up the sex and violence and then the Muppet
Show theme starts, well, there you have it. Yeah, that
makes sense. Then I thought it was just one of
(09:11):
those ironic names or something. I don't think like Jim
Hinson was trying to be ironically funny. I think he
was still but sure, yeah, got you the end of
sex and Violence. So yeah, the Muppet Show was born
and the rest is history. The end, the end. Thanks
for coming, Chuck, What was your favorite Muppet d How
(09:33):
did you get your voice to do that? It's anytime
you say those three words together that happens. Let me
try You should try to hum or the judges. We
see old guys in the balcony. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what
was it? Statler and Waldorf? Statler and Waldorf. Those guys
were excellent, and Jim Hinson actually voiced Waldorf. I guess
we should talk about who the creator actually voiced specifically. Yeah,
(09:56):
he did obviously did Kermit the Frog, He did Rolf
the Dog. He and Waldorf. Uh. He did Doctor Teeth
of Electric Mayhem, the Electric Mayhem, which was the the
hippie band. Yeah. I think Dr Teeth was probably modeled
after Dr John that's a guest, but probably I think so. Yeah,
he had he had that kind of new Orleans accent,
didn't he? Yeah? And then link Hogthrob of Pigs and
(10:20):
Space of what excellent, And he did the Ernie half
of Burton Ernie. Yeah. Who I have to say, Ernie's
one of my favorite characters. I know he's set to
me Street, but he's one of my favorite buppets. Um.
I kind of go for the really sweet, kind hearted
ones really Ernie, Fozzy, Yeah, Bunsen, which one was Bunsen
(10:42):
the Little Professor, a little affable professor with Beaker the most. Yeah.
Have you seen Beaker doing oh to Joy? It's pretty cool.
It's on YouTube. Type in meep and oh to Joy
and it will come up. Yeah, He's like me, me, me, Me,
me me. It's pretty cool. And of course the chef,
the chef who was Swedish chef, who actually has the
(11:04):
distinction of being the only muppet with live human hands
unsupposed or uncovered by gloves or anything like that. Yeah.
I was watching a clip of the Swedish chef and
you can very easily see why they did that. He
has to put like dashes of things in and pinch
and stuff in, and so he actually has I believe
frank Oz's hands and then then Henson doing his head. Yeah,
(11:26):
and we'll we'll talk about the muppeteering and Manto because
it gets pretty intense. So I get ahead of myself
sometimes I know it's just exciting. Uh. And then frank
Oz of course, which was the other half. And I
think the quote in the article, which I thought was cool,
as Jim Henson said that Frank Oz was probably the
person most responsible for the Muppets being funny. Right, Frank
Oz is a very funny guy. He is. He also
did h He also puppeted and voiced Yoda and All
(11:51):
Star Wars. Oh you knew that, did you? Yeah? I
think everyone did it. Frank Oz did Yoda. Uh. And um,
he did Rolf the Dog. I'm sorry he right handed
Route the Dog. Jim did the voice. Let's remember this
is what he was hired for it an, that's right.
He did Bert the Burt half. He did Grover, your
favorite cookie monster animal who doesn't love animal? A lot
(12:12):
of screaming with that one, Miss Piggy and Fozzy Bear
of course, to to the iconic characters. And you know,
frank went on to direct movies. I mean he worked
with Hinson for like thirty years and then directed movies.
He directed Uh What About Bob? And Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
and with other classics. You're gonna tell you Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels is funny. The greatest thing he's ever made, and
(12:32):
he's acted to. He was in The Blues Brothers briefly.
Oh was he the the corrections officer at Hands and
Back is prophylactic? Yes, he is. Later on he reprises
that role sort of in Trading Places. He plays the
officer checking out danack Royd in prison in that film
as well. So he's a specialist. He plays officers giving
(12:54):
prisoners there type cast. Yeah. Yeah, so Chuck you one
to get into um a little behind the scenes stuff, Yeah,
why not? We might as well. Um, well, let's start
with how a Muppet is made. Yeah, Josh, the Muppets
were created only by Jim Hinson. He did all the
original sketches and he built some of the original muppets
(13:16):
when he was still kind of a small shop. Yeah,
but he figured out pretty quick that he had too
many in his head and he needed too many to
just do it himself. So yeah, he started out, um,
using some materials like paper machee that didn't work out
because it was too hard, and then he tried um
different kinds of foam. I think he's foam rubber, but
found that that deteriorated. Yeah, so he's reticulated polyphone, which
(13:41):
is I imagined very much like foam rubber, but a
little more durable, right, And I think it's more flexible
because that that gave him the opportunity if you stick
your hand in Kerman's head to operate the puppet, to
move your knuckles around and like he would raise an
eyebrow and it would give him a little more feature
to his face. I chuck. You know, I love lore.
I want it's poss this one out. Kermit Lizard Kermit
(14:02):
pre Great Transition. Kermit was actually made from his The
skin of Kermit was made from fuzzy green coat Jim
Henson's mother owned, and his eyes were two halves of
a toy which I'm not familiar with. I wouldn't either,
wacky wacky stacks yea stacks half. Yeah. They always kind
(14:22):
of looked like ping pong balls with the little pupils
drawn on them. Yeah, well, let's go ahead and talk
about that. The pupils. Yeah, that's they They say that
they did the eyes last when they're building muppets because
it's the most important part, and the pupils are actually
very important. And this I didn't know either. Um, the
bigger the pupil, the younger the muppet. Pretty cool, Yeah,
and it really kind of makes sense. It gets the
(14:43):
point across that they're kind of wide eyed and innocent,
unfamiliar with the horrors and evil of the world. Right.
And it says they also tilt the pupils end slightly
to give them more focus. Well, they move them closer together,
because if they just put them, you know, on these
huge eyes where they should be in the middle, muppets
would look like they had easy eyes. Right. And the
man responsible for this was one of the first guys
(15:03):
that Jim Hinson hired. His name was Don uh Salen Salon.
I get the impression that this guy was like the
man behind the man in a lot of ways. Jim
Henson was this very creative, artistic person and he knew
what he was doing. But I think Don Solon was
the one who's like, okay, i'll make it work. Well.
He was definitely the master, like a sower. It sounds
(15:26):
like he came up with the Henson stitch, which he
very graciously um named after Henson. The Henson stitch, which
is a I guess, a method of sewing that hides
the scene. Yeah, you don't wanna. You don't want to
see a scene right there. It's like I forgot that's
a puppet exactly. And this, uh, this is so chuck
full of things I never knew. I'm so glad we're
doing this. Kermit the Frog actually has a stitch, Henson
(15:48):
stitch going right up the center of his nose, and
you would never know it because the Henson stitch and
the little fuzzy felt kind of helps to hide it. Yeah.
And the fuzzy felt actually um is called Andron fleets.
That's the covering of Kermit and most of the other
You know that that kind of muppet skin, they actually
call it muppet fleece. That that fabric sort of like
a worn tennis ball. Yeah. You know you've arrived when
(16:09):
there's a type of textile named after your creation, a
stitch named after you. Uh so most muppets. Um. Well,
there's either two ways you can go about it. There's
either the hand and rod method of operating or a
live hand. We talked about the live hand, and that
is when you literally stick your arm into the arm
(16:29):
of the puppet, into a glove or in the swedishchef's case,
a natural hand. Right, and there's actually two people operating.
And let's start with the hand and rod one or
rod in hand. Yes, so most muppeteers chuck or right handed. Um,
and so they're their right hand would be inside the muppet,
operating the head the face, that kind of thing. Their
(16:50):
left hand would be holding the two rods that were
attached to the muppets hand. Grover's an example of a
hand and rod one. Um, so the left hand would
make the hands clap. That kind of thing is two
very in dowels, which you can move them with your fingers, right,
so one person can operate it. Uh. And actually, since
they the most muppeteers were right handed and they were
operating with their left hand. Um, most muppets are left
(17:14):
handed since they were operating the hands with them. Yeah.
Another cool fact, except there was one muppeteer who was
left handed and all of her muppets were right handed. Yeah.
I didn't know that. Yeah, man, I'm learning so much. Uh.
And then um, occasionally you know clearly, if one person
is operating both hands, there's a limited amount of things
they can do. That's where the right handing comes in.
(17:35):
If you need uh specific movements done with both hands,
then a second puppeteer comes in operates only the right hand,
which is what frank Oz was hard to do in
the case of Ralph right Um. Ernie is another example
to see right handed. Yeah, so there's a there's one
muppeteer who's there two guys standing next to each other. Um,
(17:55):
there's one guy who has his right hand up as
high as it can go. He's operating the face, and
then his left hand is up the arm of the muppet,
and then the other guy has his right hand up
the muppets right hand. There's two people operating these three parts,
and they do a pretty good job. But you really,
(18:15):
you think about it, and you just you look at
Ernie or something, and you don't you wouldn't think that
there's two people operating him, and that sounds very cramped
and close and it is. Yeah, I mean talk about
henson Um at the beginning of the Muppet movie when
Kermit's on the log. Oh yeah, well sure, when the
shots in the movies where you don't see a human Well,
(18:36):
what I guess, let's backtrack a little. What they usually
do um was a technique that Henson invented called platforming up,
So they would build the actual muppet stage about eight
you know, six to eight feet off the ground so
the puppeteers could stand fully upright so they don't have
to bend over. Sometimes when that wasn't possible, they built
trenches for the for the muppeteers to get down in.
(19:00):
And then for the movies, which is what you were
talking about, for the scenes where like Kermit was sitting
on the log and singing Rainbow Connection. At the opening
of the film, Jim Hinson was in a little capsule
cramped down underwater, underwater sealed uh, with the thing all
around was sticking up out of the water, probably disguised
(19:20):
as a read that allowed him to breathe exactly. But
they were showing off right out of the bat they
right out of the gate. They did a three sixty
shot of Kermit on the log to show that right,
no wires is not a marrionette. Pretty cool, Yeah, it
was pretty cool. I love that. And then they did
scenes where they were like riding bicycles, and in some
cases I think they had to have multiple h They
called it muppet switching, where they had like a full
(19:42):
body Muppet that they would occasionally have to use the
marrionette wires, or they would have a little person in it,
or they would have a little person, or they would
use a remote control which came a little bit later. Um. Also,
this is my favorite. When they had a muppet driving
a car, the car was actually being driven, so the
Muppet would be in the front seat. Uh, the muppeteer
would be crouched down in the back seat operating the Muppet,
(20:05):
and then there would be a little person in the
trunk driving the car with remote control looking at a
video screen. Yeah, they're actually extremely sophisticated. What they have
to do. This is incredibly complex. Imagine having to build
like you have to know exactly what's going to happen
in every scene. Then you have to build the set
to accommodate a human person and a muppet and their muppeteer,
(20:27):
so there may be several different levels. It sounds very dangerous.
And then as a muppeteer as well, Chuck Um. They
have and they have had since the seventies monitors strapped
to their chest so they can see what the what
their muppet is doing. Right, it is backwards, so they
have to know that if they're if they are looking
at the screen and they want their muppet to move left,
they have to move right. I mean, I imagine that
(20:49):
the wiring, the neural connections of these people's brains are
very unusual. If you could slap them in a wonder
machine and take a look at them next to like
one of ours, I'll bet you've noticed some real distinction.
We should write a article on muppeteers brains would be good.
Uh and you're dead on man, because one of the muppeteers,
there's been about a hundred of him, one of them
named Dave Gold, said it takes maybe five years to
(21:10):
do everything without thinking about it. In fact, I still
find it difficult. And Frank Oz said, what you're doing
is so complicated that you really don't have time to
think about what you're doing. First your body understands and
then your mind grasp what you're doing. Sometimes so very
complicated stuff. There's there's one other kind of muppet. We've
got hand and rod uh live hand or right hand muppets,
(21:33):
and then there's full body muppets like Big Bird. Sure,
so this is actually you know Big Birds as tall
as he looks, um, what is he like? Eight feet tall?
He's pretty tall. So there's a muppeteer and they're probably
a fairly tall muppeteer on platform shoes five inch shoes. Uh,
standing up with his right hand going up to Big
Bird's mouth and it's a it's a reach to Yeah,
(21:55):
I can you imagine. I'll bet they feel like Neil
Pert all the time? Right, you know what you should
look on the on the article actually, and there's some
really good illustrations, excellent illustrations. It shows like Big Bird
with the person inside of it, and it is a
stretch man that would get really really tiring, just physically exhausting,
I would imagine. So the right hands up, the left
hands controlling left hand, and then there's a wire connected
(22:17):
to the left elbow that's connecting Big birds right hand
or that's that's controlling Big birds right hand. Which is
why if you notice, if you watch Big Bird, when
the right hand goes up, the left hand goes down.
When the left hand goes down, the right hand goes
up because it's Uh, it's like a little Pulley system, right, Chuck.
We were we were talking about, you know, um, muppeteers
performing in trenches on the set or platforming up or
(22:41):
you know, how difficult it is to create these sets. Uh,
And once you know what they're doing, you can see
it pretty easily. Like I was watching a clip of
Steve Martin playing dueling banjos with some muppets class on
The Muppet Show, right classic, and they're doing it, like
I guess in between performances because they're out in the
theater seats and Steve Martin doesn't move the whole time,
(23:02):
so god knows how many like pits are on either
side of him and how far he would fall if
he stepped one way or the other. And then some
of the other muppets are in the seats rows of
seats behind him, so that clearly provides a trench for
the muppeteers too. And once you once you kind of
know how they did it, you can you can see
the techniques in use. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, I bet
it was a cool set to visit, for sure. The
(23:23):
sets were usually speaking of sets were um, there were
a couple of ways they could do it. They're either
muppets sized when there was only muppets involved, which would
be scaled down obviously, or when um obviously. You know.
The Muppet Show was famous for having celebrity guests each
week when humans interacted, and as they do in Sesame
Street too, they would have kind of a mix. Some
things would be human size and then they would do
(23:46):
it's a technique called forced perspective when they would make
like a door, you know, seven eighths the size of
a real door in the background to make it look
like it's really far away, or just to bring everything,
you know, to where it all matches up. Fantastic, pretty cool. Yeah,
that is cool. What's the quote from Carol Burnett? Because
that the article talked about, you know, humans interacting with
muppets and once it like to act with you know,
(24:07):
poly Era. She said something like, when you're standing next
to Kermit and interacting with them, you totally believe him.
And she she was on the Muppe Show a lot, wasn't, Yeah,
she was. And the other cool thing was they said
that between takes that they said the puppets would often
just kind of chit chat with the actors, like making
small talk, just totally buy into it. Yeah, I love it, man,
that would have been an awesome show to do. It
(24:29):
was a good time for it too, And Chuck, if
you notice there's um a lot of there's so much
going on on the Muppet Show. They really nailed the
realism in part because there were so many muppets going around. Yeah,
and the big scenes, right, and then you have like
the stars clearly like ms Piggy, Kermit, Swedish Chef Buns
and Beak Girl them, um, but then you also have
(24:50):
some muppets who you just like you you don't really
recognize the background extras basically right, And and there's actually
a name for these muppets. They create blank slate my
bits and then you know, depending on what they need,
they have all sorts of costumes eyebrows, eyes, noses, all
that stuff that they can just switch out real quick.
Pretty cool. And what do they call them? Well, there's
a couple of names that originally they were called anything Muppets,
(25:13):
but the one I like, they were called what Knots. Yeah,
I love that. I knew you would like whatnots over
anything Muppets. Well, who wouldn't The Whatnots would be a
good band name. Uh so, yeah, they were basically the
background extra of The Muppet Show and they would just
interchange these uh these guys and girls. I guess, I
guess they were gender specific. Sure. Yeah. Ms Piggy actually
had her own costume designer or her own real human
(25:35):
costume designer for the Muppets. One of the few, well
not few, but one of the one of the Muppets
that were close A lot of them were in the buff. Yeah. Kermit, well,
Kermit actually wore his trench coat sometimes. Well when he
was on Sesame Street, he was the roving reporter where
he had the trench coat and the hat and everything,
which was pretty awesome. I loved the idea of a
frog reporter. But then on The Muppet Show, his character
(25:55):
was the kind of the lead producer of the show.
That was kind of the idea of the show. That
leads me to the thirty Rock thing that what's gonna
tell you about the television show thirty Rock? That was
there's a thing on the internet, so one did on
a blog I think, where they linked the Muppet Show
to thirty Rock and how they were basically the same show.
And Liz Lemon was Kerment trying to pull this show
together amid the craziness, and Jane Karkowski was Miss Piggy,
(26:19):
and I can't remember the other characters, but they kind
of tied each one to the other. And the only
one who they couldn't get a representation of was the
Alec Baldwin character, which I thought was pretty interesting. Maybe
he would be Carol Burnett, Yeah, maybe so, but I
think they said he could have been both Waldorf and
Statler something like that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Um Chuck the uh. I guess that's kind of emblematic
(26:42):
of the Muppets, right. The Muppet Show produced a bunch
of spinoffs. First of all, you've got the three movies, right, Yeah,
You've got The Muppet Movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and
The Great Muppet Caper, all three of them excellent, excellent film.
And apparently there's uh Seth Rogan and Jason Siegel, the
actors from Knocked Up, were trying to make another Muppet
movie and I don't know if yeah, I don't know
(27:03):
if that's ever gonna happen, but they were kind of
in talks with the Hint and people to write a
script and make another Muppet movie. There's a did you
ever watch Frago Rock? Did I watch Fraggle Rock? I didn't, actually, dude,
Fraggo Rock was on when I was eleven, twelve and
thirteen on HBO, so right when I first got h
you just answered the question. So yes, I lived and
breathed Fraggo Rock. Down, Chuck, you will be happy to know,
(27:24):
or possibly dismay, that there is a Frago Rock movie
that's supposed to have already come out. It hasn't yet,
but I imagine it's coming down the pike. It is.
I looked it up today and right now they had
the date listed as eleven. Good god, so we'll see okay,
and uh, Frago Rock is not the only one. Did
you ever watch Muppet Babies? I did not. That was
after my time. That was right in my time, actually
(27:47):
embarrassingly maybe slightly after, but I still watched it. Um. Yeah,
that was a really, really good cartoon. Barbara Billingsley played
the nanny whose face you never saw. Yeah, they used
to have some great adventures. I didn't know. That took
me along on. And then my favorite was emmett Otter's
jug Band. Christmas have you seen that? Man? Are you joking?
(28:07):
How old are you? It came out in nineteen seventy seven.
I was six years old. Et Otters Jug Band Christmas.
Have you seen a Jerry? Jerry hasn't seen it. Emitt
Odors Jug Band Christmas is one of the best Christmas
specials ever in the history of Christmas specials. I'll check
it out. It was awesome. The the river Bottom Nightmare
Band was there. There were two bands. There was em
(28:30):
Hotter clearly with his jug band were these old nice
Otters that played country jug music, and then there was
the Evil Faction, which was the River Bottom Nightmare Band
and they did this like hard rock, heavy metal stuff
and they had a snake muppet that was swimming around
in a tank and it was awesome. That's pretty good.
I will check that out. I'll add that to a
Christmas story and it's a wonderful life. You totally should. Well,
(28:53):
that's pretty much muppets. They're still going on. As we mentioned,
Brian Henson's doing the puppet up Uncensored Crop Show. Yeah.
I think you can catch him at a comic con
in San Diego, Australia. TBS had some stuff. I'm pretty sure.
If you type in pup it up on the Internet,
it will bring up some stuff for you. There was
a Broadway show. There is a Broadway show called Q.
(29:15):
It's like, um, a revision of Sesame Street but adults
a little more drama. Yeah, they had to work it
out with the Hintson Company to get approval and umour
for best Musical. Good move there. And I want to
just recommend if anyone visits Los Angeles ever or lives
(29:35):
in Los Angeles. If you live there, you know about it.
But the Jim Hinton Company is located at the corner
of Libre and Sunset, and it was the original Charlie
Chaplin Studios. So it's this really cool old kind of
English tutor uh studio. But it's it's small. It's not
like some big studio's right in the middle of Hollywood,
so it's not very big. But um you drive ei
(29:56):
there now and it's got a big archway right when
you drive in, and on top there's like an eight
foot tall kermit dressed as the Charlie Chaplin little tramp
character with the top hat and cane. And here it's
really cool and the Hitler mustache and Hitler mustache. Now
I don't think he has the mustache. Actually, so Chuck.
I want to leave everybody with a really chilling thought.
(30:16):
Imagine Jim Henson back in n had decided to go
into accounting and this world was a world without muppets?
Are you trying to make me cry? Isn't that a
weird thought? It really kind of barrels it into perspective.
We should write a book called a World without Muppets,
(30:37):
like some sort of reality. Be awful. It's nothing but war.
So thank you. Jim Henson, who everyone knows. Sadly in
passed away of a kind of pneumonia, and they said
it wasn't actually pneumonia, but it was. It was a
bacterial infection that shut his organs down. Basically, he complained
of flu like symptoms to his wife or his x
(30:59):
Y food he was still close with. I think they
were separated at the time. And I went to the
hospital and twenty hours later died. It's very, very sad.
But his children continued that tradition, and his son does
not actually do the voice of Kermit as many people thought.
His son Brian, A lot of people thought that he
took over for Kermit. It was actually me for Kermit,
(31:22):
Yes you did. That's my side gig. So that's muppets.
I could go on for hours, I know you could.
I gotta stop you right here. We're gonna press stop
on the Stopwatch. Okay, okay, Chuck. Are we doing any
listener mail today? No, Josh, no listener mail. Because this
is a special episode. We want to play it out
with a little treat for the fans, A little snippet
(31:43):
from a song we all know and love. So uh,
without further ado, take it away. Thanks for coming, everybody.
(32:06):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House stuff Works dot Com about rainbow and what
(00:22):
a Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Hey,
Chuck Bryant, Hey Josh Clark. It's a beautiful day here
at How Stuff Works, Hunt it is. I have a
question for you, Jy. Have you ever been half sleep?
And have you heard voices? Chuck? Josh, I've heard them
calling my name? Is that the sweet sound that calls
(00:45):
a young sailor? Oh? I can't remember the next line.
It might be one and the same. I think it
is one and the same. Yes, clearly we were speaking
of none other than top hit Academy Award nominated song
Rainbow Connection is performed by a certain philosophizing frog in
(01:07):
a swamp at the beginning of the Muppet movie. Huh,
we're gonna be talking about how the Muppets work today.
I know Josh is like rocking in his chair right now.
He's so excited. I love the Muppets. Who doesn't love them? Uppet? Everybody?
You show me someone that doesn't love the Muppets, and
you know they've got a butt kicking coming to them
via me. Yeah, Chuck's the Muppet enforcer, Muppet love enforcer. Um,
(01:29):
I think we should probably give a disclaimer, Chuck. If
anybody is really attached to illusion and doesn't really want
to know, like the nitty gritty details of how muppets
are made and moved about, they should probably not listen
to this one, right, People that don't even want to
acknowledge that they are puppets. Yeah, the lovers, the dreamers
and me. Yeah that's awesome. Yeah. So um, Chuck, let's
(01:53):
start at the beginning. Let's start back in. Gotta start
with Jim Henson. Yeah, well, yeah, there are no ups
without Jim Henson and even says it right there in
the article how Muppets Work, which you can find on
how stuff Works dot com. Right right, Uh, Washington, d
C has a local TV station and uh, and I
think the winner of nineteen fifty five, Um, a young
(02:15):
college freshman, Jim Henson. Dude, until probably had no idea
that this went back that far. No, this guy was
starting something huge at this time, right, I mean it's puppets,
Like puppets were relegated to what children's birthday parties, stuff
like that. This guy's bringing them on the TV. Exactly huge.
And what what what was kind of surprising is that
(02:35):
this show Sam and Friends, Right, that was his first show,
the one on the local Washington d c UH television station,
was for adults. Absolutely, it was I believe there was
some satire involved, correct, a ted political satire parody. They
parodied other television shows and it ran for six years
(02:56):
and got him on Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show. Yeah,
and actually this is where um, a little lizard like
creature who came to be known as Kermit debut. Should
I do it? Yeah? Hi? Who Kermit d Frog? Here?
That is wonderful, Chuck revealed before the the UM, I
guess the real, the real that's run by a hamster
(03:18):
started rolling. Um that he started with Kermit. That was
your first voice, first voice? What else do you get?
My voices are mediocre at best, But I still like
doing him. I gotta tell you, Nail Kurmit, but I've
been doing Kermit since I was like six km. Yeah,
well you've got him. I'm trying to get a ya
out of Chuck, but have a limited range. Well, Kermit
(03:39):
lizard like Kermit, as we'll call him Um. It was
joined by some other wonderfully named puppets that weren't quite
called muppets yet these are still puppets in Henson's mind.
You had Sam Yorick Harry the Hipster, one of my favorites,
Professor Magcliff. I'm surprised it wasn't a hippie rob. No
(04:00):
hippie rob yet give it another decade. Mush Melon and
Chicken Liver was part of the regular cast, and basically
it was Henson and a classmate of his um named
Jane Nabel, who later became Jane Henson. They met up
and she kind of assisted him early on. They fell
in love. They did fell in love, and she was
(04:23):
actually replaced when they got married and had kids by
one frank Oz. Frank a nineteen year old Frank Oz,
and he was originally um hired just to be the
right hand literally of Rolf the Dog. Right they call
that technique right handing. We'll get into that, which we'll
get into and Rolf actually fun fact, Rolf the dog
with the big floppy ears, who's performed with the likes
(04:46):
of Liberacci among others, was actually created specifically to sell
Purina dog food. Yeah. After he did Salmon Friends, he
produced TV commercials for a while with the early muppets,
a bunch of them. So this is a clearly we've
we've transitioned into the era where there were muppets. We
went from Salmon Friends and now muppets are starting to
(05:08):
come about. Ralph Kermits now Frog. He's made that sexual
transition from lizard to frog, that right of passage that
every lizard has to go through. Um, and uh, there's
still no TV show. We're in the sixties and everyone's
getting to be aware of the muppets, Chuck, Like you said, Uh,
they were on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Jimmy Dean Show,
(05:30):
which you should have been in the green room for
that one sausage everywhere. Um. He did create some pilots,
but they never took no one ever, bottom up No.
And he got really close with ABC, but they walked
on a deal. Um. What really kind of catapulted him
into a possible TV deal was the formation of kids
show called Sesame Street, the children's television network started by
(05:53):
Joan and Coney Right and Jim Henson always kind of
thought of his puppets and then muppets as um uh
for adults, like this is adults stuff like you can
even today there's um puppet Up Uncensored. It's a live
improv muppet puppet show for adults. It's carried on by
(06:14):
his son Brian. And that's very much in the tradition
of Jim Henson's original idea, which is these are puppets,
but they're for adults. Like there's just that kind of
ironic twist that these puppets are cursing, you know. But
apparently somewhere along the way he came to figure out
that um children could be a very sophisticated audiences a
quote in the article, So he went along with Sesame Street, right, yeah,
(06:37):
and that's really where it blew up. Everyone who grew
up in the United States and probably elsewhere watch Sesame
Street as a kid and may still and that's where
we were introduced to uh, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird
and Burton Ernie Cookie Monster. Doesn't get any more classic
than that. Grower's my favorite Sesame. Yeah. I did little
(07:00):
video one time with a Grover Finger puppet. Did you
This is back in like the old VHS days where
you could edit like I literally had to edit it
all in camera as I shot it, and I used
like a ween song and I Grover finger Puppet. He's
pretty fun. So this had nothing to do with Karate Chuck. No, no, no,
these are just my early filmmaking days. It's fun. So okay,
So Sesame Street takes off and still going today. I mean,
(07:21):
this has got to be one of the longest running
television shows of all time. Yeah, I think sixty Minutes
has a beat. Maybe General Hospital. You know General Hospital
has been on since the mid fifties. Who cares. Yeah,
but dude, that's a really long time for a single
television show to run. That's a lot of crap, it
is They just shovel it on nothings. Yeah, back to
the goodness of the Muppets though. So he's almost there,
(07:43):
He's so close. He's been shooting pilots. None of them
were getting taken up. ABC's Walked Um and a little
show called s Live starts up in nineteen Yeah. I
did not know this until I read this article. I
didn't either. I'm a big fan. I'm trying to sound
like I did know this, alright. Um, the the first
season and included sketches Um called The Land of Gorge,
(08:04):
which were larger muppets, and the SNL writers said, we're
not writing for puppets. Yeah, in fact they're I think
they're head writer is famously quoted saying I don't write
for felt, which I thought was kind of was that
Al Franken? Now what now Franken? I can't remember his name,
but Senator Al Franken, Senator Al Francin is so crazy.
Um so that was very short lived. Finally, Henson strikes
(08:28):
a deal with UM I t C and they start
shooting The Muppet Show in London and syndicating it out
at CBS. And this is Yeah, the pilot, though I
thought was interesting. I should mention was the name of
the pilot was called Sex and Violence. They actually UM
I was watching it earlier and um, one of the
muppets comes out, not when I could identify by sight.
(08:50):
Uh comes out and there's this huge thing carved out
of stone. It's a sex and violence and uh, the
announcer says, and now the end of sex and violence
on TV. And the Muppet presses a dynamite plunger and
blows up the sex and violence and then the Muppet
Show theme starts, well, there you have it. Yeah, that
makes sense. Then I thought it was just one of
(09:11):
those ironic names or something. I don't think like Jim
Hinson was trying to be ironically funny. I think he
was still but sure, yeah, got you the end of
sex and Violence. So yeah, the Muppet Show was born
and the rest is history. The end, the end. Thanks
for coming, Chuck, What was your favorite Muppet d How
(09:33):
did you get your voice to do that? It's anytime
you say those three words together that happens. Let me
try You should try to hum or the judges. We
see old guys in the balcony. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what
was it? Statler and Waldorf? Statler and Waldorf. Those guys
were excellent, and Jim Hinson actually voiced Waldorf. I guess
we should talk about who the creator actually voiced specifically. Yeah,
(09:56):
he did obviously did Kermit the Frog, He did Rolf
the Dog. He and Waldorf. Uh. He did Doctor Teeth
of Electric Mayhem, the Electric Mayhem, which was the the
hippie band. Yeah. I think Dr Teeth was probably modeled
after Dr John that's a guest, but probably I think so. Yeah,
he had he had that kind of new Orleans accent,
didn't he? Yeah? And then link Hogthrob of Pigs and
(10:20):
Space of what excellent, And he did the Ernie half
of Burton Ernie. Yeah. Who I have to say, Ernie's
one of my favorite characters. I know he's set to
me Street, but he's one of my favorite buppets. Um.
I kind of go for the really sweet, kind hearted
ones really Ernie, Fozzy, Yeah, Bunsen, which one was Bunsen
(10:42):
the Little Professor, a little affable professor with Beaker the most. Yeah.
Have you seen Beaker doing oh to Joy? It's pretty cool.
It's on YouTube. Type in meep and oh to Joy
and it will come up. Yeah, He's like me, me, me, Me,
me me. It's pretty cool. And of course the chef,
the chef who was Swedish chef, who actually has the
(11:04):
distinction of being the only muppet with live human hands
unsupposed or uncovered by gloves or anything like that. Yeah.
I was watching a clip of the Swedish chef and
you can very easily see why they did that. He
has to put like dashes of things in and pinch
and stuff in, and so he actually has I believe
frank Oz's hands and then then Henson doing his head. Yeah,
(11:26):
and we'll we'll talk about the muppeteering and Manto because
it gets pretty intense. So I get ahead of myself
sometimes I know it's just exciting. Uh. And then frank
Oz of course, which was the other half. And I
think the quote in the article, which I thought was cool,
as Jim Henson said that Frank Oz was probably the
person most responsible for the Muppets being funny. Right, Frank
Oz is a very funny guy. He is. He also
did h He also puppeted and voiced Yoda and All
(11:51):
Star Wars. Oh you knew that, did you? Yeah? I
think everyone did it. Frank Oz did Yoda. Uh. And um,
he did Rolf the Dog. I'm sorry he right handed
Route the Dog. Jim did the voice. Let's remember this
is what he was hired for it an, that's right.
He did Bert the Burt half. He did Grover, your
favorite cookie monster animal who doesn't love animal? A lot
(12:12):
of screaming with that one, Miss Piggy and Fozzy Bear
of course, to to the iconic characters. And you know,
frank went on to direct movies. I mean he worked
with Hinson for like thirty years and then directed movies.
He directed Uh What About Bob? And Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
and with other classics. You're gonna tell you Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels is funny. The greatest thing he's ever made, and
(12:32):
he's acted to. He was in The Blues Brothers briefly.
Oh was he the the corrections officer at Hands and
Back is prophylactic? Yes, he is. Later on he reprises
that role sort of in Trading Places. He plays the
officer checking out danack Royd in prison in that film
as well. So he's a specialist. He plays officers giving
(12:54):
prisoners there type cast. Yeah. Yeah, so Chuck you one
to get into um a little behind the scenes stuff, Yeah,
why not? We might as well. Um, well, let's start
with how a Muppet is made. Yeah, Josh, the Muppets
were created only by Jim Hinson. He did all the
original sketches and he built some of the original muppets
(13:16):
when he was still kind of a small shop. Yeah,
but he figured out pretty quick that he had too
many in his head and he needed too many to
just do it himself. So yeah, he started out, um,
using some materials like paper machee that didn't work out
because it was too hard, and then he tried um
different kinds of foam. I think he's foam rubber, but
found that that deteriorated. Yeah, so he's reticulated polyphone, which
(13:41):
is I imagined very much like foam rubber, but a
little more durable, right, And I think it's more flexible
because that that gave him the opportunity if you stick
your hand in Kerman's head to operate the puppet, to
move your knuckles around and like he would raise an
eyebrow and it would give him a little more feature
to his face. I chuck. You know, I love lore.
I want it's poss this one out. Kermit Lizard Kermit
(14:02):
pre Great Transition. Kermit was actually made from his The
skin of Kermit was made from fuzzy green coat Jim
Henson's mother owned, and his eyes were two halves of
a toy which I'm not familiar with. I wouldn't either,
wacky wacky stacks yea stacks half. Yeah. They always kind
(14:22):
of looked like ping pong balls with the little pupils
drawn on them. Yeah, well, let's go ahead and talk
about that. The pupils. Yeah, that's they They say that
they did the eyes last when they're building muppets because
it's the most important part, and the pupils are actually
very important. And this I didn't know either. Um, the
bigger the pupil, the younger the muppet. Pretty cool, Yeah,
and it really kind of makes sense. It gets the
(14:43):
point across that they're kind of wide eyed and innocent,
unfamiliar with the horrors and evil of the world. Right.
And it says they also tilt the pupils end slightly
to give them more focus. Well, they move them closer together,
because if they just put them, you know, on these
huge eyes where they should be in the middle, muppets
would look like they had easy eyes. Right. And the
man responsible for this was one of the first guys
(15:03):
that Jim Hinson hired. His name was Don uh Salen Salon.
I get the impression that this guy was like the
man behind the man in a lot of ways. Jim
Henson was this very creative, artistic person and he knew
what he was doing. But I think Don Solon was
the one who's like, okay, i'll make it work. Well.
He was definitely the master, like a sower. It sounds
(15:26):
like he came up with the Henson stitch, which he
very graciously um named after Henson. The Henson stitch, which
is a I guess, a method of sewing that hides
the scene. Yeah, you don't wanna. You don't want to
see a scene right there. It's like I forgot that's
a puppet exactly. And this, uh, this is so chuck
full of things I never knew. I'm so glad we're
doing this. Kermit the Frog actually has a stitch, Henson
(15:48):
stitch going right up the center of his nose, and
you would never know it because the Henson stitch and
the little fuzzy felt kind of helps to hide it. Yeah.
And the fuzzy felt actually um is called Andron fleets.
That's the covering of Kermit and most of the other
You know that that kind of muppet skin, they actually
call it muppet fleece. That that fabric sort of like
a worn tennis ball. Yeah. You know you've arrived when
(16:09):
there's a type of textile named after your creation, a
stitch named after you. Uh so most muppets. Um. Well,
there's either two ways you can go about it. There's
either the hand and rod method of operating or a
live hand. We talked about the live hand, and that
is when you literally stick your arm into the arm
(16:29):
of the puppet, into a glove or in the swedishchef's case,
a natural hand. Right, and there's actually two people operating.
And let's start with the hand and rod one or
rod in hand. Yes, so most muppeteers chuck or right handed. Um,
and so they're their right hand would be inside the muppet,
operating the head the face, that kind of thing. Their
(16:50):
left hand would be holding the two rods that were
attached to the muppets hand. Grover's an example of a
hand and rod one. Um, so the left hand would
make the hands clap. That kind of thing is two
very in dowels, which you can move them with your fingers, right,
so one person can operate it. Uh. And actually, since
they the most muppeteers were right handed and they were
operating with their left hand. Um, most muppets are left
(17:14):
handed since they were operating the hands with them. Yeah.
Another cool fact, except there was one muppeteer who was
left handed and all of her muppets were right handed. Yeah.
I didn't know that. Yeah, man, I'm learning so much. Uh.
And then um, occasionally you know clearly, if one person
is operating both hands, there's a limited amount of things
they can do. That's where the right handing comes in.
(17:35):
If you need uh specific movements done with both hands,
then a second puppeteer comes in operates only the right hand,
which is what frank Oz was hard to do in
the case of Ralph right Um. Ernie is another example
to see right handed. Yeah, so there's a there's one
muppeteer who's there two guys standing next to each other. Um,
(17:55):
there's one guy who has his right hand up as
high as it can go. He's operating the face, and
then his left hand is up the arm of the muppet,
and then the other guy has his right hand up
the muppets right hand. There's two people operating these three parts,
and they do a pretty good job. But you really,
(18:15):
you think about it, and you just you look at
Ernie or something, and you don't you wouldn't think that
there's two people operating him, and that sounds very cramped
and close and it is. Yeah, I mean talk about
henson Um at the beginning of the Muppet movie when
Kermit's on the log. Oh yeah, well sure, when the
shots in the movies where you don't see a human Well,
(18:36):
what I guess, let's backtrack a little. What they usually
do um was a technique that Henson invented called platforming up,
So they would build the actual muppet stage about eight
you know, six to eight feet off the ground so
the puppeteers could stand fully upright so they don't have
to bend over. Sometimes when that wasn't possible, they built
trenches for the for the muppeteers to get down in.
(19:00):
And then for the movies, which is what you were
talking about, for the scenes where like Kermit was sitting
on the log and singing Rainbow Connection. At the opening
of the film, Jim Hinson was in a little capsule
cramped down underwater, underwater sealed uh, with the thing all
around was sticking up out of the water, probably disguised
(19:20):
as a read that allowed him to breathe exactly. But
they were showing off right out of the bat they
right out of the gate. They did a three sixty
shot of Kermit on the log to show that right,
no wires is not a marrionette. Pretty cool, Yeah, it
was pretty cool. I love that. And then they did
scenes where they were like riding bicycles, and in some
cases I think they had to have multiple h They
called it muppet switching, where they had like a full
(19:42):
body Muppet that they would occasionally have to use the
marrionette wires, or they would have a little person in it,
or they would have a little person, or they would
use a remote control which came a little bit later. Um. Also,
this is my favorite. When they had a muppet driving
a car, the car was actually being driven, so the
Muppet would be in the front seat. Uh, the muppeteer
would be crouched down in the back seat operating the Muppet,
(20:05):
and then there would be a little person in the
trunk driving the car with remote control looking at a
video screen. Yeah, they're actually extremely sophisticated. What they have
to do. This is incredibly complex. Imagine having to build
like you have to know exactly what's going to happen
in every scene. Then you have to build the set
to accommodate a human person and a muppet and their muppeteer,
(20:27):
so there may be several different levels. It sounds very dangerous.
And then as a muppeteer as well, Chuck Um. They
have and they have had since the seventies monitors strapped
to their chest so they can see what the what
their muppet is doing. Right, it is backwards, so they
have to know that if they're if they are looking
at the screen and they want their muppet to move left,
they have to move right. I mean, I imagine that
(20:49):
the wiring, the neural connections of these people's brains are
very unusual. If you could slap them in a wonder
machine and take a look at them next to like
one of ours, I'll bet you've noticed some real distinction.
We should write a article on muppeteers brains would be good.
Uh and you're dead on man, because one of the muppeteers,
there's been about a hundred of him, one of them
named Dave Gold, said it takes maybe five years to
(21:10):
do everything without thinking about it. In fact, I still
find it difficult. And Frank Oz said, what you're doing
is so complicated that you really don't have time to
think about what you're doing. First your body understands and
then your mind grasp what you're doing. Sometimes so very
complicated stuff. There's there's one other kind of muppet. We've
got hand and rod uh live hand or right hand muppets,
(21:33):
and then there's full body muppets like Big Bird. Sure,
so this is actually you know Big Birds as tall
as he looks, um, what is he like? Eight feet tall?
He's pretty tall. So there's a muppeteer and they're probably
a fairly tall muppeteer on platform shoes five inch shoes. Uh,
standing up with his right hand going up to Big
Bird's mouth and it's a it's a reach to Yeah,
(21:55):
I can you imagine. I'll bet they feel like Neil
Pert all the time? Right, you know what you should
look on the on the article actually, and there's some
really good illustrations, excellent illustrations. It shows like Big Bird
with the person inside of it, and it is a
stretch man that would get really really tiring, just physically exhausting,
I would imagine. So the right hands up, the left
hands controlling left hand, and then there's a wire connected
(22:17):
to the left elbow that's connecting Big birds right hand
or that's that's controlling Big birds right hand. Which is
why if you notice, if you watch Big Bird, when
the right hand goes up, the left hand goes down.
When the left hand goes down, the right hand goes
up because it's Uh, it's like a little Pulley system, right, Chuck.
We were we were talking about, you know, um, muppeteers
performing in trenches on the set or platforming up or
(22:41):
you know, how difficult it is to create these sets. Uh,
And once you know what they're doing, you can see
it pretty easily. Like I was watching a clip of
Steve Martin playing dueling banjos with some muppets class on
The Muppet Show, right classic, and they're doing it, like
I guess in between performances because they're out in the
theater seats and Steve Martin doesn't move the whole time,
(23:02):
so god knows how many like pits are on either
side of him and how far he would fall if
he stepped one way or the other. And then some
of the other muppets are in the seats rows of
seats behind him, so that clearly provides a trench for
the muppeteers too. And once you once you kind of
know how they did it, you can you can see
the techniques in use. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, I bet
it was a cool set to visit, for sure. The
(23:23):
sets were usually speaking of sets were um, there were
a couple of ways they could do it. They're either
muppets sized when there was only muppets involved, which would
be scaled down obviously, or when um obviously. You know.
The Muppet Show was famous for having celebrity guests each
week when humans interacted, and as they do in Sesame
Street too, they would have kind of a mix. Some
things would be human size and then they would do
(23:46):
it's a technique called forced perspective when they would make
like a door, you know, seven eighths the size of
a real door in the background to make it look
like it's really far away, or just to bring everything,
you know, to where it all matches up. Fantastic, pretty cool. Yeah,
that is cool. What's the quote from Carol Burnett? Because
that the article talked about, you know, humans interacting with
muppets and once it like to act with you know,
(24:07):
poly Era. She said something like, when you're standing next
to Kermit and interacting with them, you totally believe him.
And she she was on the Muppe Show a lot, wasn't, Yeah,
she was. And the other cool thing was they said
that between takes that they said the puppets would often
just kind of chit chat with the actors, like making
small talk, just totally buy into it. Yeah, I love it, man,
that would have been an awesome show to do. It
(24:29):
was a good time for it too, And Chuck, if
you notice there's um a lot of there's so much
going on on the Muppet Show. They really nailed the
realism in part because there were so many muppets going around. Yeah,
and the big scenes, right, and then you have like
the stars clearly like ms Piggy, Kermit, Swedish Chef Buns
and Beak Girl them, um, but then you also have
(24:50):
some muppets who you just like you you don't really
recognize the background extras basically right, And and there's actually
a name for these muppets. They create blank slate my
bits and then you know, depending on what they need,
they have all sorts of costumes eyebrows, eyes, noses, all
that stuff that they can just switch out real quick.
Pretty cool. And what do they call them? Well, there's
a couple of names that originally they were called anything Muppets,
(25:13):
but the one I like, they were called what Knots. Yeah,
I love that. I knew you would like whatnots over
anything Muppets. Well, who wouldn't The Whatnots would be a
good band name. Uh so, yeah, they were basically the
background extra of The Muppet Show and they would just
interchange these uh these guys and girls. I guess, I
guess they were gender specific. Sure. Yeah. Ms Piggy actually
had her own costume designer or her own real human
(25:35):
costume designer for the Muppets. One of the few, well
not few, but one of the one of the Muppets
that were close A lot of them were in the buff. Yeah. Kermit, well,
Kermit actually wore his trench coat sometimes. Well when he
was on Sesame Street, he was the roving reporter where
he had the trench coat and the hat and everything,
which was pretty awesome. I loved the idea of a
frog reporter. But then on The Muppet Show, his character
(25:55):
was the kind of the lead producer of the show.
That was kind of the idea of the show. That
leads me to the thirty Rock thing that what's gonna
tell you about the television show thirty Rock? That was
there's a thing on the internet, so one did on
a blog I think, where they linked the Muppet Show
to thirty Rock and how they were basically the same show.
And Liz Lemon was Kerment trying to pull this show
together amid the craziness, and Jane Karkowski was Miss Piggy,
(26:19):
and I can't remember the other characters, but they kind
of tied each one to the other. And the only
one who they couldn't get a representation of was the
Alec Baldwin character, which I thought was pretty interesting. Maybe
he would be Carol Burnett, Yeah, maybe so, but I
think they said he could have been both Waldorf and
Statler something like that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Um Chuck the uh. I guess that's kind of emblematic
(26:42):
of the Muppets, right. The Muppet Show produced a bunch
of spinoffs. First of all, you've got the three movies, right, Yeah,
You've got The Muppet Movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and
The Great Muppet Caper, all three of them excellent, excellent film.
And apparently there's uh Seth Rogan and Jason Siegel, the
actors from Knocked Up, were trying to make another Muppet
movie and I don't know if yeah, I don't know
(27:03):
if that's ever gonna happen, but they were kind of
in talks with the Hint and people to write a
script and make another Muppet movie. There's a did you
ever watch Frago Rock? Did I watch Fraggle Rock? I didn't, actually, dude,
Fraggo Rock was on when I was eleven, twelve and
thirteen on HBO, so right when I first got h
you just answered the question. So yes, I lived and
breathed Fraggo Rock. Down, Chuck, you will be happy to know,
(27:24):
or possibly dismay, that there is a Frago Rock movie
that's supposed to have already come out. It hasn't yet,
but I imagine it's coming down the pike. It is.
I looked it up today and right now they had
the date listed as eleven. Good god, so we'll see okay,
and uh, Frago Rock is not the only one. Did
you ever watch Muppet Babies? I did not. That was
after my time. That was right in my time, actually
(27:47):
embarrassingly maybe slightly after, but I still watched it. Um. Yeah,
that was a really, really good cartoon. Barbara Billingsley played
the nanny whose face you never saw. Yeah, they used
to have some great adventures. I didn't know. That took
me along on. And then my favorite was emmett Otter's
jug Band. Christmas have you seen that? Man? Are you joking?
(28:07):
How old are you? It came out in nineteen seventy seven.
I was six years old. Et Otters Jug Band Christmas.
Have you seen a Jerry? Jerry hasn't seen it. Emitt
Odors Jug Band Christmas is one of the best Christmas
specials ever in the history of Christmas specials. I'll check
it out. It was awesome. The the river Bottom Nightmare
Band was there. There were two bands. There was em
(28:30):
Hotter clearly with his jug band were these old nice
Otters that played country jug music, and then there was
the Evil Faction, which was the River Bottom Nightmare Band
and they did this like hard rock, heavy metal stuff
and they had a snake muppet that was swimming around
in a tank and it was awesome. That's pretty good.
I will check that out. I'll add that to a
Christmas story and it's a wonderful life. You totally should. Well,
(28:53):
that's pretty much muppets. They're still going on. As we mentioned,
Brian Henson's doing the puppet up Uncensored Crop Show. Yeah.
I think you can catch him at a comic con
in San Diego, Australia. TBS had some stuff. I'm pretty sure.
If you type in pup it up on the Internet,
it will bring up some stuff for you. There was
a Broadway show. There is a Broadway show called Q.
(29:15):
It's like, um, a revision of Sesame Street but adults
a little more drama. Yeah, they had to work it
out with the Hintson Company to get approval and umour
for best Musical. Good move there. And I want to
just recommend if anyone visits Los Angeles ever or lives
(29:35):
in Los Angeles. If you live there, you know about it.
But the Jim Hinton Company is located at the corner
of Libre and Sunset, and it was the original Charlie
Chaplin Studios. So it's this really cool old kind of
English tutor uh studio. But it's it's small. It's not
like some big studio's right in the middle of Hollywood,
so it's not very big. But um you drive ei
(29:56):
there now and it's got a big archway right when
you drive in, and on top there's like an eight
foot tall kermit dressed as the Charlie Chaplin little tramp
character with the top hat and cane. And here it's
really cool and the Hitler mustache and Hitler mustache. Now
I don't think he has the mustache. Actually, so Chuck.
I want to leave everybody with a really chilling thought.
(30:16):
Imagine Jim Henson back in n had decided to go
into accounting and this world was a world without muppets?
Are you trying to make me cry? Isn't that a
weird thought? It really kind of barrels it into perspective.
We should write a book called a World without Muppets,
(30:37):
like some sort of reality. Be awful. It's nothing but war.
So thank you. Jim Henson, who everyone knows. Sadly in
passed away of a kind of pneumonia, and they said
it wasn't actually pneumonia, but it was. It was a
bacterial infection that shut his organs down. Basically, he complained
of flu like symptoms to his wife or his x
(30:59):
Y food he was still close with. I think they
were separated at the time. And I went to the
hospital and twenty hours later died. It's very, very sad.
But his children continued that tradition, and his son does
not actually do the voice of Kermit as many people thought.
His son Brian, A lot of people thought that he
took over for Kermit. It was actually me for Kermit,
(31:22):
Yes you did. That's my side gig. So that's muppets.
I could go on for hours, I know you could.
I gotta stop you right here. We're gonna press stop
on the Stopwatch. Okay, okay, Chuck. Are we doing any
listener mail today? No, Josh, no listener mail. Because this
is a special episode. We want to play it out
with a little treat for the fans, A little snippet
(31:43):
from a song we all know and love. So uh,
without further ado, take it away. Thanks for coming, everybody.
(32:06):
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