Last week, the King of Pop unexpectedly passed away. No, not Dr. Pepper. Michael Jackson shed this mortal coil, leaving a trail of press coverage in his wake. Every news source, including blogs, has been talking about Michael, so why should we be left out?

Long before MJ became the poster child for all things creepy, he crossed paths with the Muppets a few times. The most notable example is his appearance in A Special Sesame Street Christmas, the goofy special nobody saw because Christmas Eve on Sesame Street completely overshadowed it. Michael's afro (and Michael) passed by Oscar's can to donate the book, "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex Ghosts", to the Scrooge-ified grouch. He doesn't count to (Jackson) 5, he doesn't Moonwalk in the shape of the letter R, he doesn't organize a cadre of celebrities to sing about how we are the world. He just hands Oscar a book and exits, stage right. Check out the video below for Michael's cameo, which is sandwiched in between Ethel Merman singing the Christmas classic, "Tomorrow," and the moustacioed Smothers Brother dressed as an astronaut.

Michael was parodied and referenced a few times here and there: a Muppet Babies comic book cover, "Beat It" in the Muppet Show on Tour show, "Billie Jean" light-up sidewalks in the "I'm Gonna Always Love You" music video. But Jackson only had one other significant connection to Sesame Street, which Chris Cerf related at a book signing last winter.

For all of the musical parodies that Sesame Street produced, very few of them resembled the original song enough to warrant legal action. "Letter B", a parody of The Beatles' "Let It Be", had the unfortunate distinction of being too similar to the original. Northern Songs, which owned the Beatles' library, threatened to sue the Children's Television Workshop for $5.5 million. Thankfully, before the case went to trial, Michael Jackson swooped in on wings of angels and purchased the Beatles catalog. He decided not to pursue legal action, and CTW was only fined $50, which Cerf paid out of his own pocket.

Did Michael decide to drop the suit because of his appearance in A Special Sesame Street Christmas? If so, maybe the special wasn't so bad after all. It might've saved Sesame Street $5.5 million (minus $50, of course). And we'll just tack that on as one of the many, many ways Michael Jackson left his mark on the world.
Special thanks to Guillermo for uploading the video!

Click here to Moonwalk on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: death, Sesame Street

Earlier this week, the world lost another important person close to the Muppets: Bernie Brillstein. Bernie managed Jim Henson throughout most of his career, and was pivotal in the creation of productions such as The Muppet Show, The Muppet Movie, and Fraggle Rock. He also executive-produced shows like ALF and It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and movies like Ghostbusters, The Blues Brothers, and The Cable Guy. Not to mention the long list of big celebrities that he personally represented, like Rob Lowe, Jennifer Aniston, Wayne Brady, and just about every cast member of Saturday Night Live.

For more about Bernie’s life, check out his entry on the Muppet Wiki. For a whole lot more about Bernie’s life, I wholeheartedly recommend reading his autobiography, “Where Did I Go Right?”, which is a terrific read.

The life of Bernie Brillstein is really only half of his story. The other half comes with the all-important character of Bernie, as seen on The Muppet Show, The Muppet Movie, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, live appearances, web shows, and even non-Henson productions. His resume is almost as long as the frog’s!

Feeling uneducated regarding all things Muppet? That’s all right; be prepared to learn! In honor of the late, great Bernie Brillstein, here is a retrospective of his namesake, the aptly-named Bernie.

Before The Muppets were The Muppets, Kermit the Frog was discovered by Bernie the Agent. Bernie showed Kermit that he was able to spot a potential star after a half of a song and a couple wisecracks, that he loves to pronounce the word “Hollywood,” and that he has an intense fear of alligators. If it weren’t for him, Kermit would have never lost his bicycle! Oh, and he would have never met his friends and became famous or whatever.

Bernie represented singer Lola Falana for a short while, but he was let go after failing to get her out of her commitment to guest star on The Muppet Show, even though she only gave him 15 seconds notice and appeared to have a great time flirting with Gonzo.

Bernie also represented Boober Fraggle for a time, as seen in the Fraggle Rock wrap party tape. Boober came close to convincing Bernie to try and cast him as the leading man in the new Meryl Streep movie, but Bernie knows where his client’s talents lie. And he let Boober know of his exact thoughts by, uh, hanging up on him. So much for that ten percent.

In an episode of From the Balcony, Statler calls out to Bernie, who is just offscreen. I’ll be honest with you, I gave up on From the Balcony pretty quickly, so I can only imagine that the bit involved some sort of bad pun about being old and very little to do with actually rating movies.

While filming the classic film, “Singin’ in the Rain” (the one starring Grover and directed by Prairie Dawn.. what movie were YOU thinking of??), Grover bailed on his responsibilities as an actor to take lunch with Bernie, who I’m sure was on set in an advisory capacity. Prairie Dawn has held a blood vendetta against him ever since.

In the John Landis film, “Into the Night,” Jim Henson (the Muppet guy) is having an argument with Bernie over the phone. “Have I ever lied to you?” asks Henson, “Okay, but can we talk about it?” he pleads, mercifully. Suddenly, Henson is surrounded by tuxedoed goons and offers to call Bernie back later. Sources say that they did finish their conversation at a later date.

The latest proof of Bernie’s existence was in a 2007 episode of The Late Late Show, in which an infuriated Miss Piggy threatened to call him after learning that the show doesn’t air until 12:30am. As of printing date, Bernie has not been able to remove a “Late” from the Late Late Show.

It’s still too early to tell if Bernie the character has passed along with the non-fictional Bernie, but I’m sure we’ll hear from him again soon. Because even though the people we love and respect pass away, their legacies will live on forever. A simple concept, but one the Muppets have kept true.

Click here to help us remember Bernie Brillstein on the ToughPigs forum.

Labels: death, lists

Today's article was written by Andrew Leal. Andrew is currently an administrator on the Muppet Wiki. Special thanks to Andrew for all his hard work!

This past week, another seminal figure in Muppet history has left us. Kermit Love, the man, who may or may not have loved Kermit the frog (and certainly did not inspire his name), died at the age of 91. Alongside Don Sahlin and Faz Fazakas, he was a key pioneer in the Muppet Workshop and in shaping how Muppets look and move. For even ardent Muppet fans, his name may register only as that, an interesting handle glimpsed in the closing credits. As a child, my awareness of Kermit Love was limited to his role as Willy the hot dog man, and by the early 1980s, that was limited to a “Hey, it's that bearded guy who for some reason shows up in Sesame Street Treasury cast photos. But Kermit the human had a long and often surprising history, both within and outside the Muppets.

Before he came to Sesame Street, Love had his home on Broadway. After a childhood of puppet building and drawing, he made his stage debut in a small role as a student in the (apparently justly) forgotten 1937 musical Naught Naught '00, a musical full of characters named Spunky and P. De Quincy Devereaux (still, the show managed three revivals through 1946). He soon shifted to costume design, working on such shows as 1943's One Touch of Venus, the brainchild of humorsists Ogden Nash and S. J. Perelman, with music by Kurt “Threepenny Opera” Weill. For the latter, Love shared praise for “real genius” in the inventive costumes worn by ingenue Pauline Laurence (one featured “a front with no discernible relationship to its back.”)

Love continued in this vein, and was one of an odd assortment of craftsmen (costumers, puppetmakers, set designers, even actors) recruited to build the stop-motion figures used in Michael Myerberg's obscure 1954 animated feature Hansel and Gretel. Love worked with future Muppet designer Don Sahlin on the project, but soon returned to the stage. In the 1960s, he began working with famed choreographer George Balanchine, and created large-scale costumes and puppet figures, such as a giant for Balanchine's 1965 “Don Quixote.” Around this time, Love and Jim Henson crossed paths. Not surprisingly, he worked, at first anyway, mostly on full-bodied Muppets, working out both mechanics and aesthetics for the La Choy Dragon and the full-bodied beasties in The Great Santa Claus Switch and The Frog Prince, among others. His biggest impact was on Sesame Street, however, constructing Big Bird, a beloved character built like a tutu, Caroll Spinney, in The Wisdom of Big Bird, remembered Love as simultaneously “the most frustrating man i knew...” but also a “perfectionist and brilliant craftsman.” He went on to work on Mr. Snuffleupagus and for many years was the head of the Sesame Workshop, guiding and shaping the aesthetic of the street Muppets which was both familiarly similar and yet distinct from the Muppet Show gang. He did the same thing for many of the international shows, notably redesigning Samson and Tiffy for Sesamstrasse.

Love slowed down and eventually left Sesame Street after the 1980s (during which time he also worked on The Great Space Coaster and mentored the likes of Kevin Clash and Jim Martin), but abandoned neither puppetry nor costuming. Love was the man responisible for cuddly fabric softener spokescharacter Snuggle Bear, and in the 1990s, he launched a PBS series called Whirlygig, starring himself and various Love puppets. Through recent years, he worked with the Joffrey Ballet on their annual presentation of Balanchine's Nutcracker, creating mice and an enormous Mother Ginger puppet.

So Love leaves another void for the Muppet historian, another link to the past gone. But living to the age of 91 is quite antihistimine (not to be sneezed at), and Love left behind a very diverse legacy for future children, puppeteers, designers, and obsessive Muppet bloggers. And on a personal note, Love's life partner for an impressive fifty years was one Christopher Lyall. Lyall assisted Love on various projects, and in the Muppet realm, he chreographed Thog's charming dance with Mia Farrow in The Muppet Valentine Show. It's comforting to confirm that the grandfatherly, bearded father of Big Bird, this cheerful looking man called Love, was indeed loved himself.

Click here to help us remember Kermit Love on the ToughPigs forum.

Labels: death, guest bloggers

Much like a bad pun or a rampaging Cookie Monster when a box of Thin Mints is nearby, death is unavoidable. Even more unavoidable is my own inability to keep up with current events. We at ToughPigs never claimed to be a news source, but I like to pay homage where homage is due when it comes to the untimely demise of people who were near and dear to the Muppets.

Looking back, it’s been a whopping ten months since I wrote about Merv Griffin's passing. Many a celebrity has passed away since then, and I’d like to share a few of their stories with you. If things get too sorrowful, let me know and I’ll come over to give you a hug.

The celebrity death that I’m most upset about neglecting to write here on ToughPigs is Muppet Show guest star Teresa Brewer, who passed away on October 17, 2007. I’ll be the first to admit that I had no idea who she was before seeing her on my Muppet Show DVDs, and the second to admit that I still kinda don’t know much about her non-Muppet career. Teresa sang “Cotton Fields” on a train, “Music Music Music” on some kind of prehistoric MP3 player, and “Spinning Wheel” in a particularly hilarious skit involving a swing, Sweetums, and no laws of physics. She also got the chance to binge in front of Miss Piggy while showing all of America that she eats an entire cake for lunch.

Bob Cunniff passed away at the age of 81 on January 20. He worked on The Today Show and The Dick Cavett Show in the 1960s, and then he joined the Sesame Street team as a writer and producer in 1972. In his three years with Sesame Street, he was directly involved with skits like “Morty Moot Mope” and “The Ballad of Casey McPhee.” In 1973, he shared an Emmy Award with Jon Stone for “Outstanding Achievement in Children's Programming.”

Anthony Minghella passed away at the age of 54 on March 18. He is best known to Henson fans for his work on The StoryTeller, for which he wrote the final scripts. He also wrote Living With Dinosaurs and he created The StoryTeller: Greek Myths. In 1996, he directed the film The English Patient, for which he called up some of his old buddies at the Jim Henson Company and hired them to create the special effects makeup used on the titular character.

NRA spokesperson Charlton Heston passed away on April 5. Aside from being referenced in passing by Statler and Waldorf in an episode of The Muppet Show, he provided the voice of The Mastiff in the Creature Shop film Cats and Dogs.and was (very loosely) parodied on The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence. He’s also famous for being Moses and kissing apes.

Del Ankers passed away on May 15 at the incredible age of 92. He was already well-known for photographing Presidents of the United States when he took the job as cinematographer for Jim Henson’s Wilson’s Meats commercials. He even appeared on camera in one of the Wilson’s Meats Meeting Films, which are wonderful slices of early Muppet life.

My all-time favorite Mel Brooks movie is Blazing Saddles, which would not be so great without Harvey Korman, who passed away on May 29 at 81 years old. His work on The Carol Burnett Show is priceless, but he arguably did his best work while hosting an episode in the first season of The Muppet Show. You have to admit, it takes some real acting chops to tame a wild Thog and turn into a giant chicken, all within a half-hour variety show. He re-teamed with the Jim Henson Company to voice the Dictabird in The Flintstones live-action film, as well as its sequel as Col. Slaghoople.

Most recently, early rock musician Bo Diddley passed away at the age of 79 on June 2. He appeared on Sesame Street twice: once in the celebrity version of “Monster in the Mirror,” and again to spoof his role in Bo Jackson’s “Bo Knows” commercials in the early 1990s. Rock and Roll would not be what it is today without Bo Diddley, and neither would my childhood.

So, hopefully there will be no more mourning for Muppet fans from here on, and everyone that has ever worked with the frog will live on with a prosperous life and lots of babies. But on the off chance that there will be more goodbyes on their way, I’ll do my best to make sure they’re immortalized here on ToughPigs.com. Harvey Korman would have wanted it that way.

Click here to remember Teresa, Bob, Anthony, Chuck, Del, Harvey, and Bo on the ToughPigs forum.

Labels: death

Entertainment mogul Merv Griffin passed away this week at the age of 82. We at ToughPigs remember him for The Merv Griffin Show, which had Jim Henson and the Muppets as guest stars in 1977, then again in 1984 to promote The Muppets Take Manhattan.

You can read all about their appearances with Merv on the Muppet Wiki. In the meantime, keep on watching Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune in Merv's memory.

Click here to help us remember Merv Griffin on the ToughPigs forum.

Labels: death

Sadly, Muppet Show guest star Beverly Sills passed away this week at the age of 78.

Miss Bev Sills was one of the great singers of country and western music. Some even called her the "queen of country." Wait.. that's not right. I have to get rid of Fozzie as my fact-checker.

You may remember her from episode 409 of The Muppet Show, in which she sang about ridin' and ropin' with the jug band, did a little tap-dancing, and had an all-out opera battle with Miss Piggy.

Although Beverly Sills was world-renowned for her opera singing, she is still referenced in most of her biographies as a "Muppet Show guest." Is it because it was one of the few times she appeared in popular culture, or is it because she gave us one of the greatest half-hours of television ever? In any case, the world has lost an incredibly talented opera singer and entertainer.

She's also quite the spoon-hanger.
Click here to help us remember Beverly Sills on the ToughPigs forum.

Labels: death

We at ToughPigs.com remember Roscoe Lee Brown, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 81.

Jim Henson Creature Shop fans may have recognized his voice as the narrator for Babe. Other astute fans have seen him in an array of guest starring roles in television shows like "The Cosby Show," "Soap," and "Columbo."

Help us remember Roscoe on the Tough Pigs forum by clicking here.

Labels: death