Hey, how about that interview with Louise Gikow from the other day? Wasn't that fantastic? Sorry, what's that? You think it should've been longer? Well you are in luck, my furry friend! Part two of our chat with Louise is right here, right now!

ToughPigs: How did you get started in your career with the Muppets?

Louise Gikow: When I was very young, I was a graduate student of Medieval Literature at Columbia University. I got my Masters and decided that it was insane to be a Medievalist. It was a bad economic time and nobody wanted professors of medieval literature. I also realized that university teaching and the university atmosphere was probably not for me. I wanted real life. So I left, answered an ad in the New York Times, and got a job at the National Lampoon Magazine for six years. I worked with everyone from Doug Kenney to Henry Beard to John Belushi, because I was a production assistant on the first Lemmings show. I’ve been so incredibly lucky. I was there for about six years as the Senior Copy Editor, and then I decided that I didn’t want to be working for that magazine when I’d hit a ripe old age. I loved it madly, but it was time for me to move on, so I quit and freelanced for a while. And while I was freelancing, my friend Mark Saltzman, who had been writing for Sesame Street, called me and said that they were starting Muppet Magazine and they were looking for freelance-permanent staff. And I became the Managing Editor of that.

TP: So Muppet Magazine was your first job with the Muppets?

LG: Yeah, it was my first Muppet experience. I worked there for about a year, and it was a great gig for me, because I would come in irregularly and I made about $12,000 a year, which at that time was an enormous part of my income, which goes to show you how the world has changed. After about a year, Jane Leventhal, who was the head of publishing, who is the older sister of J.P. Leventhal, who is the publisher of [the Sesame Street 40th Anniversary book], called me up and said she’d like me to come and work full-time in the publishing division. I really like freelancing, and I like having permanent jobs, but I really don’t like transitioning between the two. And I told Jane a few weeks later that I had a nightmare the night after she asked me to come where she was chasing me around the office with a meat cleaver, shouting “Come join us! Come join us!” And I was running away going “No, no, I don’t want to! I like freelancing!” But I went and joined them anyway because it was one of those things you couldn’t pass up. I was lucky enough very soon afterward to become kind of an ad-hoc creative group that Jim gathered of people from a variety of places, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I guess he liked my big mouth and my ideas enough to invite me to all the meetings. So I didn’t do the scriptwriting very much for him, but I did a lot of bits and pieces like PR and internal films and things like that. Mostly I was a part of this brain trust kind of thing. And Jim… oh Jim, Jim was a wonderful guy. I miss him very much. He used to gather people together for these weekends, and he would hire the most amazing people, people who were famous in a variety of fields, and we’d go in and they’d tell you these fascinating things about their fields and we’d brainstorm about what we can do. It was just a joy, we were so lucky.

I did that for 11 years, past when Jim died, probably longer than I should have, mostly because I just loved it there and it was hard to leave. Then I got a job starting a publishing and multimedia division at Nickelodeon, and I thought I really had to try it. So I spent two years at Nickelodeon, and I learned more there than I had at any other job in my life, and it’s influenced everything I’ve done since, because it was more about what makes a successful show, what makes a successful network. And then Chris Cerf asked me to join Sirius Thinking, where I worked for seven or eight years, and I’ve got two Emmys to show for it. Then I left to freelance and I’ve been freelancing ever since.

I was always a book writer, I became a script writer, I helped develop shows like Johnny and the Sprites, I wrote the last two planetarium shows. And as a part of my freelance work, I got a call one day from J.P. Leventhal, and he told me about the 40th anniversary book, and he asked if it was a project I’d be interested in writing. Because when The Works was done, I was pretty instrumental in the publishing division, rewriting it and getting it all together. So I said you betcha. I know they’ve tried to do it before and haven’t really been able to. There was Sesame Street Unpaved, which was a different kind of book, and I think they planned on a 25th anniversary book in-house, but it was very difficult. I think one reason why it was possible now is because of the perspective. The world is changing so much and Sesame Street is still here, and it demands a celebration. It took a long time to get the project off the ground and it took a long time to get it done.

TP: You have written books for more of the Muppet franchises than just about anyone: Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies, Muppet Kids, Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss., Labyrinth. Did you have a favorite franchise to work with?

LG: I love Fraggle Rock, I really do. I mean, I love them all, but there was something about Fraggle Rock that was joyous and amazing, and the people were extraordinary. It’s really inspired other people. John Tartaglia was inspired by Fraggle Rock to do Johnny and the Sprites. It has extraordinary music, it’s such a wonderful show. And it breaks my heart that more people don’t know about it, and I know they’re bringing it back now in DVDs, and I’m hoping that they really promote it because. It was a show that was ahead of its time in terms of a broadcast situation because it was on HBO and HBO wasn’t big enough. And the only place where it became popular was that band between America and Canada, because all of the northern states could pick up the signal from CBC. So we’d get huge numbers in Buffalo of Fraggle Rock fans because they could get it on television.

The other one that was close to my heart was the Palestinian-Jordanian-Israeli Sesame Street co-production. It was an amazing opportunity to work with those people, and to do something to really make a difference. That’s where Gary Knell is really standing out now, and that’s where he’s dug his heels in, saying this is how we’re going to change the world. I think Joan [Ganz Cooney] really wanted to change the world when she began, but I think she was thinking of the American world. And very soon after it became the international world. So to be a part of international for Sesame Workshop was an additional gift. I worked for Jim Henson for 11 years and it was all amazing, I loved it dearly, but that was something that let you wake up feeling good every day.

TP: Going back to the books, how did it work when you’d get an assignment? Did you pitch ideas, or would you get a note saying “We need a book about Wembley”?

LG: I’ll tell you the story about the first book I ever wrote. I wrote over 100 books, some under pseudonyms. I wrote under “Emily Paul” and “Rebecca Grand”. Emily Pauline is my niece, and Rebecca Grand was my grandmother. I liked both of those names, and I thought they sounded sort of professional. Now I can say it since no one will care anymore. Anyway, what would happen was we’d make a deal with the publisher, and they’d say how many books they want and how many pages in each book. So you really started with a format, and you’d know the kind of book you’d want to do and the age range of the kids who will read it. I was going to write the first Fraggle Rock books myself because they didn’t give us any lead time, and the show wasn’t going to be on for a while, and it was difficult to explain to people what the show was going to be. I was involved in production, I was at the set in Toronto, I knew about the show. So we were going to do the first books in-house and then outsource the later ones. You don’t want to do them all yourself, because then you don’t get any interesting voices. But I decided for the first book I ever wrote for them that I’d write “What’s a Fraggle?” I love rhyme, I love Dr. Seuss, and I wanted to write a sort of funny explanatory book for kids, because I thought it was a good way to start the line. Very often I would talk to the publisher about the book, or I would talk to [editor] Jane [Levinson] about my ideas, but this one I didn’t. We had a meeting where Jane told us what the formats were, and I said I’d like to do a book about Fraggles. She said let’s try a book like that, and then I went back to my office and wrote it in five minutes and came back and said “You mean like this?” She thought I was out of my mind. I’m sort of hyper when I get excited, and I’m a very fast typist. But I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and it was basically published verbatim, just as I wrote it. I don’t think there was a single word change. Jane really liked it and the publisher liked it, but God knows not all books were like that.

The way it works is, if the order is for eight books, you’d look at them and say “Let’s do a general book with all of the Fraggles, let’s do five featuring the main characters, and a Doozer book…” and I did a “What’s a Doozer?” book too, and I thought that had a genius idea, that the way Fraggles start was that there was a lazy Doozer who at a lot and didn’t exercise, so he became bigger and bigger and eventually became a Fraggle. So it’s part of Doozer lore that Fraggles are basically useless Doozers.

TP: You also wrote a lot of the Muppet Kids books. Was that any more difficult because you didn’t have source material to pull from, like Fraggle Rock or Muppet Babies?

LG: We were very careful on Muppet Kids. If you work for the Muppets for as long as we did, you really know these characters well. There were always creative kickoff meetings for things like this where we’d talk about how it would work, who would these kids be, where would they live, what would they look like and how would they behave?

The first time I came on board, when I was working for Muppet Magazine, I was writing the Miss Piggy column. The way you write a lot of this stuff, especially when you’re not the character yourself, is you get the voice of the character in your head. When I first began to do that, I had a meeting with Frank Oz. Frank was very particular about Miss Piggy at the time, and he spoke to me for a couple hours about Piggy. He told me the classic pig’s beginning story, born on a farm, lots of brothers. He was extremely helpful to me, because he told me where he got her from and from where he derived this extraordinary character and all the things that sort of made her her. So you’d get to know these characters like you know your friends. And I may not have known my best friend when she was 15, but I know who she was when she was 15. The essence of a person is the essence of a person. You know that Piggy started out scrabbling the yard with all her brothers, elbowing her brothers out of the way so she could get her share of the food because she was smaller, so she had to learn to be aggressive early on. So you know the kind of kid she was in grade school, and you know the kind of kid she was in junior high. She probably never went to college, and she’s probably embarrassed by that fact, because she had to go out and earn a living… To know who a character is is everything.

TP: You wrote the Sing Along with Kermit and Friends tapes. How was it different writing for Jim Henson, rather than just his characters in the books?

LG: Luckily for me, Jim was comfortable enough with what I’d written to just read them. Jerry Nelson, who’s just the most talented puppeteer, voice artist, character builder, and just an amazing and wonderful guy, did Robin on a number of those and was just amazing. I’m trying to think if it made any difference, and the truth is that it didn’t. Whatever I wrote they had to like, as far as I was concerned. It wasn’t a matter of whether they were going to read it or if they were going to read it and say it out loud. It was a little confrontational emotionally for me when they did it, but it was also very pleasurable. I loved working with them, they were brilliant, and I just loved being among them. But the books were just as important to me to get right, and if I didn’t write my best and do my best to get the voices right, I wouldn’t have been doing my job. And because everyone was so incredibly supportive, it was such a joy to work with them, it never occurred to me to be scared. It was actually more fun and more joyous, and I think the reason why I moved from writing books to doing more production is because I get to work with more people like that.

TP: I know that there are a good deal of inside jokes in the Muppet books. Were you ever caricaturized in any of your books?

LG: No, not as far as I know. My name was occasionally used as a character, but not artistically. Although I did play Miss Preen in the National Lampoon Yearbook. If you go back and find Miss Preen the guidance counselor, that was me.
Many special thanks to Louise Gikow for chatting with us! Keep an eye out for Sesame Street: A Celebration of Forty Years of Life on the Street, due in stores this November!

Click here to ask What's a Fraggle on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: interview, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

The release of the epic coffee table book Sesame Street: A Celebration of Forty Years of Life on the Street is on the cusp of showing up on your doorstep (y'know, assuming you did the smart thing by pre-ordering it on Amazon.com). Rather than wait patiently on the stoop for the mailman, we took this opportunity to sit down for a chat with Louise Gikow, the book's writer and editor.

Stop back around these parts later this week for part 2 of our chat with Louise, when we'll be talking about her entire career with the Muppets. But for now, let's learn a thing or two about her work on Sesame Street: A Celebration!

ToughPigs: Can you tell us about some of the research you had to do for the book?

Louise Gikow: I was very lucky because I was with Sesame Workshop, and I knew many of the people involved. Many of the puppeteers, a lot of the writers, we were in and out of each other’s pockets over the years, and I love them all dearly. So one of the things I did was talk to every person I possibly could on the staff. And really, that was most of the research I had to do. That and my own knowledge of everything. I knew Richard Hunt very well, I knew Jim, I knew Jon Stone. I did use the internet. I used, God bless you, your site and I used the Muppet Wiki a lot. And I have to say, it’s extraordinary what you guys do. I will tell you, people at the Workshop have gotten information about what the Workshop is going to do from you guys before they even knew it was happening. There’s a habit at the Workshop, it’s a very casual work environment, that when some people got hired, they didn’t even know they were hired until somebody mentioned to them a week before shooting, “Oh by the way, we’re sending you your ticket,” and it’s like “So I got the job?”

I had to use the obituaries, sadly much more than I wanted to. But the truth is that most of what I did was talk to people. And it’s ironic because some of my interviews will sound like interviews that have been done in the past because people tend to give the same interviews over and over again, but I got them from the horses’ mouths. I was lucky enough to work with Betsy Loredo, who is a wonderful editor, who did a tremendous amount of work on this book. We had a conversation years ago, and we both felt really strongly that we wanted the book to not be a tombstone on what maybe some people think is a show that is no longer being produced. And what I envisioned was pretty much what happened. That season, I went on set for many, many days, I’d get there before 9 and I left when everybody left, and I sat in a chair on the set, and I got to meet all the members of the staff that I’d seen but never got a chance to talk to, and I literally scribbled in my notebook constantly. I wanted to get a sense in the book about actual production. I wanted this to be a book that people who are interested in television production could read and get a sense of what the show’s production is about. I really wanted to pay tribute to the people on staff who were the unsung heroes, not just the puppeteers. The technical people, the lightning people, cameramen, and really make sure they all show up in the book.

TP: Did you collaborate at all with Michael Davis?

LG: No, that was a completely separate project, but I think we’re appearing on a couple panels together. Actually, I still have to read his book. I specifically didn’t read it because I didn’t want to be influenced by it. He was writing at the same time I was, and I really wanted it to be my voice and the voice of the people who were in it, and it was too close a timeline. But because the books were so close, I wanted them to be different. I really wish him the best, and I want his book to sell well, I want our book to sell well. I think if they’re different, they’ll support one another. I also think it’s great that he was able to express a different point of view and really go after a different aspect of the whole thing. It was more me staying out of his hair because he got his haircut first, so I can’t say he had to stay out of mine. When I first went on set, everyone said “I’ve already talked to somebody who’s doing a book.” And I said, “But you didn’t talk to me! Who is this person?” I didn’t know about [Street Gang], and neither did publishing because it was another division of Sesame that had given him access. But they got used to me because I just sort of sat around and was very nice and smiled a lot. I was very well-behaved.

TP: What were some of the most challenging parts of writing and editing the book?

LG: It’s probably more publishing stuff; I know you’re more interested in Workshop stuff. That part was not challenging, everybody was very generous with their time, everyone was really willing, the materials were unbelievably rich. The problem was that writing a book like this is chicken and egg. When I spoke with my editor, and knowing the Workshop like I do, I asked her how she wanted me to do it, because there is an enormous treasure trove of images and information and letters and memorabilia, but we didn’t know what they were yet. They weren’t accessible yet because we hadn’t begun the research process. Each chapter starts out with an on-set visit and something that relates to that chapter, either puppeteering or behind-the-scenes or licensing or whatever. That part I could write because it was fresh. But the rest of the book was based on things that we didn’t have available. Normally if you’re writing a big coffee table book on just about anything, you’d have the images already, and your writing would determine what images you used. I couldn’t do that because I never knew what images were available. So the biggest challenge was writing an entire manuscript of many hundreds of pages, and then completely rewrite it for the most part because of what we discovered. We wrote it first, and some of it stayed, but some of it was cut because we didn’t have images, but more importantly, more images became available and we had to rewrite to that. And up until the last minute, we were rewriting to things that were surfacing weeks before it was due.

TP: Did you have a favorite part of making the book?

LG: Talking to the people. I got a chance to meet a lot of people I’d heard about. Frank Biondo, Caroll Spinney I didn’t know well, a lot of the actors and actresses. But talking to everyone was so extraordinary. And having an excuse to spend four hours with Steve [Whitmire], who I never get to see. Spending a little more time with Matt Vogel, who I vaguely knew. Getting to know Joan [Ganz Cooney], who I had met but never really spoken with. I got to watch the older interviews done with the American Television Institute. I just loved it. It was one of the main reasons why I agreed to write the book. What a gift, to be able to spend your life near people like that. It’s like, how did I end up here by answering an ad in the New York Times? These are the greatest people. I work with geniuses, whatever that word means.

TP: What about your least favorite part?

LG: It had to be all of the people I didn't meet. What I’m talking about is all the people who I didn’t get a chance to talk to. I mean, office managers from 1979. I send my thanks to everyone who was involved, all the people I couldn’t talk to as well as the ones I could, because every single one of them left a bit of themselves in the company and on the show.

TP: Was it difficult to find a balance in the book between the old years of Sesame Street and the new?

LG: Not really, no. I didn’t feel that there was. I’d like to think that I did a good job at keeping it balanced. Clearly there’s an awful lot of early stuff here, but I wanted to reflect what production is like right now and how it has changed.

One of the things I really wanted to do, and this is specifically to you and to [the Muppet Wiki] and all the fans out there, but I really wanted to put at least one thing in the book that you didn’t know, but I don’t know if I succeeded because you guys know everything! Many of the images I’m sure you’ve never seen, but I hope there’s at least a point of view or something that you guys will really like. It’s you guys who have kept it alive in an extraordinary way, and it’s humbling to everyone at the Workshop, and we admire you enormously. And it’s why I always felt that there was a little ToughPig sitting on my shoulder saying, is it good enough, is it original enough, is it unique enough, will you like it?

TP: I’m glad we were involved somehow! Was there anything in the book that you wanted to be in it, but had to cut?

LG: The truth of the matter is that you can’t include everything you want in a book like this. I wish I could have acknowledged every single person. Another thing that had to get cut was a lot of the on-set stuff. There were an awful lot of funny lines and interesting things that I had to let go of. I wrote a book that’s probably three times the length of the one that came out. But there’s nothing specific, nothing that stands out as a hole in the book.

TP: Since you’re one of a few people who has really delved into Sesame Street’s 40-year history recently, is there an era where you feel like the show was at its peak?

LG: Not really, no. The truth of the matter is that there are peak moments throughout. For example, there’s a description in the book of Jim and Frank in a recording session doing Bert and Ernie, and some of it was scripted and some of it was ad-libbed, and what comes out on the screen is just extraordinary. A couple of those moments with the kids, like Jon Jon, are just amazing moments. The sad moments, like Mr. Hooper, and the reveal of Snuffy. I like to think the show is sort of like a life. As a newborn, you take lots and lots of pictures, but less as it gets older. But that doesn’t mean that graduations and jobs and so many moments through a person’s life aren’t as important. The entire 40-year arc for me is a highlight.
Click here for part two of our interview with Louise Gikow, where you'll see Louise talk about her career writing for the Muppets!

Click here to be the little ToughPig on Louise's shoulder on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: interview, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

We Muppet fans are pretty lucky. Not only do Muppet comic books continue to show up in our comic book stores, but Roger Langridge keeps on agreeing to do these Q&As with us! Let's see what Roger has to say...

Note: This Q&A was conducted after the release of Peg Leg Wilson #1. Check out our review of issue #1 here, and our review of issue #2 here.

ToughPigs: How does it feel to have your first Muppet Show story arc in the can and another already in stores?

Roger Langridge: Pretty satisfying, I have to admit - there's nothing like finishing a long piece of work.

TP: Do you have a method for creating the cover art?

RL: I usually submit between 4 and 6 sketched roughs to the editor each month, and he'll come back to me with suggestions and tell me which ones he'd like worked up into finished covers. At that point I take my sketch and blow it up nice and big, then I'll trace it and build it up into finished pencils, fleshing out details and fixing anything that looks a bit wobbly. Then I ink it, scan it and send it off to be coloured.

TP: How did you make the decision to stop the designs with the characters in the circles from the first arc? Will the circle covers be making a comeback after the end of Peg Leg Wilson?

RL: I always intended those to be limited to the first arc - my original plan was to change the colour of the curtains each issue so the covers didn't look too similar, but that idea seems to have been lost in the shuffle at some point. I think it's a good idea to move on from that now - I don't want to risk people skipping an issue because they think they've already bought it!

TP: On the ToughPigs forum, we’ve discussed the difficulties in capturing Miss Piggy’s character (she’s often written as too angry, too much of a “diva”, or too quick to turn to violence). We saw a great character arc for her in the 4th issue of The Muppet Show Comic Book. Did you have any trouble writing her?

RL: Well, you're always feeling your way a bit with any character you didn't create. I suppose she was difficult, but no more difficult than any other character. The thing I try to remember about Piggy is that her toughness is a front to conceal a very vulnerable pig beneath. If you can show flashes of that vulnerability it makes her much more rounded, if you'll pardon the expression.

TP: We were happy to see the return of fan favorites Wayne and Wanda, and the Talking Houses. Were you worried that readers might not remember them? Are you keeping a list of other Muppet Show sketches to include in future issues?

RL: I'm not too worried if people don't remember a particular sketch because I try to make them work whether you remember them or not. If you recognise it, that's like a nice little bonus - an Easter Egg for dedicated Muppet-watching - but it shouldn't be essential to know this stuff in order to enjoy the comic. If it is, I'm not doing my job right!

TP: You mentioned in an earlier interview that your close friends’ love of Pigs In Space led to its inclusion into every issue. Now that you’ve gotten feedback on your first arc, are there any other sketches or characters that you’re considering giving more screen time?

RL: Well, it wasn't just close friends! But I'm probably going to ease off on Pigs in Space for a few issues after the Peg-Leg Wilson arc is over, not least because there'll be a Pigs in Space one-shot between that and the arc which follows. So that should keep the Pigs in Space fans happy for a few months.

TP: When you’re designing a new character (for example, “Ninja Rogers”), do you think of them as a puppet first, or is the fact that they might not fit with the overall design of the Muppets not an issue?

RL: I try to make them look at least vaguely plausible as Muppets - or at least cartoon Muppets, as they appear in the comic - but that leaves an awful lot of wiggle room when you consider the enormous variety of shapes and designs the Muppets encompass. I've been almost too conservative sometimes, I think!

TP: How do Kermit’s sunglasses stay on his face if he has no ears or nose?

RL: The magic of comics, I'm afraid. Don't look at the man behind the curtain.

TP: BOOM! has amassed a strong team of cover artists for the Muppet comic books. Have they offered you any opportunities to illustrate a variant cover for any of the other titles?

RL: No, but then I wouldn't have time with doing the Muppet Show book. It's a full-time thing, and then some. If I were cloned I'd love to have a shot.

TP: Have you seen the Muppet Robin Hood comic book? Or any pages from the upcoming Muppet Peter Pan? Did you have any advice to give to the writers or artists of those series?

RL: I've seen the Robin Hood book at a recent convention, although I didn't get time to read it. The Muppet books aren't for sale in the UK, so I don't get much of a chance to look at them. I thought the art was strong from the bits I saw.

TP: We enjoyed the Muppet/Dr. Who sketches you posted on your blog. Is there any chance we’ll see any of those in The Muppet Show Comic Book?

RL: Nothing quite so on-the-nose, because of the fact that Dr Who is owned by the BBC, but I wouldn't be surprised to see an oblique Who reference or two in the Pigs in Space one-shot. I'm still writing that one, so I don't know for sure myself yet!

TP: Speaking of references, do you have any other plans for literary or pop culture references in the comic?

RL: To call them "plans" would be putting it a bit strongly, but I've got an idea for a Hamlet song I'm looking for an excuse to work in sometime.

TP: You also reported on your blog that there will be a Pigs In Space one-shot in between story arcs. Is this the only one-shot planned right now? Can you tell us who will be illustrating it?

RL: It's the only one planned right now - I'm probably going to need another breather at some point, though. I'm not 100% certain if the artist has been selected yet. (UPDATE: Shelli Paroline has been announced as the artist. Congrats, Shelli!)

TP: How was the San Diego Comic Con? Have any interesting stories?

RL: San Diego was great fun. I don't know how interesting the story is, but I ran into the editor who gave me my first comics work in the UK 20-odd years ago, which was great. And I got to meet some of the other Muppet comic creators like Shelli Paroline and Grace Randolph. I was reluctant to go at first but I'm really glad I went.

Many thanks to Roger Langridge for all the obvious reasons!
Click here to discuss this article in Comic Sans on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: comics/magazines, interview, Roger Langridge

The second issue of Muppet Robin Hood will be released this week (See our review of #1 here). Today, we've got a Q&A with writer Tim Beedle.

TOUGH PIGS: The obvious first question: How did you get the Muppet Robin Hood job? Were you approached by Boom!, or did you seek it out?

TIM BEEDLE: Actually, I’m very fortunate in that I worked alongside Paul Morrissey, the editor overseeing all of BOOM!’s Muppet and Pixar titles, when he was at TOKYOPOP. I was the editor on both Return to Labyrinth and Legends of The Dark Crystal, so Paul knew of my love and admiration for Jim Henson’s work, as well as my complete obsession when it came to the Muppets. When Paul landed at BOOM! and learned he would be editing Muppet comics, I imagine I was one of the first writers he approached. Most likely because he knew he’d never hear the end of it from me if I wasn’t.

TP: Whose idea was it to do Robin Hood as the first Muppet adaptation comic?

TB: Well, I believe Paul made the decision to launch BOOM!’s line of adaptations with Muppet Robin Hood rather than any of the other ones that had been pitched, but the idea of adapting that particular legend was mine. When Paul approached me about pitching ideas, he told me that BOOM! wanted to do a line of Muppet parodies in the vein of Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island, so I thought about some stories that might make sense for a line of comics like that. We wanted the adaptations to be based on classics and I wanted to take advantage of the fact that these were comics rather than films, so budget and sets weren’t an issue. We could do something epic if we wanted to.

At the same time, I wanted to do something that felt appropriate for the Muppets. For example, I thought briefly of adapting a Jules Verne book like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but that just didn’t feel like a natural fit for the Muppets. Robin Hood just struck me as something we could have a lot of fun with, and it offered a big enough cast and story to include not only the really popular Muppets everyone knows and loves, but some of the more obscure ones as well.

Plus, it was an action story, so we could have swordfights, archery and Muppets riding on horses, without having to stress over how it could be done technically with puppets. Finally, in my opinion, Robin Hood is a legend that hasn’t been appropriately skewered yet. Yes, there’s Robin Hood: Men in Tights, but as much as I love Mel Brooks, I don’t think that’s one of his better movies. I figured the Muppets could do a much better job of parodying it.

TP: When you started working on the comic, were you aware that the Muppets had done the Robin Hood story on an episode of The Muppet Show? Have you seen the episode, and if so, did it influence your writing in any way?

TB: I’ve seen the episode, but I don’t consider it a full-on adaptation any more than I consider the Mark Hamill episode to be “Muppet Star Wars.” I see that version of Robin Hood as more of an extended skit performed on the show. After all, the real story that drives that particular episode is Piggy’s anger at losing out on the role of Maid Marian to Lynn Redgrave. The Robin Hood story was just the onstage texture.

That said, I think it’s a really great episode that came along when the classic Muppets were in their prime. Because of that, I deliberately avoided rewatching it until after I’d gotten well underway in scripting the comic since it would’ve been tempting to lean on the casting choices and humor of the episode a bit too much. All things considered, I’d say that particular episode really wasn’t much of an influence on my writing. However, I do include a small shout-out to the episode in the third issue. A character shows up briefly in our story that fans of the episode will recognize.

TP: How did you decide which Muppet would play which character from the Robin Hood story? Were any of the parts especially challenging to cast?

TB: Some of them seemed obvious to me, but others were more challenging. Clearly, Robin and Marian were pretty obvious (with all due respect to Ms. Redgrave). Little John was a bit of a challenge, but once the thought of Sweetums taking on the role entered my mind, I couldn’t let it go. Fozzie shows up as Friar Tuck in the second issue, and that seemed like a pretty clear choice to me as well, though for a reason that won’t be completely obvious until you read the issue (let’s just say that Friar Tuck plays a much different role in this version of Robin Hood than he usually plays).

I had a lot more trouble with the villains than the heroes because the only Muppets that stand out as “villainous” are pretty obscure, like J.P. Grosse. In the movies, this problem was usually addressed by casting a human actor as the chief villain (Michael Caine in Muppet Christmas Carol and Tim Curry in Muppet Robin Hood), and when it came time to put together the cast list, I suddenly understood why. Fans who grew up with the original show tend to think of all of the Muppets as being part of a close family of performers and it just doesn’t feel natural to imagine them doing harsh things to each other.

On top of that, I wanted to provide substantial roles to as many Muppets as I could, so we actually have three main villains in our story: Prince John, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisbourne. Finding Muppets to play all three was hard.

Prince John hasn’t shown up yet and I don’t want to give him away, but when I hit on the idea of using this particular Muppet in the role, I got excited because it just felt fun. Plus, for some reason, he’s a Muppet you don’t see as being particularly close to most of the others, so he works well as a villain.

However, the Sheriff and Guy went through a bit of recasting. Originally, I had Gonzo playing the Sheriff and Rizzo as Guy, but Disney really seemed to like the idea of Sam as the Sheriff. So Rizzo became a Merry Man, Gonzo became Guy and Sam—who I was originally going to use as Will Scarlet—became the Sheriff. And I think it’s worked out really well. Sam and Gonzo are so utterly different that I’ve been having a blast teaming them up. They’re the oddest couple imaginable.

TP: We were pretty surprised to see Hilda make an appearance. What inspired you to include such an obscure character? Will we see any other similarly little-known Muppets in later issues?

TB: Absolutely. As I said, part of the appeal of doing Robin Hood is it has a big cast. I knew from the start that I’d be able to feature all sorts of cameos within the structure of the story. Plus, since this is a comic book and not a film or TV special, we don’t need to worry about whether the original puppeteers would be available or how the characters would come off with a different performer if not. In other words, the sky’s the limit for what characters you may see! I’ve unofficially branded issue #3 the “cameo issue,” so expect to see a bunch of familiar faces in that one. However, we have a couple fun ones in issue #2 as well.

As for why I used Hilda, one of the unfortunate truths about the Muppets is that there are only two female Muppets who are particularly well known: Piggy and Janice. That means you need to be a little creative when it comes to casting female characters. I wanted Marian to have a few female companions so that she’d always have someone to interact with when she’s away from Robin, and Hilda is such a great early Muppet. She definitely seemed to fit the role of the dressmaker to me. I think that may be Hilda’s only appearance, though. Marian has a slightly younger companion in the next couple of issues. I’ll let your readers speculate as to who that might be. *smiles*

TP: How close are you sticking to the source material? How are you deciding what to include and what to leave out? Have you studied any other adaptations (e.g. the Disney animated movie) as part of your preparation for the comic?

TB: I’m very familiar with most of the better known adaptations—the classic Errol Flynn movie, the Disney version, Kevin Costner’s Prince of Thieves, even Robin McKinley’s Outlaws of Sherwood. I still think the Flynn version is best if anyone’s looking to watch the legend brought to life on screen.

However, I’m not really concerning myself too much with any of those, or with staying too faithful to the legend. My thoughts are that anyone who wants to experience the story of Robin Hood probably isn’t going to start with this comic. Rather, I’m writing this story for Muppet fans, and as such, the legend is just a loose framework. I certainly haven’t thrown it out entirely. All the famous elements and characters are there. But we’re clearly taking some big liberties with it, and they only get bigger as we go on. In fact, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is more of an influence on the way I’m approaching this adaptation than any Robin Hood film or book. I think that movie’s one of the strongest examples of how to use a famous story as framework for absurd comedy.

TP: How much input did you have regarding the choice of artist for the book?

TB: On just about any licensed comic book project, the writer is going to have very little say in who the artist is. I think you pretty much know that going in. However, Paul did ask me if I had any thoughts or suggestions. I offered up a couple of names, but it was Paul who suggested Armand Villavert, Jr. I’ve known Armand for a few years, so I was thrilled for this chance to work with him. He’s a good guy and a big fan of the Muppets. The minute I saw his sample pages, I knew he’d be a great fit.

A project like this is really pretty difficult for an artist when you think about it. Not only does an artist have to accurately reproduce dozens of distinct characters in a way that pleases the fans, but he or she has to draw them doing elaborate actions that there really isn’t any precedent for. I mean, as far as I know, the Muppets have never had a staff fight over a river. If you think about it, that’s a difficult thing to draw, especially considering the two combatants are Kermit and Sweetums. Sweetums is at least five times the size of Kermit! Any staff that Kermit could reasonably wield would be little more than a twig for Sweetums. How could he possibly stand a chance in that fight? The cool thing about Armand is he can pull stuff like that off in such a way that you never ask those kinds of questions. He makes that staff fight look like the most natural thing imaginable.

One last little thing I’ll add is that while I can’t take credit for Armand, one of the names I suggested to Paul was Amy Mebberson. Paul was already familiar with Amy’s work and was speaking to her about the Pixar comics, so I can’t claim to have fully gotten that ball rolling, though I do believe that I was the first person to get behind the idea of having her draw the Muppets. Amy has such a natural gift for comedic timing. It’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. I can’t wait to see what she does with Muppet Peter Pan. Seriously, Amy Mebberson and Grace Randolph? I’m telling you guys now, that book is going to be AWESOME!!!

TP: What kind of notes or feedback have you gotten from the Disney people?

TB: Disney’s notes have been very constructive and helpful, and they’ve made some great suggestions. As you know, we have Jim Lewis approving each of these comics and his feedback has been invaluable. Giving credit where it’s due, it was Jim who suggested using Louis Kazagger for the sports announcer in the first issue. I had completely overlooked that character when writing that scene, but Louis was the perfect choice.

The character suggestions we’ve gotten from Jim Lewis and Disney have been great, but they’ve also been really helpful when it comes to figuring out the balance between character and role. That’s trickier than you may think. After all, Robin Hood as a character is much different than Kermit the Frog, so how much “Kermit” can we bring to the role? There’s been a fair bit of back-and-forth between me, Paul and Disney on those sorts of things.

TP: Are there any plans for you to work on future Muppet comics after Robin Hood wraps up? Are there any ideas that you're itching to do?

TB: I’d love to do more with the Muppets, but nothing’s set in stone at this point. If BOOM! asks me to write another series, I certainly wouldn’t turn them down. I suppose whether or not I get the opportunity probably depends a lot on how well Muppet Robin Hood performs. So far it seems to be doing okay, so my fingers are crossed!

I do have a second pitch in at BOOM! for another Muppet adaptation. I’m not sure I should reveal it here since it may or may not happen, but it’s another large-scale adventure story that also has great opportunities for humor. I think could be PERFECT for the Muppets. In fact, just between us, it was actually my favorite of my two initial pitches. As proud as I am of Muppet Robin Hood, I think this other one could be even better.

TP: The age-old question: Who’s your favorite Muppet?

TB: You know, this question was a lot simpler before I started writing Muppet comics. I’ve noticed that I’ve become really fond of some Muppets who I never gave much thought to before when I discovered what a blast they are to write. Janice is one example of this. She has easily become one of my favorite characters in Muppet Robin Hood.

As for my favorite Muppet all around…well, can I choose two? My favorite on the show was always the Swedish Chef. His segments still crack me up no matter how often I’ve seen them. However, I also really like Rowlf. I always admired how he could play the straight man as well as the clown. And he narrated Dog City, which I thought was a lot of fun!

Our thanks to Tim Beedle for sharing his answers with us! Click here to talk about Muppet Robin Hood and other Muppet comic books on the Tough Pigs forum!

ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com

Labels: comics/magazines, interview

How lucky are we that we can go into any comic book store and actually purchase and read not one, but two Muppet comic books? Not lucky enough, because BOOM! Studios is bringing us a third comic in the form of Muppet Peter Pan.

Writer Grace Randolph was awesome enough to answer a few pressing questions about the comic for us. We'll have at least one more Q&A with Grace after the comic's debut, so stay tuned for more! Now let's settle down and listen to Grace Randolph and her insight into the frog that never grew up.

ToughPigs: How did you get involved with BOOM! Studios?

Grace Randolph: Paul Morrissey was my editor on a few different projects over at Tokyopop, so when he took over BOOM! Studios’ Disney line I asked if I could pitch a few ideas. Happily my Muppet Peter Pan pitch sparked his interest and Disney’s, so it was off to the races!

TP: Where did the idea for Muppet Peter Pan come from? Was it your pitch, or did BOOM approach you with the idea?

GR: It was kind of a mix, really. Disney and BOOM! had decided that in addition to The Muppet Show comic book (awesome book!), they were going to publish a Muppet Storybook comic book as well. So I pitched three different storybooks ala Muppets and Peter Pan was everyone’s favorite.

TP: Were you a Muppet fan before this project came about? Who are some of your favorite characters?

GR: Yes! I love the Muppets! I’d watched The Muppet Show when I was a kid and I’ve seen all The Muppet movies – I’d say my favorite is A Muppet Christmas Carol. As for favorite characters, of course I love Kermit but I’ve always had a soft spot for Sam the Eagle. Also my sister loves Pepe the Prawn and Bean Bunny, so they’re special to me too.

TP: In Muppet Peter Pan, what Muppets play which characters? Will there be any surprises for the fans?

GR: There sure will be some surprises – especially if I don’t ruin them here! So sorry, I can only divulge the casting of the main characters as they’re already on the cover of the main book. Kermit plays Peter Pan, Miss Piggy plays Tinkerbell, Janice plays Wendy, Scooter plays John and Bean Bunny plays Michael. Also I believe the solicitation for the book mentioned that Gonzo plays Captain Hook.

TP: How are you changing the Peter Pan story to fit in with the Muppets' sensibility?

GR: Actually, I’m trying to stick with the original Peter Pan story as closely as possible. As I said above, my favorite Muppet movie is A Muppet Christmas Carol and that was a very close adaptation of Charles Dickens’ original story. So what I’m trying to do is simply put the Muppets in that world and, since the Muppets are naturally funny, voila! Muppet Peter Pan becomes a comedy but one which is still as touching and charming as James L. Barrie’s classic story. Personally I believe those are the best stories, ones that work on many levels.

TP: What kind of research have you done to prepare for this comic?

GR: To be honest, I know the Muppets and the story of Peter Pan so well that I haven’t had to do too much research. I did look into the origin of Peter Pan which isn’t often included in other adaptations, and I also have a Muppet Whatnot named Josh who was very helpful explaining the intricacies of Muppet culture that we non-Muppets aren’t privy too. Having an inside man was a crucial part of my process.

TP: Have you seen any pages from Amy Mebberson yet?

GR: I have and oh boy is everyone in for a treat! I’m very lucky to have a great artist like Amy on the book because she’s got great comedic timing. I put a lot of humor in the book, some of it subtle and visual, and to really sell the jokes the art has to be just perfect. Amy is also giving it that wonderful storybook feel we all love.

TP: Do you have a dream comic that you'd like to write featuring the Muppets?

GR: Um, I’m writing it. Hehe. But in all seriousness, it’s just an honor to write for the Muppets and get to play in that world. Hopefully there’ll be more opportunities in the future.

TP: What is it about Bean Bunny (who has been mostly absent in recent years) that made you want to bring him back?

GR: It’s very simple really. Bean Bunny got this role because of his work in The Muppets 3D ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando. I’ve been going to Disney World for years and every time I go, I stop by and watch this 3D movie. It’s very funny and well done, especially considering I haven’t gotten tired of it yet! And Bean Bunny is such a cute character here that I felt he was the perfect choice to play Michael. Plus, as I said, my sister likes him so I also included Bean Bunny as a nod to her.

TP: Has it been a challenge to have to mix two different franchises while staying loyal to them both?

GR: Yes, but it’s one of those challenges that when you get it just right, it’s very fulfilling. The great thing about the Muppets is that they’re so dynamic, and each character has so much personality, which means they don’t just live in another world but add to it. Therefore I’m happy to say that while you might be familiar with the Muppets and Peter Pan, this is a whole new story that feels fresh and exciting while still maintaining the qualities that made each property so beloved in the first place. At least that’s the plan.

TP: Do you have a message you want to relay to the fans?

GR: The Muppets are in good hands!

Special thanks to Grace Randolph for taking the time to chat with us!
Click here to discuss alternate uses for pixie dust on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: comics/magazines, interview

Another month has gone by, another issue of The Muppet Show Comic Book has come out, and we've got another Q&A with Roger Langridge!

Read our review of this issue by clicking here!

Remember, if you've got questions for Roger Langridge, feel free to e-mail them to me and I'll include them in next month's Q&A. Enough about me, let's get to the good stuff!

ToughPigs: I love the two-page spreads at the beginning of each issue (as well as the gag of the Electric Mayhem dressed in different costumes for each one). Is this something you’ll be continuing after this first 4-issue arc?

Roger Langridge: In The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson I'll continue with the spreads, but they'll be backstage instead of onstage. And in the arc after that one... well, you'll just have to wait and see! But yes, I like to establish a bit of chaos nice and early, and those spreads seem as good a way as any.

TP: We've been seeing some minor background characters popping up in the background -- some of which are familiar (the Fazoobs, Koozebanians, etc), and some of whom appear to be your original designs. Are you keeping a character bible for the new creations and are you naming them? Do you plan on being consistent with individuals re-appearing in multiple issues, or are they just abstract background filler?

RL: I'm winging it! Really, I'm working at such a rate on these things that I don't have a whole lot of time to be precious about character sheets, as useful as they are. One of the nice things about drawing a comic is that I don't have to set aside time and money to make new Muppets - I can just make them on the fly!

TP: You’ve had original or whatnot characters sing songs in the comic. Will you have any of the Muppet bands (The Electric Mayhem, the Jug Band, the Country Trio, etc) sing in future issues?

RL: There's an appearance by a hillbilly character from the show in TOPLW #2 who gets to sing at both the front and back ends of that issue. And TOPLW #1 has a closing number which prominently features the Electric Mayhem, although Miss Piggy ends up doing the vocal honours there. I'm glad you mentioned the Jug Band - I'll make a note of that...

TP: Did you use a cryptogram-like language for the alien in the Pigs in Space sketch, or are they just random symbols?

RL: Oh, completely random. I hope I didn't send anybody scurrying off to decode it!

TP: In the latest comic, you addressed the issue of Gonzo’s species. Did you hear any comments regarding fact that Muppets From Space tried to claim that he is an alien? (By the way, the fans are very pleased to find that Gonzo’s alien heritage is not canon.)

RL: I haven't seen that one - to my shame, as my friend Paul Peart-Smith designed Space Gonzo for that movie. Anyway, nobody mentioned that to me, either at Disney or through less formal channels, until about a week ago when a friend brought it up. Too late to do anything about it by then!

On whether or not it's canon, I imagine you could reconcile both stories if you wanted to - by putting Muppet Show #3 earlier in the chronology than Muppets in Space. But it's probably best not to worry too much about these things as long as the story is good.

TP: In Peg-Leg Wilson, will the Animal subplot continue through all four issues, or is it just in the first one? If it’s the latter, then what can we expect to see in the other three?

RL: The Animal subplot runs through all four issues, being resolved by the end of issue #4. As do a couple of other subplots. This arc is an attempt to keep a lot of plates spinning in the air for four issues while at the same time making each issue as satisfying on its own terms as possible. It's turning out to be tougher than I expected! But I'm writing the final issue at the moment and I think it'll all hang together by the end. Just about.

TP: Are there any Muppet characters you aren’t allowed to use? Either via Disney mandate or your own personal censorship.

RL: I'm not allowed to use the Sesame Street Muppets, alas. I keep trying to sneak Ernie and Bert in there and they keep taking them out again!

TP: Will you have Lips play with the Electric Mayhem, or do you consider him not to be an official member of the band?

RL: It's not so much that he's not an official member as that I don't really know what to do with him. He seems not to have a clearly defined personality, and is kind of surplus to requirements in the stories I've written so far -- though if I can find a way to work him in that seems natural, I'm all for it.

TP: Now that we know what Gonzo is, what is Scooter?

RL: He's a gofer. I thought everybody knew that. (Seriously, his uncle is human, so I guess he's just got a good suntan.)

TP: How far into Peg-Leg Wilson are you? Are you already preparing for the third arc?

RL: I've got rough plots worked out for the next arc, yes, but they need another going-over before they'll be ready to go. Partly to address some concerns from Disney, partly to streamline it a bit for my own benefit after seeing how little breathing room I had in the Peg-Leg Wilson arc. I'm learning every issue!

Thanks again to Roger for taking the time to chat with us!
Click here to deduce Scooter's species on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: comics/magazines, interview, Roger Langridge, The Muppet Show

Roger Langridge is currently the MVP for the Muppets, being the only one these days who has been writing The Muppets in a consistent and funny voice on a regular basis. The second issue of The Muppet Show Comic Book hit the stands this week (read our review here!) and Mr. Langridge joined us for another Q&A, because he's the coolest guy I know (sorry Dad).

If you've got questions for Roger Langridge, feel free to e-mail them to me and I'll include them in next month's Q&A. Now let's get some As for our Qs!

ToughPigs: I noticed that Pepe made a cameo in the opening 2-page spread. Is that just a tease to the fans, or can we expect him to have a role in future issues?

Roger Langridge: I confess I'm not that familiar with Pepe - if I'm requested to give him a bigger role I'd do my best to find out more about him, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't a part of the classic show, which is what I'm trying to evoke, and what my brief is, as it were. So it's low on my list of priorities at the moment. I'm not ruling anything out, though!
TP: In the latest issue, Fozzie is dealing with the pressure of having to be funny for a niche audience. Were you channeling your own turmoil for this one?

RL: Ha ha! Not really, though I can see the connection now that you mention it. It was more that I needed to find something central to Fozzie's character to build a story around, and his sense of himself as a "Funny Bear" seemed about as central as you could get.

TP: What has the feedback from Disney been like?

RL: I haven't heard anything from Disney directly, but the feedback Boom! have passed on to me has been very positive.

TP: Will we ever get to meet Flash McBuck?

RL: No plans, but you never know! I think the Pigs In Space situation works best when it's claustrophobic and the principals are getting on each other's nerves - introducing a supporting cast would dilute that somewhat.

TP: Both this issue and the first one ended with a nice message and the main character learning something about himself. While this is welcome territory for the Muppets, will this be a recurring theme, or will we see some more bizarre storyline endings that focus more on the zaniness of the Muppets rather than the heart?

RL: These issues, focussing on individual characters, sort of require some moment of heart, some statement of who they are - that's kind of the point of them. Further down the line, I expect I'll mix things up a bit more. But on the whole I'm trying to balance the wacky with the heartfelt without letting one overwhelm the other. Can't promise I'll get it right every time, but it won't be for lack of trying!

TP: How did your approach to the writing and art change between the first two issues? After the feedback of the first issue's release?

RL: The first four issues were completely written before the first one was released, so there wasn't any real difference in approach as a result of reaction to the first one. I hope there's no difference in approach afterwards, either! I'm trying to produce a comic I'd like to read myself; I've been doing that since day one, and I want to continue to do that. If I think it's funny or moving or whatever, presumably other people are going to think so too. I'm not sure I believe that trying to anticipate critical reaction and change things accordingly can ever produce anything of value.

TP: How did you come up with the sketch, "The Ubiquitous Quilp?" Between the nonsense language and your playing with the comic page as a multi-tiered set, it's very impressive, yet confounding!

RL: I'm always trying to come up with ways to make the comic book something unique, something that couldn't work on television - the graphic style is a part of that, and using the medium in ways that wouldn't work on screen is another part. Otherwise, the entire comic book project is kind of redundant - why make a Muppet comic when you could just watch the videos? So I try to come up with something that could only work as a comic in each issue. And I always liked the bits on the show that seemed to come from nowhere; that were, shall we say, aggressively strange. So that was something I wanted to do as well.

TP: Can you tell us anything about your next Muppet Show comic book, "The Treasure of Peg Leg Wilson"?

RL: It's a four-issue story where Scooter finds a map in a storeroom that reveals the existence of a treasure hoarde hidden somewhere in the theatre. Rizzo gets his fellow rats searching for it, and naturally this interferes with the smooth running of the show. Hilarity ensues! (Or something.) Meanwhile, Kermit starts acting very cool for no apparent reason, getting Miss Piggy all hot and bothered, and Animal... oh, poor Animal isn't himself at all. This story will be a bit stronger on subplots than the first four issues, hopefully all coming together in a satisfying way by the end. (Bit of a new way of working for me, so I hope I can pull it off!) And, of course, the skits and general mayhem will continue unabated.

TP: Again, is there anything you'd like to relate to the fans?

RL: Once again, I'd just like to express my sincerest thanks for the warm reception the book has received so far. It's very gratifying and means a lot to me. So thanks!

Thank you, Roger, for taking the time to chat with us!
Click here to discuss this article on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: comics/magazines, interview, Roger Langridge, The Muppet Show

Way back in January, we had ourselves a little chat with Roger Langridge, the writer and artist for BOOM! Studios' recent hit, The Muppet Show Comic Book, which is already selling out and garnering rave reviews (including one from your favorite Muppet fan site). In our first of what we hope will be a monthly feature, we'll be holding a Q&A with Roger Langridge after every issue. If you've got pressing questions for Roger, feel free to e-mail me or post on the ToughPigs forum. Now, let's get on with the gettin' on!

ToughPigs: What sort of updates in the writing and design did you make between the preview comic and the first issue? Gonzo's more-rounded nose, for example, is one obvious change you've made.

Roger Langridge: As I've mentioned elsewhere, the preview comic consisted of material originally produced for Disney Adventures magazine which was never published, and my brief on those stories was to do it in my own style, hence what some fans probably regard as my stylistic eccentricities. The Boom! comic was really a fresh start, and the expectations were somewhat different, so Gonzo's streamlined nose reflects that - the comic is more like "official merchandise", as far as that goes, despite not being commissioned by Disney directly. So it wasn't so much a case of making conscious changes, more a case of treating the Boom comic as its own thing and approaching it accordingly.

TP: Did you get any notes from BOOM! or Disney about Americanizing the dialog? (Note: Roger Langridge hails from New Zealand and currently lives in London.)

RL: Jim Lewis made a couple of suggestions and queried a colloquialism or two that wouldn't travel well. They're keeping their eyes open for the obvious ones!

TP: Aside from Jim Lewis, who we Muppet fans are intimately familiar with, who are the other names listed in the "Special Thanks" section? (Tishana Williams, Ivonne Feliciano, Jesse Post, and Susan Butterworth)

RL: No idea! (Apart from Jesse Post, who was one of the people who got me into Disney Adventures when he worked there.) The Thank-Yous were put in at editorial level - presumably they're all Disney/Henson liaisons of some kind or other.

TP: What is your process for writing original songs that appear only in print form like "Bang, Boom, Splat and Pow" and "In the Pond Where I Was Born"? Did you actually write or record music for them?

RL: Good lord, no! It's just doggerel, really - I don't have a musical bone in my body. Proper songs usually involve a lot more repetition (choruses, refrains), which is something that doesn't usually work on the printed page. I'm trying to get the idea of a musical number across, but in a way that works in print. My ideal here is Alice in Wonderland (the book, that is), where characters are constantly breaking into "song" but in a way that uses the printed page to full effect, like Carroll's "Tail of a Mouse", in which the text is actually shaped like a tail. I'm not there yet, but that's something to strive towards.

TP: I enjoyed the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards analogs in the comic. Will you have "celebrity" guest stars in future issues?

RL: If I can work them into the story artfully, I'd be up for that. Nothing in the ones I've yet written, though. Believe it or not, I didn't think of the Zimmer Twins as guest stars (except to use that as an excuse to wedge them in there) - I just thought "The Zimmer Twins" was a nifty gag! Kermit and Scooter discuss possible guest stars in issue 4 as an excuse for me to trot out some atrocious celebrity Spoonerisms, for what that's worth. I'm aware it's a part of the show's format that has to be addressed from time to time.

TP: When you create original characters like the hoptoads, do you envision certain puppeteers performing each one?

RL: I'm not as immersed in the behind-the-scenes stuff as most of your readers are, so the only puppeteers I'm aware of are the really well-known ones, the household names. But since these hop-toad characters were really just throwaways, here for two pages and then gone forever, I wasn't too concerned about giving them individual personalities - in fact, I think that would have been counter-productive in this context.

TP: Rumor has it that you're already starting work on a second Muppet Show miniseries. Can you give us any details on that?

RL: As far as my work schedule is concerned, The Muppet Show Comic is an ongoing monthly series, but Boom! Studios want to re-start the numbering every four issue for marketing reasons. So the next four-issue story arc is called "The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson", in which rumours of a hidden treasure inside the theatre lead to, one hopes, hilarious complications - all this as a background subplot to the usual songs, sketches and so forth. Nothing radically different to the initial four issues, except the subplot element is a bit stronger. And that will lead us into the next four-issue arc, which is a logical progression from this one, I hope.

TP: Do you have a favorite character to write for? A favorite episode of The Muppet Show?

RL: I'm finding Gonzo and Miss Piggy the most enjoyable so far, because they both seem to have layers like an onion. You think you know them and then they surprise you. But I can't think of a single character I'm not enjoying on some level.

Favourite episode: Probably the Spike Milligan one. I'm a huge Milligan fan and it just seemed like such a perfect mesh of sensibilities.

TP: Is there anything else you want to relate to the Muppet fans?

RL: Just to say thanks for being open-minded about the book, and thanks for giving it such a warm reception. I really appreciate it.
Super special thanks to Roger Langridge for chatting with us! And double super special thanks to him for making The Muppet Show Comic Book! Issue #2, "Fozzie's Story," hits the stands on April 29! And while you're at the comic shop, be sure to get the first issue of Muppet Robin Hood, which will be released on the same day.

Click here to break into (written) song on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: comics/magazines, interview, Roger Langridge, The Muppet Show

Did you miss the first part of our chat with Sesame Street puppeteer and head writer Joey Mazzarino? Well it misses you too. You should call it more often.

Let's dispense with the preliminaries! On to part two!

ToughPigs: I wanted to ask you about Horatio the Elephant. How did he get his name?

Joey Mazzarino: Belinda [Ward] named him. He’s had a few different performers. I think Dave Goelz did him for "Elephant Elevator Operator", and Marty Robinson did him for Monster’s Clubhouse, and I don’t even remember when I started doing him. I just remember when I started doing him, I thought, “You know what would be great? If I could do this upright. And it would be even greater if he had legs!” And they started to build him that way. He doesn’t have the greatest eyes, he was made by Ed Christie to be a big jungle animal. It’s the most freeing thing in the world to be a full-bodied puppet.

TP: So how does he work…?

JM: It’s just like Big Bird, but I give him this weird curve in his spine (sticks arm in the air, but tilted forward, not straight up like Big Bird).

TP: Is it like Big Bird where you’ve got a monitor strapped to your chest, with the camera pointed at the character?

JM: Yeah, it’s looking straight on. I do have some little slits in the front, because it does get dangerous. I mean, that trunk really hurts if you hit somebody with it.

TP: How did you come up with that hyperactive personality?

JM: It was a one-shot thing, and I was just stealing Bobcat Goldthwait’s voice. Most of my characters, even Murray, have been developed in any way. Even Stinky the Stinkweed was a one-off in an Oscar parody. I know some people hate the voice, but I never cared about it. I love that most of my characters are hyperactive.

TP: Is that a part of you coming out?

JM: Yeah, I’m very hyper. Murray’s interviews are about as close to me as you’re going to get. I tend to be big and annoying.

TP: You were one of the writers on Muppets From Space. What was that like?

JM: It was a miserable experience. We were working with a director, Randal Kleiser, who had directed Grease, one of my favorite movies. We got the green light, it was Jerry Juhl’s script, and they asked me to do a pass, and I wrote a very parody-heavy script. We parodied Men in Black, Contact, Alien, and we were very close to shooting. Then I got a panicked call from Henson saying that they were firing Randal. They said, “We don’t feel like he’s bringing enough vision.” I said, “But we got the green light! We’re going!” So they flew me out to LA to pick a new director, and we picked a director who was a very nice guy, and he did a decent job, but he wanted to get rid of all the parody stuff. He wanted it to be more real, and the ending, I hate the ending. In my draft, the aliens were getting the signal of old Muppet Shows, and they made themselves look like Gonzo because he was the ultimate being to him. And then they peel back to reveal themselves to be these hideous creatures. And it’s not about family being those guys, his family is the Muppets. So he’s still a whatever, he’s not an alien in the end. So the fact that they made him an alien bugs the crap out of me. Anyway, they hired him, he wanted to make all these changes, and I just left.

TP: So you weren’t on set for the filming?

JM: No, I left before they started. And it was probably a mistake because I never worked on a feature again.

TP: That might not just be you, the Muppets haven’t worked on a feature since then either.

JM: I know, but I was doing really well with Columbia at the time.

TP: I recently rented Ghost Town. I knew you were in it, but I forgot at the time. When I saw your name in the credits, I had to go back and find your blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene. How did that happen?

JM: We were doing auditions for the character who would become Leela, and I had Murray on the auditions, and I was improving with all of the actresses, and at the end of the day, [casting director] Pat McCorkle said to me, “We’re looking for funny character actors to come in and do Ricky Gervais’ new movie. Are you interested?” And I was like, yeah sure, why not. And about three weeks later, I got a call to come in and meet David Koepp, the director, and he asked me, “Can you sneeze?” So I did some sneezes and he says, “Those are really good sneezes.” The next thing I know, I’m called to the set and I did my sneeze and that was it. And at the end of the day, I said to Ricky, “I work on Sesame Street, we’d love to have you,” and all of the sudden he was like, “Oh yes! I’d love to do that! What do I do?” And we’re having him on the show this season.

TP: Do celebrities often come to you to ask to be on the show?

JM: Yeah, sometimes. We have a talent booker who keeps an eye out on who’s in New York that we can grab for a few hours. But some people are just big Muppet fans, like Neil Patrick Harris.

TP: Yeah, we’ve heard in a few interviews, he loves talking about how much of a Muppet fan he is.

JM: It was great, he came in and did a whole episode, which is rare.

TP: That was a great episode, he was fantastic.

JM: You liked it? I wrote it and directed it! Neil was great. He was totally committed to it. And coming up this year, we have Judah Friedlander. He plays “Inspector Four” and he’s hilarious.

TP: Well, if you ever want more celebrities, we’re available.

JM: (Laughs) I’ll keep you on the list.

TP: We heard at the event in New Jersey that Frank Oz had performed earlier that day. Was he on set?

JM: He was, he came in. He did Grover for a bit, and then he did a parody, I think he did Mad Men. He hadn’t been on in a couple years, he’s just so busy.

TP: How often does Jerry Nelson come in?

JM: Jerry’s been on quite a bit this year. He’s been in maybe four or five days. I’ll tell you this: keep an eye out this season for Marshall Grover and Fred the Wonder Horse with Frank as Grover.

TP: We’ve noticed that you’ve done a lot of the Muppet and kid moments on the show.

JM: That’s how Murray came about. I happened to be in Egypt working with the puppeteers there, and they have this character named Filfil, who’s this purple monster with a jaw line like Murray, and I fell in love with this character. And just by chance, that year new A.M.s came in and one of them was that puppet design, so I said, “Please put this puppet away, don’t let anyone take him, I don’t know what I want to do with him yet but I want to use him.” That was when they had me interviewing kids as Papa Bear and a broccoli.

TP: Yeah, I remember you had the broccoli doing pushups in one sketch.

JM: Well it was all improv, right? So I said they should let me use this guy, and they let me change it up and use Murray. We were trying to figure out a name and I think a crew guy or a producer said he looks furry, how about Furry Murray? My grandpa’s name was Murray, and I was always naming characters Murray, like Little Murray Sparkles, there’s a Murray in the Halloween video. And I was like great, it’s my grandpa’s name, so I’m going to use it. And then the Word on the Street thing came about, and there was a marketing campaign behind it as a promo for the show, and we were trying to figure out who to use, and they said they really liked those Murray and kid videos, and we took a chance. People saw it and recognized it as Sesame Street right away, so it turned out to be really great. And then we did those Murray Has a Little Lamb pieces, and those were the greatest shoots ever.

TP: Are those coming back?

JM: We’re going to re-air them if we don’t have the budget to shoot new ones, but if not then we’ll do new ones for season 41. I loved the stuff in the schools. Because we’d go into a place, like a karate school, and we’d watch a class for a little bit, and then we’d say, “Okay, we have a puppet, we have wild legs, Ovejita, and a throwing Ovejita, what can we do?” And in a couple hours, we’d figure out what physical stuff we can do. My favorite thing is throwing Muppets.

TP: Wild feet are what you call the disembodied feet?

JM: Right, they’re the legs that are not attached. They’re rodded. For the karate one we had them kick, and in the gymnastic one we had Murray on the rings, and in the pottery one we had the legs working the pottery wheel.

TP: Should we expect any surprises in season 40?

JM: We’re trying to do what we call a gem in every episode. That’s for you guys, the fans. Little things like Biff and Sully in a scene, or some other stuff that I won’t tell you about that will be hidden in the scene. There’s one, the writing on the sandwich board outside of Hooper’s Store reads, “Loaf of bread / Container of milk / Stick of butter”. We’ll try to get one of those in most of the episodes this season.
Special thanks to Joey Mazzarino for taking the time to chat with us! We can't wait to see what you've got in store for season 40!

Click here to show your fake sneeze on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: interview, Sesame Street

You may know him as Stinky the Stinkweed. You may know him as Murray, the Word on the Street monster. You may know him as one of the writers of Elmo in Grouchland, Muppets From Space, and Kermit's Swamp Years, not to mention being the head writer on Sesame Street. Well, we know him as Joey Mazzarino. And, y'know, all those other things we mentioned in this paragraph.

Besides being a veritable Muppet Rennaisance man, Joey Mazzarino is a supercool guy, because he took the time to sit down with us for an interview all about what it's like to be the head writer on Sesame Street.

So what are you waiting for? Look down about half an inch and start reading!

ToughPigs: First of all, congratulations on winning the WGA award [for Elmo's Christmas Countdown] last week.

Joey Mazzarino: Thank you.

TP: Were you actually at the ceremony?

JM: I was. The great part about that was that they were honoring Norman Stiles. Norman was my first head writer, and he taught me a lot about comedy writing. He was being honored for the Herb Sargent Award that night.

TP: Wow, that’s awesome. So, you are the head writer on Sesame Street this year. How did you get that job?

JM: Belinda Ward was head writer last year and she was having a hard time balancing work and her family, she didn’t want to do it, they asked me to do it, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to give up my free time, because Belinda had to be there a lot. So I thought I’d give it a try. And it’s actually pretty fun. It’s hard though. 26 episodes doesn’t sound like a lot, especially when we used to do 130, but 26 stories that are 12-15 minutes long, it’s been tough.

TP: How do you break up the writing duties?

JM: There are about nine other writers beside myself, and they’re all given an assignment, and you’ll get assigned characters. So you might get Elmo, Snuffy, Big Bird, whatever. You can also trade, like “I really want Telly for this one, can I have Telly?” Then they’ll come and meet with me, and they’ll have their curriculum laid out with the letter and number and pitch me a story based on the characters in their cast list and we’ll work on it from there.

TP: So, you started as a puppeteer, but some of your writing is pretty early on in your career. Did you set out to be a performer or a writer?

JM: I set out to be a performer. I didn’t even know about puppetry until college. I didn’t know that was a job. Camille Bonora came to teach improv at my college. At the time I was working for a nursery school and we’d watch a lot of Sesame with the kids in school. She said that she worked on Sesame Street as a puppeteer, and I asked “What a great job! What do you do?” and she said, “Oh, I do this character Meryl Sheep…” and I said, “Meryl Sheep! You did the Sophie’s Choice accent, that’s really great!” She said, “You watch it? You really know the stuff?” I said yeah, and she said I could come and meet Jim one day. I said that’d be great, and then a year and a half went by and I never saw her again.

Then I was lighting a show at Fordham and she came and she said, “Oh, I told you you could come and visit the set. Jim’s going to be here next week, why don’t you come?” And I went and visited and I got to meet Jim, and I was very tongue-tied and didn’t know what to say. But he was very gracious, and we talked about Fordham because he’d gotten an honorary degree from there. So I was watching those guys work, especially Richard Hunt. I think Richard was doing a butler, and he had the puppet’s hands behind his back and he was really very funny, but the stuff he was saying off camera was even funnier, he was cracking the crew up. And I just said, “I want to be that guy!” So I put on a puppet, and Camille said, “You know, this is really hard, some guys have been doing this since they were little kids, it’s really tough.” I said I don’t care. I said, “Give me a tip,” and she said, “Just drop the thumb.” So I’d practice while talking on the telephone, and I went back to the costume shop at Fordham and I asked the professor if I could borrow some fabric and wigs and stuff, I started building Frankenstein’s puppet.

TP: I hope you still have that puppet somewhere.

JM: I do, it’s at my parents’ house, I think. It was awful, it was terrible. I had my "Of Muppets and Men" book I got from my brother-in-law, and I put a camera up in my bedroom. During the day when I wasn’t at school, I’d practice and rehearse in front of the camera. I was obsessed with building my puppets, and my parents thought I was insane, they really thought I went nuts. Then I sent in a tape and Kevin Clash invited me to a workshop. And that’s how I got into puppetry.

I didn’t know I could write, I was a terrible writer. I was literally the worst grammarian in school. At the end of the year, after 120 episodes, they needed characters, so they said we could go to the Workshop and look at any characters we wanted to do. I saw this little black lamb and I came up with this little commercial for “Colambo”, I put it up for the writers, and they thought it was funny. Lisa Simon, God bless her, she said to me, “Do you want to try writing?” I said no, I’m a terrible writer, I can’t do it. She said, “Well, we pay for the audition,” and I said, oh yeah!

TP: And this was after your first season?

JM: This was probably 1991, so probably my second season.

TP: Can you describe the writing process for an episode of Sesame Street?

JM: Yeah, so I’m a writer and I get my assignment for, say, episode 4210. It’s science and nature, I’ve got Big Bird in my cast, so I’m going to write a show about migration. I’d go to the head writer, I’d pitch my story about Big Bird, he wants to migrate, this real estate worker sells him on a new home and at the end Big Bird decides he wants to leave, and what’s that going to do to everybody? Everyone’s like, “You can’t leave, this is your home, this is your habitat,” and I’d pitch that to the head writer and he’d say, “Yes this is great,” or “No, let’s work on it some more.” So you’d work it out and look at the curriculum and figure out what each scene is going to be, you’d go off and write it, hand it in, the head writer will look at it and give you some notes, you’d take a second pass at it then you’d do a polish on it based on research and producer’s notes. It’s pretty autonomous, it’s the most autonomous writing job I’ve ever heard about, especially in television because there’s not a lot of network involvement, PBS is pretty hands-off. You might hand that all off at once and do your inserts later, when you’d pitch your parodies and you’d pitch your letter films.

TP: So the writers just pitch whatever they come up with?

JM: Sometimes we go, “Hey we need things about near and far” or something, but normally we say we need some parodies, like we’ll have a Mad Men parody this year and Jon and Kate Plus 8.

TP: The recent ones have been really great.

JM: Oh yeah? Which ones did you like?

TP: Like Pre-School Musical…

JM: That was me!!

TP: Are there certain characters you really like writing for?

JM: Telly Monster is my favorite. I don’t understand why kids don’t love Telly more. I love all the characters, I honestly do, but it took me the most time to write Big Bird. For some reason, I couldn’t nail Big Bird’s voice as quickly as everything else. But Telly I just fell in love with right off the bat. I love writing Grover, Grover is awesome. I love writing for Elmo, Elmo’s really fun to write for too. My favorite thing is when we came up with Rocco, Zoe’s pet rock. I love it because it shows this darkness to Elmo, like Elmo gets mad. “It’s not a pet, it’s a rock!” I wrote Rocco first, and when I found that little dynamic, Elmo suddenly got a whole other side to him, it’s not all super sweet.

TP: Do you have any favorite scripts that you wrote?

JM: The first time I got to write and direct my own show, it was the opening air show last year with the Indiana Jones parody. It’s got Telly, who I love. It’s got Chris, who I love.

TP: Murray is in that one too, right?

JM: It’s got Murray. I actually didn’t love that Murray was in it. I kinda keep Murray like, who’s the guy on Fraggle Rock? Uncle Traveling Matt. Because I feel like he goes out into the real world, and when we put him on the Street, there’s just a million characters who can service this. We wanted to try it, and I didn’t think it was that great. Plus, it’s really hard to direct when you’re in it. But I loved coming up with big ideas, like the giant 8-foot boulder. And to parody my favorite film in the world, it was great. The new sequel had just come out, and I’m like, “I can finally parody Indiana Jones!”

TP: That was a pretty ambitious episode.

JM: It was a little ambitious. We actually took a day and a half to shoot it instead of just one day. But just because it was my maiden episode for writing and directing, it’s probably my favorite one.

TP: Do you have any least favorite scripts?

JM: Maybe if I go back and look at the first scripts I wrote, because I didn’t know anything about writing. My first Street scene that I wrote, I just remember there were a lot of stupid, obvious, punny things like the Count with a bat, but it was a baseball bat. I remember being in the control room, and Jon Stone was there and he didn’t know I was there, and someone said, “Should we do it again?” and he said, “It’s not worth it.” At the time, I was so crushed, but looking back, he was right. I didn’t know what I was doing. It wasn’t until maybe my third season when I wrote one that I loved. It was called “Cindertelly”. Flo Bear, who was an awful character, was writing this story called Cindertelly, and there were these little mice getting him ready for a bowling ball.

TP: We heard that the target audience is younger than it used to be. Has that influenced the way you write?

JM: We’ve made a conscious decision that we’re aiming for three, because that’s our target, but I’m still pushing to get that comedy in there for adults. But is it tougher? No, but if I feel like there’s pressure to start taking jokes out, then I get mad. And in my first year as head writer, I’m trying to keep a really consistent comedic voice in the show. Right now, I don’t feel it as much. I’m trying to push a lot of the physical stuff and I want to stay away from the talking-to-the-camera stuff. I don’t mind talking to the camera like we’ve always done on Sesame, but trying to elicit answers from kids really bugs me out.
Click here for part two of our interview, where you'll hear Joey talk about Horatio the Elephant, Muppets From Space, and some super special surprises coming up in season 40!

Click here to drop your thumb on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: interview, Sesame Street

Coming up after these messages is part two of our chat with "Street Gang" author Michael Davis! Be sure to click here and read part one, or else you'll be horribly, irrevocably lost. Continuity is king!

And in case you haven't been reminded enough, Michael will be appearing TONIGHT (that's Friday, January 30 if you're reading this late) with lots of famous Sesame Street alumni (including some folks by the names of Clash, Spinney, Manzano, McGrath, Robinson, Brill, Rudman, Geiss, and one Mr. Frank Oz) at William Patterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. Click here for more info, and if you're already attending, be sure to say hi to the ToughPigs, who will be attending the heck outta this thing.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled interview.

ToughPigs: Aside from the interviews, what sort of research materials did Sesame Workshop provide you with for the book?

Michael Davis: A lot of tape. And you probably know, all of Sesame Workshop’s paper archives up until about 1976 are at the University of Maryland. Whatever I needed after that point, they tried to provide if it was still available. So if there was something specific that I wanted, I had to know exactly what to ask for. They didn’t give me the key to the filing cabinet. But to their great credit, whenever I had a question, it got answered. If I wanted a document or a letter, they found the letter. They were very professional about their assistance to me. And because Joan was interested in the project and gave it her blessing, they were doing Joan’s bidding. She’s the boss of bosses. Nobody wants to let her down. I can think of no time when I was turned down for anything.

It got a little sticky when it came to finding photographs for the book. Because as you know, they’re very interested in creating their own book, and needed to have a proprietary sense about holding on to some of those images, and I understood that. But their reluctance was actually a plus, because it forced me to think about what I could get for this book that they likely won’t go after. And the answer became evident to me, that we should ask the sources in the book if they would consider providing images from their personal collections. I had a wonderful photo researcher work with me named Vashti Anderson and between the two of us, appealing to sources in the book, we were able to get over 50 images which, I think have a real intimacy, a real kind of family feel to them. They’re pictures you would probably see framed in somebody’s house. Some people were a little reluctant. Loretta Long, a little. But God bless her, some of the images she gave us were the best of them all. We could have done a whole book of Bob McGrath images. He and his wife Ann have done a wonderful job of collecting personal mementos, archives, photographs. He had so much great stuff, it was such a hard choice to narrow it down. People were wonderful, and because they were so generous, it gave a very different feel to the collection of photographs. Originally we were just going to have 20, but when Viking saw what was coming in, they’re the ones that said “No, 50.”

TP: I mentioned in my review, my only complaint about the pictures was that I wanted more. If you got 20, I wanted 50. If you got 50, I wanted 500. Are you planning on making the images available elsewhere?

MD: Yes, StreetGangBook.com. To my regret, we didn’t end up using any pictures of Matt Robinson. I want to do something nice about Matt on the site, and soon, because I have a couple of great Holly Robinson Peete stories that I didn’t get to use. I wanted to create content on the website for people to come back to. I haven’t done a lot yet, but I wanted it to be a place where I can update content every once in a while and write some more about Sesame Street. There’s so much to write about, even the current stuff. I thought the season that just ended was just superb. I love the animated Bert and Ernie, I thought that was great. It’s presumptuous, but I think Jim would love it.

He was so techno-savvy. I don’t think Jim ever thought the characters were too precious. That’s why I did so much in the book about Burr Tilstrom. People ask me why I did so much; it’s because Burr created a very different model about how he felt about those characters. He didn’t want any commercialism at all. He didn’t want a Kukla and and Ollie in the stores. He felt that there was only one Kukla and one Ollie and those were the puppets on his hands. He felt that they had a soul and a life of their own. Jim didn’t, he kept the puppets in a plastic bag, he didn’t think that they were alive. He knew that the performers were the ones that gave them life. I’m not saying Burr Tilstrom was off his rocker, he just came about it from a different angle with a very different belief about these characters and what they represent. He could have been a gazillionaire. I’m old enough to remember Kukla, Fran and Ollie on television and they were it. They were it for a while. They could have been in every five and dime, every drug store, every toy store, but he didn’t want it. And then here you have Jim who went about it carefully, cautiously, but he was interested in making money from the characters. Why? Because it gave him the freedom to do the things he really wanted to do like the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. He wanted to expand and make sure that the people who worked for him made a good wage. It’s two different ways of looking at the world. It’s so true to say that Burr Tilstrom influenced Jim in a profound way. We don’t know when it happened, but we do know that the light went on in Jim’s head about the way that these characters are represented through the lens of the camera and how they’re projected on the screen and how they have dimensionality and shape and form. One of the reasons he knew that was because of Kukla Fran and Ollie.

TP: Regarding Caroll Spinney’s reading of the audio book, did you have any influence in getting him? Was that your idea?

MD: ((Nods yes)) He was really up for it. Right from the start when I got the first call from Viking that Listen and Live bought the rights to the audio book, my first words were “I want Caroll Spinney to read this book.” If it can’t be me, I would want Caroll. I think my persistence helped. I said that if anybody is concerned about the hint of New England accent in his voice, get over it, because within five minutes it will melt away. I think the world of Caroll Spinney, and it was such a thrill to listen to him read the book. To be in the studio and to do that interview with him and to hear him read the words that I pecked out on my PC, it was an out-of-body experience. (Note: The audio book is also available on iTunes, where you can hear a sample of Caroll's reading.)

TP: For people like me who bought the book in its first printing, if there will be extra chapters in future editions, will we get a chance to see them or will they be exclusive to those printings?

MD: I’m going to put everything up online. I have spoken to Viking about refreshing the book for its release to paperback and doing a chapter that updates the book and brings us right up to this year as the 40th anniversary approaches. I haven’t gotten anything that solidly promises that I can do that, but it’s something we’re discussing. I don’t want to ever make it like I’m trying to steal any thunder from the book that’s coming out this fall from Sesame Workshop, because they need their day in the sun too. If I’m allowed to, I’d really like to update the book because so much has happened and is happening. I think they’ve done some really interesting things in the last two seasons. I like Murray a lot and the Word On the Street idea. I realize that one of the great challenges of educating preschoolers and getting kids ready for school these days is their spoken vocabulary as well as their written vocabulary. Introducing kids to words now is so very important, and I admire what they’ve done for the show toward that end. I have no qualms whatsoever about Abby Cadabby. I think she’s adorable.

TP: I agree, I love Abby. And Leslie Carerra performs the hell out of her.

MD: She is magnificent. She’s hilarious, she’s adorable, she’s talented to the Nth degree. And they finally have their female star. I’ve read all of the contrary reviews about Abby and I don’t want to belittle it because I know it incurs the wrath of feminists that there’s this princess character in pink that reinforces what they believe is this kind of stereotype and an unfortunate target for young girls to reach for. But I’m old enough to see that everything in pop culture is a cycle, and we’re into that cycle of princesses again and little girls who desperately want to be in dresses and tutus.

It’s always a marriage of great writing and performance. If you didn’t have the great writing for Abby, she’d be shallow and a dud. But Abby grew out of the mind of the writing staff, Tony Geiss’ brain, he’s the one who gave birth to Abby Cadabby. It didn’t come from the marketing department, it came the old fashioned way. Abby didn’t spring forth fully formed, she evolved and they played with her a bit. The first season was good, but the second season was better. That says to me that they’re wrapping their arms around this character, creating a real persona, a real personality with depth. I think she’s hilarious and I love the situations they create for her. They’ve got to stay in business, and the competing forces in the marketplace are profound. This is the golden age for preschool television. There’s great stuff on Nick, there’s great stuff on Disney, there’s great stuff on Discovery Kids. Sesame Street ain’t the only game in town anymore. They’ve got to fight, they’ve got to make themselves known, they’ve got to continue to move merchandise in the stores, and I’ll say that with my support. Because the money that comes in not only supports the domestic show, it helps to keep propagating the ideas of Sesame Street around the world, and I buy into those ideas. I think it’s very good, what they do, and unless somebody shows me an example of a degrading Sesame co-production that’s wrong-headed or promotes cultural stereotypes, I’m going to keep saying that it’s a good thing. It may be the very best ambassador that the United States has out there in the world, and I’m for it.

TP: Regarding Jon Stone’s memoir, is the Stone family actively trying to get it published? Because I’d love to read it.

MD: It’s my dearest hope that it will be published someday, and I’ve mentioned it to [Stone’s wife] Beverly and I’ve mentioned it to [their daughters] Polly and Kate, and I have offered my assistance to them if they want somebody to help edit the book and get it ready for an agent to look at or a publishing house to look at. I do think there is a long section of the book toward the back that has a little too much anger and vitriol in it. I don’t think anybody really wants to hear it. I think it was extremely cathartic for Jon to get it out of his system, but I don’t think anybody wants to read it. If you surgically removed that, what you have left is this magnificently funny, moving, poignant insider look at not only Sesame Street but the early days of television, and it really is such a window into his psyche, into the mind of this great creative person. He’s very tough on himself, he doesn’t project himself as this wonderful guy who has no flaws. To the contrary, he writes about his challenges, about getting along in the workplace, he doesn’t come across as this guy who had all of the answers all of the time. He does come off as somebody who really appreciated women, women in the workplace. He has wonderful things to say about Bob Keeshan and his term of service on Captain Kangaroo. I really hope the world gets to read the book some day because it’s that good. I feel privileged for having had the opportunity to read it and quote from it, and I thank the Stone family over and over again for allowing me to do so. It was a real extension of trust for them to allow me to do that, and I hope I did not let them down in any way.

TP: The story of the production of Sesame Street starts about halfway through "Street Gang". With 40 years worth of production history to fit into about 200 pages, how did you choose what to cut?

MD: It was very hard. A smart person told me at the beginning of the project that I should have no more than seven major characters, so that helped me a little bit. I had to make decisions on what would keep the narrative moving. I also wanted to make sure that the people that I felt after doing the years of research who didn’t get as much credit, I wanted to make sure that the book would give them their due. So, Dulcy Singer. Lloyd Morrisett. Richard Hunt, I found his story to be so moving. I love his characters. Gladys, I love. I love Placido Flamingo and the Two-Headed Monster. His characters always spoke to me in a profound way. Oh, how could I leave this out? How could I leave out Sully and Biff? Genius, Sully and Biff.

TP: I don’t know any other character who could perform a silent character as well as Richard.

MD: And there’s a linkage there to Beaker. I really wanted to write more about that. I had a passage about Beaker and Stan Laurel, because I think they’re the same character in a lot of ways. And Beaker is genius.

TP: When we asked Steve Whitmire about performing Beaker, he said, “I can’t tell you exactly where that character came from, from within Richard, because I just don’t know.”

MD: My wife and I talk about this a lot, about the interior life of Beaker. We know his soft spots, we know what makes him happy, we know what makes him quizzical. It’s very hard for a puppet to do a comedic take, but Richard could do it. I talked to Caroll Spinney just the other day, and I asked him how he was able to make Oscar look chagrined and embarrassed when Sonia pulls him out of the can. Because he does, he shrinks. That’s just talent. These guys were master puppeteers. For all the things you can say about Frank and Jim, for all of Jim’s talents as a producer, director, performer and on and on, there was a point in our cultural history when he and Frank were the two best puppeteers anywhere. And if that was all they ever did, that would be enough. It’s very hard for me to watch Ernie and Bert’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” duet in Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. It makes me so sad, I just couldn’t watch it this year. Because what it always brings me back to is that it can’t happen again.
Special thanks to Michael Davis for taking the time to meet with us, and double special thanks for writing a book like "Street Gang"!

Click here to discuss this article on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: books, interview, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

I hope you all bought this semester's required reading, Street Gang by Michael Davis. If you haven't there's still time before I give you a big fat F. And if you have, then you probably have some questions for author Michael Davis (aside from his recommended questions for book clubs). Well, you're in luck, because we at ToughPigs had the unique opportunity to speak to Mr. Davis and ask all of those pesky questions that have been keeping you awake during nap time.

And just a reminder, Davis will be moderating a panel discussion this Friday, January 30, at William Patterson University in Wayne, New Jersey celebrating the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. Panelists include a few folks you may have heard of: Frank Oz, Kevin Clash, Caroll Spinney, Sonia Manzano, Bob McGrath, Marty Robinson, Fran Brill, David Rudman, and Tony Geiss. The event will also have a special showcase celebrating the life of Richard Hunt. The ToughPigs will also be in attendance (not on stage, unfortunately), so keep an eye out for us and feel free to say hello! Click here for more info on the event.

Special thanks to Michael Davis for being supercool and making the time to chat with us. Take it away, interview!

ToughPigs: I’m sure all of our readers on ToughPigs are jealous over just about every person you got to interview for the book. Some of the more notable names, like Judy Collins, James Earl Jones, James Taylor, how were you able to get those interviews just to talk about one specific subject with them?

Michael Davis: I started with a polite letter explaining my purpose, and in some cases I had to give them a bracketed amount of time like, “I have to talk to you sometime this spring.” I do think that in most cases, publicists were very helpful. Having a contract with Viking definitely opened doors. And I would also just say please and thank you. What I found was, in every case, every case, people opened up tremendously about the show, about their experiences. They wanted to contribute to this book, wanted to share their stories. Judy Collins, goodness gracious, she talked about her battle with alcoholism. She said Jon Stone gave her a reason to live. James Taylor gave us that wonderful riff about how Sesame Street prepares children for the real world and doesn’t wrap it in cellophane. They all felt kind of a sense of duty to tell their story, their experience with everybody. And even those who sadly didn’t get into the book, I wanted to keep the book to less than 400 pages, there are a lot of wonderful people who gave me their time and with the website, over time, present their stories. Norah Jones is one of them; she was fabulous. So many of the celebrity guests had great stories to tell. More than you can capture in a book. There’s a tremendous sense of pride that celebrities have for being on Sesame Street. They feel honored. Some of them approached rather gingerly, like Johnny Cash. He really did say, “May I please come with my son?” And they said, “Of course! Will you sing?” So I didn’t have that many barriers to cross with people once they knew that I had a contract and this was something real, and I know that a lot of celebrities called the Workshop to ask if I had their blessing. Then I sent thank you notes right away, I sent them progress reports about the book, I tried to keep a line of communication open with everybody.

TP: Likewise, you were able to talk to a lot of family members like the Hunts and Raposos. Was there any hesitation in asking them on your part, or were they already open to talking about their family?

MD: There wasn’t any hesitation on my part, because what I tried to do was to learn as much as I could before approaching them, so I wasn’t going in there and asking vague questions. I came to them with specific questions about their dad or their husband. Some people expressed a little bit of hesitancy, and just like the celebrities, some of them called the Workshop to check on me, but I have to say, they were incredibly helpful, forthcoming, the interviews took on a kind-of intimacy, we cried a lot, we laughed a lot. I took my wife Debra with me on a lot of them, and she was another set of eyes and ears for me. She picked up on a lot of things that, because I’m male, I would not have picked up on them. So it was really like having another reporter there, and because she came with me, she got to be in the presence of these great people.

TP: Who were some of the more fun or interesting interviewees you got to speak with?

MD: We’ve already talked about him, but I’ll mention him again. I’m such a big James Taylor fan. I think he is one of the great singer-songwriters in history. I think he is to our time what Stephen Foster was to previous times. Also right at the tippity top was Bernie Brillstein.

TP: It’s so great that you got to meet him before his unfortunate passing.

MD: For me, he’s the real deal, and I was honored to be in his presence. His office could have been an airplane hangar. It was the biggest office in Beverly Hills that I have ever seen. He was this big, rotund man behind a desk you could land a helicopter on. Photographs and posters on the wall of all of his successes. In his career, if he did only what he did for Saturday Night Live, that would be career enough for most people, but Bernie did so much more. There was no hiding his love for Jim, and he cried a lot in that interview. And I think he felt, until his dying day, a tremendous regret for not being on top of what was happening on the week that Jim died. It tortured him. I know that they weren’t separated by age in that many years, but he took on a more paternal role with Jim as his son, and I really do think that Jim’s death was not unlike when a parent loses a child. And I put that interview right at the top, because it was so moving and so real and so funny. If there was a Mount Rushmore of comedy, I would put Bernie there.

Jerry Nelson, what a great man. I told Jerry when I met him, “You’re a Beatle!” For people who love The Muppet Show, he’s it! Dave Goelz, I flew out to California to be with him, and it was one of the very best days of the project. He’s an astounding person.

TP: Dave Goelz only worked on Sesame Street a couple of times…

MD: That interview was more about Jim and that ensemble. But it was really worth it. And you could see how they were a band of brothers. I’m very fond of Fran Brill. She gave me so much, just a great interview. Stephanie D’Abruzzo, who I think is one of the funniest women I’ve ever heard. These people are to be celebrated for their talent, for their virtuosity. And because they work with puppets, in some people’s eyes they’re seen only as “children’s performers”. They’re satirists, is what they are. I have such an appreciation for their talent, for their imagination, their bond. That we all could work in such an environment, wouldn’t life be so much better?

And then I would have to say, meeting Grover was very emotional. I was on set for a taping, and I just think it’s uncanny how an artist has channeled Frank’s characters like Eric Jacobson. It’s not just a representation. It’s almost eerie how great he is. So, there I am in the studio, and there’s Grover messing up Fat Blue’s order again. And Jerry Nelson was there, voicing Fat Blue but not performing him, and it gets done and everyone on the floor gives Jerry a standing ovation. All the carpenters and technicians, Frankie Biondo on camera. We’re all wiping away tears, because he’s Jerry! And they begin to clear away things, and Eric is still on stage with Grover, so I begin to very gingerly walk forward. Now, I’d been on this project already for four years, and this wasn’t the first time I’d seen the puppets in action, it was the first time I’d seen Grover in action. I’ve been with Elmo and Bird a bunch of times, but there’s something incredible about being in Grover’s space. I know that he’s my favorite of the Muppet characters, and I believe that Grover is of special interest to second-born children. We had that thing happen that happens to a lot of people with the Muppets, you buy into it. You drop your sense of disbelief and you’re in the moment with the character, and the puppeteer drops away, Eric wasn’t there, and we had a conversation.

TP: What did you talk about?

MD: Television. (In a Grover voice) “Tell me about TV Guide!” (note: Michael Davis is a former editor for TV Guide) I asked him some questions about being a waiter. He said some really funny things, but I didn’t have my tape recorder. He said “What I really want to do is act.” (Laughs) So, here’s my view about Grover. Grover, of all of the Sesame Muppets, is the greatest teacher. If you look at the clips, those stick in the heads of kids. Some of the characters might be hard to get, especially with the complicated characters like Forgetful Jones, but Grover, because he’s so direct and so earnest, and because he wants so much for you to know what he knows, he’s a great teacher. And of course, he’s an extension of Frank. And I can’t tell you how great Frank was to me in the five years of making this book. I just count it as one of the most fortunate things that’s ever happened to me. I shared with him what I learned over the course of the project, because I felt that he above everyone would tell me the truth and tell me if I was off course or if I had something really, really wrong. Not only about Jim, but about the whole deal of the studio, the early years, the characters, where they came from, the motivation. There’s a bluntness about him, he can be very direct. I shared a lot with him and he was great, providing me with a lot of the feedback I needed. So I owe him a huge debt. And if I sweated anything about the book, I sweated, “Will Frank respect this book?” If I wanted to reach anyone’s standards, I wanted to reach Frank’s standards.

TP: Was there anyone you tried to contact that you couldn’t meet for an interview?

MD: No. The only people I wanted to talk to who I couldn’t are no longer on the planet. There were so many days when I’d say, “Oh Jeff Moss, I need to talk to you!” Actually, I have to correct myself. Michael Eisner didn’t talk to me. I tried very, very hard in writing, phone calls, I know his speech writer very well who helped me make an appeal to him. I come from the school of journalism that says you don’t try to take a whack at somebody without giving them the opportunity to hear what you have to say and respond to it. I tried everything to get his attention and to get him to consider it. And after he said no, I tried to change his mind, I didn’t take no for an answer. I kept going back to him saying, “Would you please reconsider? Would you accept ten typed questions, written by me, faxed to you?” So I regret that he didn’t talk. It’s easy to criticize him, and he was a punching bag for a lot of people. I didn’t want to be part of that punching bag brigade. I presented what I believe to be a true, factual story about the tug-of-war between Eisner and Jim and Joan Cooney, but it would have been so good to have his voice in the story. All that being said, I don’t harbor any bad feeling for Eisner, and I would still love to talk to him. If he called me tomorrow and said, “Alright, I read your book and I want to talk to you,” I’d tell him that his words would be in the second printing of the book or the paperback version, and I still hold out hope that he will.

TP: If I meet him, I’ll let him know.

MD: (Laughs) Please.
Click here for part two of our chat with Michael Davis where you'll hear about the audio book, Abby Cadabby, and the Holy Grail that is Jon Stone's memoirs.

Click here to visit the Mount Rushmore of Comedy on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: books, interview, Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop

Last month, we had the unique opportunity to speak with Paul Morrissey at BOOM! Studios about the upcoming Muppet Show comic books. Seeing as the comic is still en route to your local Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop, we decided to reach out to the man himself, Roger Langridge, to talk all things Muppet.

Roger is a London-based cartoonist, best known for his strip, "Fred the Clown." Feel free to peruse his wares at his website by clicking here. He was also responsible for the one-page Muppet comic from the last issue of Disney Adventures magazine.

Let's check in with Roger and see what he's got to say. Roger?

ToughPigs: What is your relationship with Muppets Studios (Disney) for the creation of the comic? Do they have to approve of all of the character designs? Plot elements?

Roger Langridge: I deal with Paul Morrissey at Boom Studios directly. Paul passes all plot outlines, finished scripts, pencils and presumably finished art on to Disney (I'm still inking issue #1 at this writing), who then send it back to Paul, who sends it back to me, and I make any changes that might be requested. I know my work is looked over by Jesse Post at Disney and Jim Lewis at Henson, and no doubt by others I'm not aware of. Mr Lewis, in particular, is very generous with notes, gags, character bits and so forth - many of the gags in issue #1 are his!

TP: What went into making the decision to make the Muppets more caricaturized, as opposed to something more photo-realistic?

RL: I should probably explain a little about where this particular incarnation of Muppet comics came from. A couple of years ago, I was approached by the now-defunct Disney Adventures Magazine to do a Muppet strip for them. They'd been running a version of Mickey Mouse and Goofy drawn in a completely off-model, undergroundish kind of style, and this had proven to be very popular, so they were looking to do more of the same with some other Disney properties. The staff at Disney Adventures knew my comics work and liked it, and I think were particularly taken with the vaudeville elements and oddball, Monty-Pythonesque humour I like to play around with in my own comics, so they thought I'd be a good fit for the Muppets. I was somewhat concerned to begin with, because I'm not that great at drawing on-model, but they mentioned the Mickey strips and said they wanted me to use my own stylistic approach on the Muppets material, so I thought I'd give it a try - not going completely underground-y, but leaning towards that aesthetic a little bit, which seemed to be what they wanted. As it turned out, of the fifteen or so pages I drew, only one was used before the magazine was cancelled (although a few more of them ended up in the San Diego Comic Con preview booklet eventually), so that was that... I thought! While I was resigning myself to never getting a chance to work with the Muppets, my work was being shown to people at Disney and Boom, and several months later things started rolling again. With the Boom incarnation, essentially my instructions have been to keep doing what I was doing on Disney Adventures... so there's your long, roundabout answer as to why the strip looks the way it does. I'm refining things as I go, though - fixing stuff that I felt looked wrong, making changes as requested by Disney and the aforementioned Mr Lewis, and generally trying to make it look as good as I can. I expect there'll be a settling-in period as I get the hang of it!

On a more general note, my feeling is that drawing all the characters precisely on-model would be to do them a disservice, as paradoxical as that sounds. On the screen, they have vibrant, eccentric, nuanced vocal characterizations to carry their personalities; on the printed page, the absence of those voices has to be compensated for visually. So my solution to that dilemma is to make the faces more expressive and more cartoony. I'm resigned to the fact that this will not please everybody, but my job is to make a good comic, and this is the approach that my instincts and experience point me towards in order to achieve that. It's a balancing act, to be sure; I'm walking a tightrope between authenticity and expressiveness, and no doubt I'll fall off occasionally. But I'll keep trying to get it right!
TP: I noticed some Easter eggs in the preview comic, like background characters that might or might not be Bert, Big Bird, Mildred, and Thog. Will you continue to throw a few bones to the fans like this? If so, can you give us an idea of what to expect?

RL: I'm sure there'll be things that pop up as we go along -- I'm not really thinking of them as Easter Eggs, more as part of the necessary texture required to evoke the Muppet Show we all remember. I don't really have a big list of obscure characters I'm trying to shoehorn in there, but I'm throwing things in as the opportunity arises... and as the whim takes me! Nothing planned enough to tell you what's coming up, I'm afraid. I'll be as surprised as you are.

TP: Given that this is a "Muppet Show" comic, will the characters be exclusively from The Muppet Show, or can we expect to see characters from The Jim Henson Hour and Muppets Tonight? Pepe, for example, is a much more recent character, and he appears on the cover to the preview comic.

RL: I didn't have anything to do with the cover of the preview comic, but my gut feeling is that I should stick with the old Muppet Show cast and format as much as possible, although that doesn't rule out cameo appearances, just for the fun of it. And Rizzo the Rat will pop up a bit - I think he's a later character, but there were a lot of anonymous rodents in the old show, so I sort of lump him in with them!
TP: Speaking of the covers, will you be providing the covers as well as the interior art? Or will we be seeing more photo covers? If so, will they be comprised of stock art or new photos? And is there any chance of guest artists providing covers to your work?

RL: At the moment, Boom have asked me to draw the covers. I don't know what their plans are down the line, but I for one would love to see some guest artists take a crack at it. Their standard approach at the moment seems to be multiple covers on everything, so there's plenty of room for other artists.

TP: As Paul Morissey mentioned in our previous interview, each issue of the first miniseries will focus on a different character. Will there be a continuing storyline going through the series, or will each stand alone as its own "episode"?

RL: When Boom first approached me, they asked me to pitch ideas for four-issue story arcs, which initially threw me somewhat - I had trouble imagining the comic working any other way apart from self-contained stories. I think I've found ways to make it work, with ongoing subplots tying largely stand-alone stories together. The first four issues - which I guess is now a miniseries (which nobody's mentioned to me!) - were added as an afterthought, at Disney's request; they're all completely self-contained, which is probably best as people get used to it. Then we'll jump into slightly longer stories, though each issue should work on its own as well.
TP: In the preview comic, we saw elements such as Pigs In Space and At The Dance. Will the first miniseries have more of this? Can we expect to see one-to-two page Veterinarian's Hospital or the Swedish Chef skits? How about the more obscure bits like the Talking Houses and Muppet
Sports?

RL: There will definitely be plenty of skits! My goal is to try to make each issue seem like an undiscovered episode of the Muppet Show, and the skits are an essential part of that. The first issue will feature the Swedish Chef, Pigs in Space and the Planet Koozebane for starters. Plenty more on the way! On the topic of Pigs in Space, I'm trying to get one of those into every issue. Whenever I mention that I'm working on a Muppet comic to my friends, they all say, "Pigs in Space! Lots of Pigs in Space!"

TP: What goes in to your research for writing the series? Did Disney provide him with complete series of The Muppet Show on DVD? Are you aware of the Muppet Wiki? If so, is it a part of your in-depth research?

RL: I don't have a complete set of DVDs by any means, though I'm gradually acquiring them when I can afford them. I have a "Best Of" set, a few books (including the excellent Muppet Show Book from 1978 or thereabouts, full of lavish colour illustrations), a ringbinder full of photo reference, character sheets, the "Muppet Bible" which Disney Adventures sent me way back when I did the strips for them, and images scavenged from the internet - including the Muppet Wiki. I'm adding to the pile all the time. And a lot of stuff is coming from my creaky old memory! That's usually where the initial spark comes from; then I'll research the things I recall and which I think would be fun to do, and sometimes that leads to other ideas as I stumble across other items or characters I'd forgotten. It's kind of an organic process in that way.
TP: Lastly, there's been some concern on our forum about the character designs for Gonzo and, to a lesser extent, Kermit. Were there any formal discussions about why you chose to go with those designs? Was there any concern from Disney or the fans? (On the other hand, most of the designs are spot-on, like Sweetums and Bunsen Honeydew)

RL: Well, as I've mentioned, the character designs in the preview are from the material produced for Disney Adventures, in which drawing the characters off-model was not only tolerated, but actively encouraged. The new comic is still being drawn in my own style, and I've been encouraged to stick with that approach to a large extent, but as I mentioned, there'll be tweaks and refinements. And no doubt I'll improve with practice! At the moment I'm in the deep end, really - trying to keep on schedule and learn all the characters' physical nuances at the same time. I hope it'll get easier! So far, the only art comment I've had from Disney is regarding Gonzo's nose, which I was basing on the version in the Muppet Show Book - pointier, more gnarled-looking than the current version - so I've had another look at Gonzo all round, and I hope the fans will be pleased with how he looks in the first issue. Beyond that, all I can say is I hope I improve with practice!
Special thanks to Roger Langridge for answering a few pressing questions for us!

The Muppet Show Comic Book will hit stores March 25, 2009!

Click here to talk about the specifics of a weirdo's nose on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: comics/magazines, Disney, interview, Roger Langridge, The Muppet Show

While we eagerly await the release of the upcoming Muppet Show comic book, due out in 2009 from BOOM! Studios, I find myself chomping at the bit, wondering what this thing's gonna be like. And that's not easy. First I had to find a bit, which is only sold in Chinatown, and then take a bite. And those things taste like black licorice. Blecch.

I had a chance to ask a few questions to Paul Morrissey, BOOM! Studios' editor for the Disney-related comics. This interview took place before I had the preview comic in-hand (which includes all of the images used in this article), which explains why I didn't ask any questions about Gonzo's beak or other script-related issues.

But don't take my word for it, here's Paul Morrissey. And, um, me.
ToughPigs: In what aspect (besides Editor in Chief) is Mark Waid involved in the Muppet comic books? I heard a rumor that he was writing some of the content, but that sounded to me to be false.

Paul Morrissey: Unfortunately, that's just a rumor. One of our press releases announcing the books was reprinted wrong on a comic news site. Though I'm sure Mark would write a brilliant Muppet comic, he's a bit too busy scripting other projects--including BOOM!'s "Incredibles" comic book.
TP: Is Roger Langridge submitting short pieces for the comic (like his one-page Muppet comic in Disney Adventures), or will he be working on full 20-30 page scripts?

PM: Roger Langridge is a mad genius, so we didn't want to restrict him to just short pieces. We miraculously found a way to have Roger write and draw full 22-page scripts. They are classic Muppets. Each one is full of hilarious skits and gags and irreverence, but Roger's stories also manage to tug at the heartstrings, too.

TP: Will Roger be the sole writer and artist for the book, or will it be a compilation of different talents?

PM: Right now, Roger is the only writer/artist on "The Muppet Show" comic. However, down the road, we'll have some exciting announcements about other writers and artists contributing their own "The Muppet Show" arcs.
TP: Are the "sequel" books (like "Muppet Prince Charming" and "Muppet Sleeping Beauty") planned already, or is that conjecture on BOOM's part?

PM: BOOM! is very much committed to having the Muppets bring their chaos to classic fairy tales and legends. Expect to see "Muppets Robin Hood" (with Sweetums as Little John!), "Muppets Peter Pan" and "Muppets King Arthur" shortly after Roger's "The Muppet Show" comic book hits stands. We're finding the funniest writers to script these projects. The tone we're aiming for is an all-ages Monty Python. That's setting the bar pretty high!

TP: Regarding the teaser comic released at the San Diego Comic Con, will there be a way for Muppet fans to see the art?

PM: BOOM! created a "Muppet Show" preview comic for San Diego Comic-Con that featured 9 pages of Roger's amazing art and hilarious gags. Most of this material is so exclusive, that it will not appear in Roger's first "The Muppet Show" arc. In fact, the preview comic has become a bit of a collector's item. I've seen them on eBay!
TP: How many issues will the first Muppet comic series run?

PM: Roger's first arc will be 4 issues. Issue #1 will focus on Kermit, issue # 2 will put Fozzie in the spotlight, Gonzo will headline issue #3, and Miss Piggy will ham it up in issue #4. Subsequent arcs, including the Muppet parody books, will also have four issue-arcs.

TP: Will there be any promotions attached to the Muppet series?

PM: Certainly! But nothing we can reveal at this point. As you may know, Disney is orchestrating the Muppets' return in a major way, and BOOM! is thrilled to a part of this new Muppet era!
Keep an eye on this space for Part 2 of our Q&A with Paul Morrissey!

Thanks to Paul for chatting with us, and special thanks to BOOM! Studios' Chip Mosher for setting the whole thing up!

Click here for an animated conversation on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: comics/magazines, Disney, interview, The Muppet Show

Here we are, the final day of our week-long interview with Steve Whitmire, and boy are my arms tired! Be sure to clickity-click here to read parts one, two, three, and four!


ToughPigs: On Studio DC, the Ashley Tisdale segment, I thought that was one of the only redeeming segment of the whole special. The choreography that Kermit was doing: how did you do that?

Steve Whitmire: It was SO HARD. There were two of us, a guy named Bruce Lanoil and myself. I was in the head and he did both hands almost throughout. I was just so afraid of it because at that point, I wasn’t familiar with the number. We were trying to match the original. When I first heard the song, I thought it was out of character for Kermit, but in the context when we actually did it, it was totally fine. [Ashley] of course knows the number by heart, she’s done it a thousand times, and was perfect the first time, but I kept having to stop her. We had a great choreographer, Bonnie Story, who choreographed the original. We had to do it in slow motion, and I had to ask Ashley, “show me what you just did in slow motion,” and she would do the moves in slow motion and Bruce would do the arms, and then we’d try it with the music track and it was ten times faster than we remembered. It was really hard. And Bruce is considerably shorter than me, so I was just dragging the poor guy all over the sound stage. He was just floating above the ground trying to keep up. It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done from a manipulation standpoint. And it was saved by the edit, because we’d obviously stop-and-start. Very tough one, but also something to be proud of.

TP: So that was just a normal Kermit puppet with arm rods.

SW: Yep, normal Kermit puppet. And one of the things that Disney wants to do, and it’s very expensive, but they do it on virtually everything we do, is they digitally remove the rods. You see Piggy sitting in a chair on that special and motioning, and there’s no arm rods. It throws me sometimes, I expect to see the arm rods, but they removed every one from that piece, so Kermit’s just leaping through the air.

TP: Do you think that’s a good decision?

SW: I like it. Jim would have liked it too. Whatever new technology there was, he always wanted to jump right in the middle of it. He would have been fine with all that stuff. He was surprisingly not terribly precious about the characters, he was willing to just, you know, do things, just experiment. And in many ways, that’s the reason why he and Frank balanced each other so well. Because Frank is extremely intense and analytical about the characters, and Jim is much more whimsical and free-spirited. The balance of that is what defines the Muppets to me, and that’s what I always tried to learn in the early days when I showed up as this 18-year-old. I had the best teachers in the world, I had Jim and Frank and Jerry and Richard and Dave. Jim was the overseer, he could see the big picture. He would look at a frame and he was seeing the whole thing, almost squinting, and he’d say “We need a puppet up here.” He was never just watching Kermit or his character, he was looking at the whole thing all the time. Frank was very focused and analytical about character and comedy and what’s funny and precise. Dave was extremely precise as a manipulator. Every move was sharp and perfect. Like, if a puppet had to spin in place, obviously we have to run around in a circle, everything was precision and I love that. Jerry was this guy who had these incredible characters that just came out of nowhere. One thing I noticed about Jerry is that he wasn’t afraid to use just his own voice. He’d just do a little thing to it, it wasn’t some extreme character voice. Richard was a lot about justice. He was always about the underdog. He’d bring people in and help them and show them and give tours of the workshop. He was a great diplomat for the Muppets as much as anything. All of that together, and being able to take the best of the little pieces and integrate it into something was very important to me.

TP: Have you seen the Muppet parodies like Sad Kermit or BeakerRoll on the internet?

SW: Yes. It’s a little sad. I had people send me some of the pieces that have been edited for YouTube, and I don’t find any of that stuff really offensive, but I kind of understand it. We sort of live in this deconstructionist world these days where the best way to pay tribute to something is to take it and break it down into little pieces and put it back together the way they like it. And I also think part of that is because we’re not doing very much. If our stuff was out there, there wouldn’t be a void to have the Muppets. Again, I’m not offended by it, I’m not a puritan, it’s art. And some of them are done so well. The lip sync is perfect. So I kind of giggle at it and shake my head, there’s no point in being offended by it. At the same time, I don’t think Jim would have been offended by it either. As an aside, when we were doing Fraggle Rock, Jim was in Toronto, and I went out to lunch one day. I went across the street and someone had made these Muppet hot pads for your oven. And it was this knitted Ernie head. It was pretty terrible. And it was $10, so I bought it. I took it back and I said “I got you something over lunch,” and Jim smiled and I handed it over to him, and the look on his face… it was really devastating to him. And he said “Do I have to take that?” And he was serious, so I said, “No, of course not!” And I realized, he never had a problem, he almost let people rip him off if it was good. When people made things that he didn’t feel were up to par, then it upset him. I don’t think he took a lot of legal action against things like that, but he wanted it to be at least complimentary. So I can’t really say what he’d think about [the videos]. I don’t think anyone confuses that for us. Nobody’s going to think we’re going to do that. But again, the more we do, maybe the less room there will be for it.

TP: Right, as we’ve seen from the official viral videos.

SW: Yeah, and it’s interesting, another thing I noticed about that is we only did the four, and we haven’t had time to do any more, we’ve been busy with other things. But I’ve noticed, for a while there, you’d go to the main YouTube page and they were being recommended there for people to see. Now when you go there, occasionally you’ll see a Mahna Mahna or another Muppet video, and it’s like there’s a hunger for that. And we’re not filling that void, but we’d like to, and we will once we get back on track.

TP: I’ve noticed that there tends to be trends on blogs related to Muppet videos, where for a few weeks every blogger will be posting the Mahna Mahna video, and then a few weeks later it will be something else, like The Leprechaun Brothers. It’s exciting for us, because people other than us are talking about the Muppets.

SW: People want the Muppets out there. I know when Charles Schulz died, I was a huge Peanuts fan when I was a kid, before the Muppets, I think his family decided it wasn’t going to go on, nobody else was going to draw the strip. And it really upset me. It wasn’t because I would pick up the newspaper and read Peanuts every day, but I just sort of knew that they were there, and soon they weren’t going to be. I’d like to think that [the Muppets] are a part of our culture, and I think people think the same way. Yet, we go out there and we do a series, and it’s hard to keep it on the air. We have our fans, and I think Disney has strategies that will build us up. If we do another series, and I hope we will, by the time we get there, I hope we will have found our following again. To that end, I think the Disney Channel specials serve a really good purpose, just to draw that group in. We were kind of on the periphery of them in a way. They weren’t Muppet specials, it was just a lot of stuff with the stars that were already there. At least we got that audience, and apparently, that show rated extremely high for Disney Channel.

TP: So you think there would be a big marketing push behind a new series?

SW: Oh, I think there would be. Things move very slow in a company like Disney, but they move. And a lot of it has been about establishing the Muppets within Disney. We’re trying to reach the other departments in Disney and say, “Hey, we’re here, and this is what we can do.” It’s a lot of reproving who the Muppets are and now there’s a lot of interest because we’ve had some recent successes between the viral videos and the Disney Channel.

TP: I’d [Ryan] actually seen you once before, in Hondo, Texas, in Extreme Makeover. How involved were you in the making of that episode?

SW: As it turned out, pretty involved in the making of it. It was one of those Disney-ABC connections. At the time, the producer was a pretty big fan of the Muppets. It was great, I had such fun. I guess a lot of that show was ad-libbed anyway. We had a vague outline of what we were going to shoot, and I ad-libbed the whole thing. I had so much fun on that show. I love it when Kermit’s in unexpected places, like Hannity and Colmes. Nobody expected Kermit to be there, we did it a couple of times, it didn’t make any sense. Nightline’s a good example of that, and Extreme Makeover worked the same way. It was just great fun. Having him ride around in the John Deere vehicle, I have one of those at home, so it was perfect (laughs). One of the fun things was, I guess Ty [Pennington] always runs around with his own camera, and they built one for Kermit, and it was an actual camera! So I was really running the camera, and I could turn it around and have Kermit film himself. I had two monitors, one of the camera on me, the broadcast version, and one for Kermit’s camera.

TP: When you do a shoot like that, when it’s just Kermit, how much crew do you have with you? Is it just you and a puppet wrangler?

SW: Usually, somebody from our studio is there and somebody like [puppet designer] Jane Gootnik, Jane herself if possible, though she wasn’t on that shoot. Jane was hired a month after I did, so she’s got a 30-year history with the Muppets too. It’s especially important, especially if it’s on location like that, for someone to be able to just dive in and do something in a hurry, like a rigging thing, because there’s just no time. But in that case there was just four of us, including Carmen Osbahr who puppeteered Kermit’s right hand for us. And then I think Jim Lewis probably contributed ideas from Los Angeles for the writing. On that shoot, I was literally in the bus, and Kermit was driving it. And that was really scary, because no one could see. I just put the thing in drive, hit the gas, went fifty feet and hoped it stayed on the road. They said, “The only thing that could happen is you could run into the ditch,” and I said, “I know! I could run into the ditch!” (Laughs)

TP: How about when it’s a talk show appearance? Do you have stuff pre-written?

SW: Almost always. Usually we’ll have Jim Lewis write something, I always try to get Jim to write for Kermit if I can because he has such a great sensibility for Kermit, in the way that Jerry Juhl did for Kermit on The Muppet Show. I think Jerry wrote most of Kermit’s stuff on The Muppet Show. So, usually he’d write several pages of talking points, and I can rely on those. And it’s a mix, he gives me three choices for every answer, and sometimes it’s ad-libbed. Occasionally we’ll have an interview where they’ll go straight down the script and I’ll just read the answers while trying not to sound like I’m just reading them.

TP: I remember seeing Kermit and Fozzie being interviewed and hearing some funny responses when asked about the Jason Segel movie, like they hadn’t heard about the movie.

SW: Yeah, we had to come up with something to say, because we kept getting asked.

TP: Was that written by Jim Lewis?

SW: No, that was just Eric and me being silly. We did 100 interviews around then and we try to do something different for each one, even though it doesn’t really matter. And that was the first satellite media tour we did with just Kermit and Fozzie, with Eric and me. And it was great, the two of them haven’t been seen together all that much, so it was nice to have Kermit and Fozzie back together instead of it always being Kermit and Piggy. It gets a little old after a while. We’d always get the same three questions. “Are you married?” Oh no, we’re not married, or maybe we are. We’d really like to move beyond that, but we can’t because that’s what everyone wants to know. But it’s great to have that Kermit and Fozzie dynamic back. Two pals, two buddies. And in the same way, it’s great to have that little core group: Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, Scooter. To have those main Muppet Show characters back in a way is also nice.

TP: Do you feel like there’s a different dynamic there between you and Eric and you and Frank?

SW: A little. Eric’s just so darn close to Frank, it’s really incredible. His voice is so close, and obviously the other part of that is the character. And I would have to say that in the last few months, he has just gelled as Piggy. We did a satellite media tour not too long ago, and she was like she’d never been before. And the challenge for Eric has been that it’s so easy for her to always be angry. Because that’s sort of the default position: she gets mad, she hits somebody, she storms out. But to play her as anything other than angry, you really have to dig into the character. And he gets in there so well, and that takes a long time. If we can get through an interview without Piggy getting angry, then I think it’s a great thing (laughs). It’s different than Frank, but less different. It just takes a long time. Frank’s characters are so deep, there’s so much to them, it’s just a hard thing to do. Eric hasn’t really worked with Frank on the characters, so he’s just kind of taking the character from what he sees.

TP: When was the last time you worked with Frank Oz?

SW: The last time we worked together was… (thinks) a while ago. I’m not even sure I can remember. It’s been quite a while. Probably the last thing was Sesame Street. Every so often, he’ll come in and do Bert. And that’s a little weird for me, with them both doing the character, but it’s Frank. You can’t say no to Frank. If Frank said he wanted to come back and do Piggy for something, he should do it, and I think Eric would be totally fine with it. (Laughs) I don’t expect that to happen.

TP: I think that’s all we have. Thank you so much, Steve, for taking the time to talk with us.

SW: You’re so welcome. As you know, as we’ve said repeatedly and repeatedly, we love reading ToughPigs because you’re our best critics (laughs).

TP: Well, we’ll continue to criticize you as long as you continue to make stuff.

SW: Exactly, it’s a reciprocal arrangement. I said this back at MuppetFest, and I think the crowd got it, but it feels like we’re in this sort of partnership, we’re kind of in this together. Especially with the Muppets, and I don’t know if other actors feel this way, but with us doing these characters that are ongoing for years and years and years, the fans contribute nearly as much to this as we do in keeping it alive, especially during the slow times.Once again, super special thanks go out to Steve Whitmire for taking the time to chat with us, plus being an extra cool guy!

And thanks to all of our dedicated ToughPigs readers for sticking it out for this entire week. As Steve said, he can't do this without us, and we can't do this without you!

Click here to sing the praises of Steve on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Disney, interview, Muppet performers

Back for more of your daily Steve Whitmire interview? Don't forget to check back to parts one, two, and three!


ToughPigs: Feel free to not answer this question, but how does your relationship with Disney work, contract-wise? If they decide to make a Muppet production, are you contractually obligated to perform?

Steve Whitmire: No, we’re freelancers. We’re still freelancers, just as we were with Henson. And that’s nice. Jim was always about a handshake, and while things would certainly be more formal with a big corporation like Disney, but it’s very laid-back, very easy-going in that respect.

TP: And you have a similar relationship with Sesame Workshop?

SW: Yeah, we’ve always been freelancers.

TP: There’s one glaring omission from the recent Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock DVD sets that have been coming out over the last few years, and it’s that there’s no commentary. If they would have asked you, would you have contributed commentary to a few episodes?

SW: That would have been fun, yeah.

TP: Too bad they didn’t ask then.

SW: Treasure Island, we did one, I think. And Muppets From Space.

TP: When Elmo makes public appearances, he makes reference to the fact that he doesn’t know he’s on a TV show. Is that a Sesame Workshop decision?

SW: I think on Sesame Street, they try to play it off like it’s a real street, that that’s really real life for those guys. And I think for Sesame, it kind of makes sense. Because Elmo’s so young, he’s meant to be young, in our world he really is, but I mean he’s meant to be a little kid. So Kevin just tries to keep him like a little kid. But I’ve heard Kevin do interviews with more funny, adult things, not just adult humor but in adult interviews where Elmo breaks out of character a little bit, and it’s always funny.

TP: Yeah, we saw him at the Long Island Huntington event where Gonzo was flirting with Zoe, and Elmo was kind of in the middle of that. It was the kind of thing you’d never see on Sesame Street.

SW: (Laughs)

TP: I have a few questions from some of the ToughPig forum members that are not Muppet related. Anthony wants to know who your favorite superhero is.

SW: Oh my god. Probably Batman. And probably the original, the original being the Adam West show. By all means. And it’s really funny, we’ve had the opportunity to run into him a couple of times and Eric Jacobson and I are like drooling groupies. You know, we did the TV Land Awards a few years ago and Eric and I were like stalkers. There was an interview online with Adam West later where you see my hand reach out from behind and I snap a picture with my phone. Very nice guy, we met him and talked to him. And I started thinking about it, and you know, Batman, when I was 10 years old, he’s this guy who has this true identity, which is a little like us when you think about it. He puts on his mask, we put on these puppets and nobody knows who you are. Maybe that was part of the warped childhood I had that led me here (laughs).

TP: Carolyn from our forum wants to know, “How is your work with cats going?”

SW: That’s a good thing to mention, especially since we’re online. I’m on the board of this place called the Shambala Preserve, which is Tippi Hedren’s place. She’s a very dear friend, I’ve probably known her for 15 years now. I do a lot of video editing for them. In my spare time with her in LA, I go to the preserve and I shoot, which is fun for me, I shoot all this video and edit it into these little pieces they can use for fund raising. In fact, I’m in the middle of one that we’ll put on YouTube once we’re finished with it. So you ask me if I work outside of Muppets: Yes, I’ve got my volunteer work at Shambala. But that’s big cats. My wife Melissa and I did almost a year of intensive work at a local humane society outside of Atlanta in 1987. We had almost that whole year off from Muppet work. Really hands-on work, cleaning the cat cages and giving injections to the cats. At the end of that, we had 13 cats of our own. And at one point, we had 36 cats that we were fostering (laughs). We were crazy, we were insane.

TP: Did you name them all?

SW: They all had names, but they all had stupid names, because we knew people were going to adopt them. It was a ridiculous thing to do, but good for the cats. So I don’t do that stuff so much anymore, but I still do the Shambala stuff when I can.

TP: Speaking of your wife, Melissa, I noticed on the Muppet Wiki that she’s puppeteered a few times with the Muppets. I don’t know much about her; is she a professional puppeteer as well?

SW: I don’t think she’d think of herself as a professional. She’s not one of those people who decided she wanted to work with the Muppets when she was a kid like us. She basically decided to do it because she’d be sitting around on set in the early days, and it just sort of made sense. It’s something she kind of picked up, we needed extra people and she never had any aspirations to be a big Muppet star with a main character, so sometimes we’d need people to do background characters. She worked intensively on The Dark Crystal with Kathy Mullen. She was Kira’s right hand for the whole film. So any time you’d see Kira’s right hand, that was Melissa. And she worked on Muppets Take Manhattan as one of the background puppeteers. Kermit’s Swamp Years I think she puppeteered a little bit. And she worked on a few things where she didn’t get credit in the end.

TP: If you let us know what they were, we can make sure she gets credit for them on the Wiki.

SW: I’ll let you know, I can’t remember offhand (laughs).

TP: Kynan from our forum wanted to ask you about tractors. Care to explain?

SW: (Laughs) Kynan cruised through LA and we met, and we owed him a slight debt of gratitude [for the Save the Muppets campaign]. Tractors, yes. I have several. I’m a farm guy. Not a legitimate farm, but I do a lot of mowing when I’m not with the Muppets. I’m a bit of a homebody. I mow about six acres a week. So John Deere is very important to me. (Laughs) Hard to imagine, I guess, but that’s what I do when I’m not working. They’re green, the John Deere tractors.

TP: What other interests do you have besides puppetry?

SW: There’s an author named Ken Wilber who most people haven’t heard of, but he’s the most translated author in the world. He’s an amazing guy, he’s just a thinker. And for the last few years, he’s written on what he calls “integral theory.” It’s the idea that everyone is right on some level, whether it’s politics, math, science, the world at large, puppets, showbiz, being a lawyer, whatever. Everybody brings a piece of the puzzle that makes the world up to the same table. And it’s a matter of choosing those things and integrating all of that together, which is a huge part of what’s happened to Disney in the last five years. And I’ve been reading his stuff for maybe 8-10 years, and I met him a couple years ago, and he’s a terrific guy. And his stuff is extremely academic to wade through. But yet, it’s a pretty simple idea. It’s the idea that the more you can integrate things together in your life, the better chance you have at getting through your life. And he calls himself a mapmaker. And he literally has taken every discipline in the world, and I know it sounds like an exaggeration, but he’s brought all that into one place, and he’s integrated it together in his books. It’s not conservative, it’s not liberal, it’s every point of view. And it goes all the way from the lowest levels of everything up to these spiritual places. It fits the Muppets perfectly. And I can look at the characters that we’ve created, and that Jim created, and they all fall under these different levels of development. It’s not something any corporation will look at and say, “We should look at that map,” but for me, and from the Muppet point of view, I use it every day.

TP: So where do Kermit and Rizzo fall on that level of development?

SW: Well, now we’re really getting complicated. Rizzo is very egocentric, in that he is very much about himself. There’s all these levels of development: there’s egocentric, ethnocentric, world-centric. As people develop through their lives, they go from being totally focused on themselves to being focused on their immediate family or group to being focused on the entire world, where they slowly accept that we’re all a part of this big machine, and beyond, whatever that might be. So Kermit’s a little bit by the world-centric and above level, while Rizzo is much more egocentric. It’s a great dynamic to play for these two guys.

TP: It’s too bad you can’t have them interacting with each other very often.

SW: Exactly. I tried that yesterday, it’s impossible. We were just being silly, because we needed as many puppets on screen as possible, so I had one on each hand. I can’t even make them look in the right place when I do that. I was having them talk to Madison, this little girl on set, and I got confused, I got it backwards. (Laughs)We're almost at the end! I know, it's quite sad. Click here for the final part of our interview with Steve where you'll see him talk about Kermit choreography, his fellow Muppeteers, and how to make a frog drive a truck.

Click here to talk tractors on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Disney, interview, Jim Henson Company, Muppet performers

Are you ready for part 3 of our interview with Steve Whitmire? Feel free to refresh with part one and part two!

And special thanks to Rick Lyon for the use of the image at the top of this article!


ToughPigs: So, you recently took over performing Statler and, more recently, the Newsman. What is that like? And how did you prepare for those?

Steve Whitmire: For Statler, I was trying to decide if I should make it more like Jerry’s original, or do I make it like Richard’s, which everyone knows from The Muppet Show, or do I make it like Jerry’s since Richard’s. He’s just been passed around a lot. It’s always been a problem for me that the characters got passed around. I get very conservative about this idea of one person doing the characters, and we shouldn’t recast them so the character can grow and not be different every time we see them. So, I’ve tried to aim for more like what Richard did on The Muppet Show. And I know I don’t really sound like Richard, and I have so much fun doing the character. And they only do like three lines at a time, but when we ad lib with them between scenes, it’s so much fun. We have so much fun.

TP: And you work so well with Dave Goelz.

SW: Yeah, you guys know there’s all these Muppet duos. Jim and Frank did all these characters together like Ernie and Bert, and Fozzie and Piggy with Kermit. Jerry and Richard did a lot of characters together like the Two-Headed Monster, and Floyd and Janice. They always seemed to team up as a performing team, and Dave and I do that too. Dave was actually the person who suggested that I do Beaker when Richard died. So I had to learn to make that noise by sucking air in. So it wasn’t “Mee Mee Mee”, it was ((sucks air in)) “Mee Mee Mee.” You’re pulling air in the whole time, so if you’re doing a long thing, and you forget and take a deep breath, you’re doing the wrong thing. You have to exhale before you start. It’s bizarre, and Richard could do that. I had to learn to do that without choking. (Laughs) The truth of the matter is, it’s always hard… the more you know about the person who did these characters, the harder it is to take them over, because it’s something we never had to do when the person was alive or still doing the character, because we have a desire to be really faithful to what that person created.

TP: Do you think that’s easier with a character like Beaker where he never actually speaks?

SW: A little bit. And it helps that Dave is consistent with Bunsen. I can’t tell you exactly where that character came from, from within Richard, because I just don’t know. Whatever was going on in Richard’s head with what he did with that character, I don’t know what it was. I’m winging it in that respect, I’m taking it in a different direction. These days, after we did the viral stuff, I get the impression that Beaker is a guy who goes home at night, you know he’s pretty intelligent, he’s a smart guy, he works in a lab, and he probably doesn’t have much of a social life. He’s pretty introverted because he really can’t talk, so his only means of communication is the internet. I love the idea that he spends all of his time in front of a computer, which is perfect for the YouTube stuff. (Laughs)

TP: Can you describe for us what you’ll be doing in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year?

SW: Yeah, we’re on the Macy’s float, which is kind of a big deal to me. It’s the last float of the parade before Santa. So, I’m basically in a box, which is very much like a coffin, and I’m working lying on my back with my arm up for about three hours (laughs), at the end of which, I sing a song. So it’s going to be wild and crazy.

TP: Will you be singing live?

SW: Fortunately, the song’s probably going to be prerecorded. But the fun thing about things like that are that we’re fixing it so I’ve got a monitor with four images, one of which, the most important one probably, is from a camera mounted in the float shooting the back of Kermit’s head and a big wide shot of the audience, so I can see what Kermit is seeing. And we’ve got a PA system, and I also have the ability to hear the crowd, so Kermit can actually communicate with the crowd.

TP: So they’ll be able to hear you.

SW: Right, they can hear me and I can hear them. I can really talk to them, which to me is really important. I mean, to those people, they will know that it’s really Kermit. I think that’s great.

TP: So, you’ve seen the New York Times article [which explains Disney’s extended plans for the Muppets]. Have you been involved in any of the plans Disney is making, or is this all news to you?

SW: I know about most of what’s been mentioned, to the extent of what’s been mentioned there. I’m not hugely involved yet. At this stage, most of the plans are something that happens on a corporate level. They own the characters and that’s the way it works. That article was more from the executive side of things, it was really talking about Disney’s approach to the Muppets. When we talk, it’s more about the characters. It’s really nice to know, now that we’re with people at Disney who “get it,” it’s nice to know we have that behind us, because it’s very easy for the Muppets to just sort of disappear. To have somebody behind us who understands the characters, but has that machine that can get them out there. And as it gets more integrated, this corporate side with this little family business thing, I think it’s starting to work. Someone told us once that we’d never be able to have our own creative little bubble within Disney, but it’s really starting to feel that way. That’s what we need.

TP: Do you see things getting better and better from here on?

SW: It feels like it, and Letters to Santa is a real good example of that. I feel really positive about it. We keep saying, and I’ll probably say this and it’ll be a big flop, but it feel like it’ll be one of those perennial shows and it’ll really catch on. It’s just so true to the characters. A lot of that happened when we started having script meetings with the writers and they had a great face and we added little character bits, and then we’re running as we go.

TP: Is there a lot of ad-libbing?

SW: Some. We’re always free to try. We have to be careful when we’re shooting out of order, that you don’t do an ad-lib where you realize that what you said doesn’t work in the story anymore. (Laughs) It’s really coming together well. We’ve got a really short time frame to shoot a pretty complicated show. It’s really just beautiful. Perfect Muppet stuff.

TP: One thing they mentioned in the New York Times article is that there’s going to be a “Desperate Housepigs” sketch on the Desperate Housewives DVD set.

SW: Oh, I heard something about that. I don’t think that’s definite though.

TP: So that hasn’t even been shot?

SW: No, we haven’t shot it yet. There’s been talks about doing some things with other shows that have something to do with Disney. I don’t know much; I can’t give you any info on that.

TP: Likewise, the Muppets appearing on Nightline? Do you know anything about that?

SW: There’s been talk about doing something related to the piece they did years ago. Again, it’s just out there, there’s no plans to actually do that yet. I’m not sure if you’ve seen it, but years ago Jim and Frank went on Nightline to explain the bull and bear market.

TP: Right, there was some great stuff with Rowlf and Sam.

SW: Yeah, they loved that, and they want to go back to it. And there’s the obvious relationship there with ABC because of Disney. And Letters to Santa is NBC, which is great.

TP: That’s a good point, I’m glad Disney has allowed you guys to do that. I remember when you were on Saturday Night Live a few years ago, that was terrific. We didn’t expect you guys to even be on NBC, let alone the surprise of being on Saturday Night Live.

SW: Yeah, it was a surprise to us too. To my knowledge, aside from the characters that Jim built for Saturday Night Live, the Muppets have never been on the show before. It was the first time. Only parodies, no real Muppets. By the way, you’ve seen the one where they knock over the puppet stage and they get into a wrestling match? I got so many calls the next day from people who know me saying “Was that you guys? Did you do that?” No, we’d never do that. (Laughs) I laughed at it, but I started getting calls from people thinking it was me. I don’t even look like that! (Laughs)

TP: On that note, do you ever overhear people in public talking about the Muppets, and you want to stand up and say something?

SW: Not too much. I can say, I won’t say anything specific, but I’ve seen things on Muppet Central and ToughPigs, and I’m just dying to get in on the conversation, but I really shouldn’t comment. You know, people saying, “You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, it’s this way!” You know how it is, whatever it might be. I’m dying to do it, but I kind of have to lay low. (Laughs)Click here for part 4 of our interview, where you'll see Steve talk about where Kermit and Rizzo fall into different levels of spiritual and psychological development. No, really.

Click here to try out your Beaker impression on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Disney, interview, Muppet performers

Click here to read part one of our week-long chat with Steve Whitmire!


ToughPigs: There’s been thousands of Muppet characters. Do you have any favorite obscure characters that haven’t shown up in recent years?

Steve Whitmire: I love, and this just happens to be someone I did at the time, there was a character named something like Eugene. He was a little weasel character who was alongside the director on Muppets Tonight. A little fuzzy thing. I always liked doing those kinds of characters. Rizzo started out that way, as a character who didn’t speak. Just a little character who was always there and always, you know, upstaging. And recently, on XD, when we see inside of Animal’s room, he has a little white bunny rabbit with him, and I did the rabbit. I just love the characters who are just there. They don’t have any lines, they just contribute to the atmosphere. And they’re all rodents for some reason. (Laughs)

TP: Are there any previous characters that you would want to bring back?

SW: It seems really important that we get back to some of the Muppet Show characters that have been missing for a while. But those are kind of coming back. What I’d like to see, if we ever get back into doing another series, is the opportunity to bring in new characters. And I think it’s really time we get into some new characters too. Just to grow the group a little bit. We’ve got the core here, and it’s working pretty well at this stage, between Eric and Dave obviously, and Bill is so great. But I’d like some new characters, and that might mean finding some new performers. When I came along, it was a great time because Jim was actively looking for a handful of new people, and the Muppets were on their way up. And I get letters from a lot of people who say they’d really like to puppeteer with the Muppets, and some of them have some real experience, and it’s just a really tough time for people to break into it with us. I always encourage people to do it anyway, don’t get stuck on the idea to work with the Muppets, just do it if you enjoy it. But it’s hard, right now it’s more about the Muppets getting more known again as a group.

TP: Do you think a new series would help with that?

SW: It has always proven to be the best time for new characters to develop because the writers may have an idea, and they build a puppet, and it’s in for a week. And then if it works, it has a chance to grow. And it seems that our characters always have a chance to grow and evolve over time. The first season of Fraggle Rock is nothing to write home about. And by the second season, we were starting to figure out who they were, and thankfully it was at a time in the world of television where they could afford to give us some time to develop this without just saying “Well, that didn’t work!” and pull it off the air, which is what they do now. (Laughs)

TP: Hugh Fink, Andrew Samson, and Scott Ganz have just been hired by Disney to write for the Muppets. From what they’ve told me, they’ve been hired to give the Muppets a more “prime time” feel and language. How do you feel about their involvement and this new direction Disney wants to take the Muppets?

SW: It seems okay. Two things always sound scary: when someone says they want to give the Muppets a “new feel,” because you never know what that’s going to mean until it’s done, and you can look back at it and say, “Oh, so that’s what they meant.” The other thing that’s always difficult to hear is when people say they’re the biggest Muppet fans and they want to write for the Muppets. Often times, they’re seeing the characters from the outside, and they really don’t know what they feel like on the inside, so it doesn’t work. But once we started working with these guys, they’ve really risen to the occasion. It was a good choice, it turned out to be a great choice, and that hasn’t always been the case with outside writers when they come in.

TP: So, what’s your take on the Jason Segel script?

SW: I haven’t met them, I keep hearing about it. I don’t know what they’re writing, we’re outside of it at the moment. I’ve heard that it’s happening, but I haven’t had any discussions about it. If they’re writing it, then once they’re finished I’ll see it and then I can probably comment about it. And in a way, that’s not bad. Jim was always very collaborative with us on everything we did, but it wasn’t like we all sat down in a room and conceived of the “first idea.” Jim was always very selective about the first three or four people he brought in on a project. He would often have an idea, and then he’d step back and let those people develop it into something. So there was always a bit that would go on before the next round when he’d bring in the puppeteers, or a broader group of puppeteers. It’s easy to get into what I call “endless meeting syndrome” where you’d get twelve people around a table, and everyone’s got ideas, and none of them really get used because the last thing that was said usually gets done. So it’s nice to have a core that expands into a bigger group, I think. That’s the good thing, that’s the smart way to really do it. And in addition to that, the more they bring us in near the early stages, the more we can give them about character, especially if it’s writers who know the Muppets but don’t know them from the inside. We can easily supply some of that. And that’s happening, so that’s a good thing.

TP: I have a question here from ToughPigs forum member and Muppet Wiki moderator Scott Hanson. There’s something they’ve been stumped on at the Wiki, and hopefully you can remember.

SW: I’ll try. You guys usually know more than I know.

TP: In the Dizzy Gillespie episode of The Muppet Show, they don’t know who performed Astoria, Waldorf’s wife, and the rumors say that it was you.

SW: Wow. And I ought to know that. But frankly, I don’t remember.

TP: Yeah, I wouldn’t expect you to…

SW: That’s interesting, because it wasn’t that long ago when we were talking about what were the names of their wives, and I think it was only the one, I don’t think Statler had one. It could have been me. I can’t answer, I don’t know!

TP: I promise I don’t have any more questions like that.

SW: (Laughs) That’s okay, I wish I could remember that.

TP: I don’t know if you heard, The Christmas Toy is coming out on DVD next month.

SW: No! That’s great! Is that Henson or Disney?

TP: That’d be Henson. Well, I was going to ask you if you contributed anything to the special features, but you obviously haven’t if you haven’t heard about it.

SW: Nope, I haven’t been involved in special features. I loved working on that show. That was just one of those Toronto productions during Fraggle time. It was a great break from Fraggles, because it was such an intense shoot. We had great fun on Fraggle Rock, but it was intense. And we went off to do this other silly thing, and the hardest thing for me was that Jim wanted me to do this little mouse. And to come up with a voice for this little mouse that wasn’t Wembley or Rizzo (Laughs), it’s like what am I going to do now? It was Rizzo in falsetto, is what it ended up being. I probably couldn’t even do the voice now. My voice has changed, and I know they sometimes change over the years, but my voice has changed and it makes it hard sometimes to do some of those older voices.

TP: Do you ever go back and watch some of the old stuff like that?

SW: I do, and I don’t think I even have a VHS of [The Christmas Toy], I’d love for that to be on DVD.

TP: Yeah, we’re very much hoping it’s going to be unedited.

SW: Yeah, me too.

TP: It’s got Kermit the Frog bookending the film, which is why the Emmet Otter DVDs have been edited versions.

SW: Yeah, I heard about that.

TP: Have you heard much about the Emmet Otter musical that’s premiering in Connecticut this December?

SW: I heard about it, but I’m not involved with it. And I wasn’t involved with the original. What have I heard? Tyler Bunch is involved, it’s half puppets and half sort of costumes suggesting puppets.

TP: Are you planning on seeing it?

SW: I probably won’t end up seeing it. I probably wouldn’t come to Connecticut just to see it. [ed. – On a side note, Dave Goelz mentioned in an earlier conversation that he probably won’t see it either, as he wouldn’t want to leave his family in LA just to fly across the country for a play. It’s too bad he won’t be able to critique the performances of Wendell Porcupine and Pop-eyed Catfish.] I’d love to see it just to see what they’ll do with it.Click here for part 3 of our chat with Steve Whitmire where you'll read all about his performing new characters, his buddy movie life with Dave Goelz, and Disney's future for the Muppets!

Click here to take credit for performing Astoria on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Disney, interview, Jim Henson Company, Muppet performers

Recently, the one and only (as far as I know) Steve Whitmire agreed to sit down with us for an informal chat. And true to the teachings of Richard Nixon, we taped the whole dang thing.

Over the following week, I'll be posting segments from the interview, so keep on coming back here to ToughPigs to read what the voice of Kermit has to say.

Special (and obvious) thanks to Steve Whitmire for helping to make all of this happen!

ToughPigs: First off, thank you so much for agreeing to talk with us. So, I want to ask you about the viral Muppet videos that have shown up on YouTube. A source tells me that you were kind of the moving force behind those. Is that true?

Steve Whitmire: The idea for that came from the whole department at Disney. Actually it was Dave Cook who decided we should originally be involved in that. So kudos to the executive force, you know? I had a lot to do with putting it together, making it work, along with the guys from a company called Soap Box, which I think is an outside production company that was brought in to produce the pieces. Great group of guys. They hadn’t worked with the Muppet before, but they’re very big fans and eager to learn about the characters. I helped in that respect, just in terms of “We should get a music director for this,” “This is hard to do, we should prerecord these.” We went the route of, when we were in the studio, we had each separate character pumped into the ear of the performer so we could hear what we were doing. In other words, we were doing it to a mass playback. Really important in something like that to be able to distinguish what we were doing. And then we worked with a guy named Ed Mitchell who was the music director, who we had worked with in the past on Sesame Street, and he won the Grammy for directing the Red and Green Christmas album. But Ed is terrific, and he really understands the Muppets and their sensibility, and what we need with our limited abilities to get through it. So he was instrumental in pulling that together. We recorded that Stars and Stripes thing, we all did our own little pieces, and thought it was going to sound great. We went into the control room to hear the playback and it was just a mess. It sounded like a zoo, you know, with all the noise. Ed’s the one who got us adjusted, got everything back on the right mark to make it sound good.

TP: Yeah, that’s a great piece. They all are.

SW: Well, I loved working on those. To me, it really felt like a real return back to the old Muppet stuff. That’s something I’ve always pushed for and fortunately there’s a group at Disney now who really understands that. And what they don’t understand, they listen to. It’s really nice.

TP: Who directed those?

SW: In the end, Kirk Thatcher directed them. But that was a last minute thing. It was originally going to be directed by one of the guys from Soap Box. And I did a lot of the prep on it, but I really wasn’t looking to direct them. And at the last minute, we had just come off of the Studio DC: Almost Live the day before, so Kirk came into the studio the next day and oversaw it as the director. It would have been fun to direct, since I did so much prep on them, but it was easier not to do that. It was easier just to concentrate on the performers’ part.

TP: Actually, we were trying to figure out: were you Beaker?

SW: Yeah, I was Beaker in all of that. And Kermit. Oh wait, Kermit wasn’t in those, was he? What am I thinking? It was Beaker and Gonzo. I actually puppeteered Gonzo for that, because Dave was having surgery at the time. And then he dubbed it. But musically, I love the music of the Muppets so much. And we’re getting back and doing more of it, but it’s been missing for a lot of years. So we did four strong pieces that were all about music, and just sent them out there and see what they did. And they did very well. I’m just thrilled that they did well with not just our fans on the internet, but everybody who saw them. I hope we do more of those. And if not those kinds of pieces, at least more viral videos. I think we have to top what we did last time somehow. (Laughs)

TP: The Muppets.com sketches have been pretty great too.

SW: Oh yeah, I love that stuff. That was kind of the first indication to me that we were in a good place with Disney. All of the sudden, we were doing that kind of stuff, those short little bits. It’s a great way to reintroduce the Muppets to people who don’t know them.

TP: Were the viral videos the first time you were involved in the concept stage of a Muppet production?

SW: I guess we kind of always took them. We definitely did more in-depth work on that than a lot of the other things we do. We always collaborate and have input on nearly everything. I was kind of sitting at home, plucking out notes on the piano, trying to think of what character should sing what. So, that kind of stuff on those things. I love doing that.

TP: I know Bill Baretta has kind of been transitioning into directing more. Have you thought about doing the same?

SW: Not really. I never had a great desire to direct anything big like Kirk does. I would like to do some of the little things, where you work hard and it really pays off and all of the details on the viral pieces. That would really be fun to do, but to do films and specials, I’m not really interested in it. It takes so much personal time, and I’d just as soon have my time for me. When I’m not working, I want to go home. (Laughs) I’m a real homebody. I’m very domestic. (Laughs)

TP: You are one of, or the only, main Muppeteer to not work outside of the Muppets. Frank Oz has directed, Jerry Nelson has his work with music, Dave Goelz did some work with Walt Disney World. Was that a conscious choice, or did the opportunity just never come up?

SW: A little bit of both. The way my whole time with the Muppets timed out, with Jim’s death and doing Kermit, it was at a point where… my whole life changed overnight in terms of the amount of time I spent working. I went from doing Rizzo and I’d walk in and hang out at the crafts services table, or I’d do a couple of lines and I’d do a background puppet, and suddenly I was doing this big thing. It takes so much time, and there’s so much demand for Kermit, with all of the appearances that we do, and I love it. But I’d just as soon get away from it when I’m not doing it. I’ve been fortunate in that I haven’t needed to do that, I’ve had a decent career and I make a decent living, and I’d also just rather have the free time in between.

TP: Have you ever been asked to do any of the Henson company stuff like Puppet Up?

SW: No, we haven’t been involved with that. I think Brian found a team of folks to do that, and they were available. If they asked us, they have to work around [our schedules] all of the time. So, not a lot of contact since the sale. Which is fine, they kind of do their thing and we do ours.

TP: There was the issue a few years ago about the Muppet recasting. Has that situation resolved itself?

SW: It has. It was a real tough patch. I always try to see it from both sides of the issue. It was necessary to get these characters back out into the world. It seemed like the way to do it, I guess, from a certain point of view to have a bunch of people doing them everywhere. But actually, as soon as the Muppets moved under [Muppet Studios], they just didn’t see the need, and there really wasn’t a need for it as it turned out. The idea was that we were going to be this gigantic worldwide thing and they were going to need that. But I think they understand now why it’s important, to keep them individual. And to be frank on that issue, I kind of look back on that whole episode and I’m kind of happy for it. Because it certainly gave me the responsibility to do some deep thought on what it is we do, and how it works, and why it’s important. And I’m not sure if Jim was actually conscious of why it’s important. He just instinctively knew that you cast someone and they stay that character. But it gave us the chance to analyze it a little bit, we sort of had to, and I’m glad for that now. I could give a lecture series on the individuality of the Muppets, the integrity of the Muppets (laughs).

TP: Had they ever asked you to be involved in something like the Muppet cruise?

SW: I did one, really in order to just make sure that Kermit stayed Kermit. It was just a weird time. Nobody knew exactly what was going on, why it was happening. Especially the people who were being asked to duplicate the characters. I don’t think they knew what was going on exactly. It was just a rough patch. And we got over it, and I’m glad it’s behind us. And it feels like it really is behind us. There’s been no indication [of more recasting], and that’s just not something they’re interested in doing.

Click here for part two of our interview, where you'll see what Steve has to say about obscure characters, Disney's new direction for the Muppets, and The Christmas Toy!

Click here to discuss this discussion on the ToughPigs forum!

joe.toughpigs@gmail.com

Labels: Disney, interview, Muppet performers

Has everyone read Joe Hennes' article from September 9th, in which he told the story of visiting the set of the new Muppet TV special Letters to Santa? (If you haven't, you should click on this link right here and read it.) In Joe's article he mentioned that he was invited by some of the Muppet people to come back for day of studio shooting. He recently took them up on that offer, and this time I got to come too.

I met Joe at the studio in the early afternoon. As we entered the stage, Joe said, "Nathan Lane is here," and yeah, actually, there he was. He's playing an airport security official in the special, which will also include appearances by Uma Thurman, Jane Krakowski, Jesse L. Martin, Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa from The Sopranos, Richard Griffiths, Disney Channel star Madison Pettis, and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. But with all those celebrities, is there any space in the special left for Muppets?

As a matter of fact, there is space, which is good, because the first scene I saw them shoot featured Bobo, and the Bobo puppet is frigging enormous. He's so bulky that when Bill Barretta performs him, he has to wear a harness kinda thing to keep Bobo steady. One take ended abruptly with Bobo toppling over, which cracked up everyone in the room, including Nathan Lane. Lane found Bobo pretty hilarious in general, and he struggled to get through a few takes without laughing. Hearing Bobo speak inspired several people in the room to do their own Bobo impressions, which makes me wonder if the annual informal holiday Talk Like a Pirate Day should be replaced by Talk Like Bobo Day.

Between takes, Joe introduced me to director Kirk Thatcher, who told us that Letters to Santa was greenlit and put into production quite suddenly. The whole shoot, in fact, will total only 15 days, which is less time than I take between trips to the laundromat.

After the scene was finished, I met and chatted with Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz, and Noel MacNeal. Here's the thing about real live Muppet people: They're impossibly friendly, and they're almost as interested in the Muppet fan community as we are in them. Several of them commented on the recent New York Times article about Disney's big plans for the Muppets, which they described as "mostly accurate." They did not, however, comment on the difficulty of the Sudoku in that issue of the Times.

After the scene was finished, it was time for the cast and crew's favorite part of the day: lunch break! Joe and I talked some more with Steve and Kirk, as well as Bill Barretta. Among other things, they mentioned that Frank Oz had briefly dropped by the set last week to say hello. Apparently he's a bit of a Muppet fan himself.

One thing that came up over and over again throughout the day was a feeling of optimism among everyone involved. All the puppeteers believe Letters to Santa is a genuinely good Muppet production in the spirit of the classic stuff. Dave Goelz described it as the best thing they've done since Muppet Treasure Island, with "the perfect mix of lunacy and heart." I think every single puppeteer we talked to used the word "heart" in their assessment of the new special. This thing is lousy with heart. Which is great news for all the fans, unless maybe there's a faction of fans who've always felt the Muppets would be better if they were really mean.


During the break, we also got to talk to Andrew Samson and Scott Ganz, two of the writers on the project (along with Hugh Fink, who wasn't there that day). They have a lot of ideas for the Muppets, and I really got the impression that they're One of Us. Or Two of Us, or whatever. They're a couple of guys who grew up watching and loving The Muppet Show and the movies, and they want to see the characters get back to doing the kind of material they did in their heyday. Also notable: Scott's wife Brooke ran the "Sesame Seventies" fan website a few years ago, which was a fun and groovy celebration of Sesame Street's crazy disco records.

Soon it was time to start shooting again, and it was more airport stuff. One thing that struck me as the day went on was the fact that, although we only saw a tiny portion of the production, every single shot we saw them do had a joke in it, and all the jokes were funny. Unless we just happened to see the only funny scenes in the entire special, that bodes well. And as Joe pointed out, the performances seemed to get funnier with every take. If that's always the case, how do they know when to stop?

Another thing I noticed: Muppet performing is hard work. The scenes we saw them shoot had several human extras, but the sets were not "built up" to allow the puppeteers to perform standing up, so they had to sit and kneel and crouch and contort and roll around on wheely things (which probably have a real name other than "wheely things"). And while we tend to take for granted that a Muppet can do anything a human can do, the mere act of Rizzo putting his coat in an airport security bin required several attempts to get right.

Of course, it would have been easier to just cut the Rizzo coat-placing. I'm sure it's not crucial to the plot, but they kept doing it until it worked. I know this is going to sound cheesy, so maybe you want to skip this paragraph, but somehow it seemed very true to the spirit of the Muppets, and even to Jim Henson's own creative philosophy. From Kermit playing the banjo in an actual swamp in The Muppet Movie to Gonzo driving a lawn mower in Muppets From Space, it's always been about creating a world in which the Muppets are real, living beings. So they did take after take until Rizzo got it right. Man, if it had been a real airport, the people in line behind Rizzo would have been seriously ticked off: Just drop your coat, already! (And by the way, what's this talking rat doing at the airport?)

And after all that trouble with the Rizzo shot? They immediately did it again, with a shot requiring Pepe to hold various objects in each of his four hands, and drop them in the bin one by one. This required Bill Barretta, Matt Vogel and Peter Linz to squeeze in close together so they could each perform a prawn hand or two. I couldn't help but think it's a good thing none of the Muppet performers smell bad. Marty Robinson called that gag "a joke that's easy to write, but hard to do"... but once again, they did it until it worked.

While this stuff was going on, Joe and I got a chance to talk to the aforementioned Marty, Matt, and Peter, and they were all a bunch of jerks. No, of course that's not true at all. Like everyone else, they were as nice as could be and very enthusiastic about the new special. This was also about the time I saw one of the puppet wranglers stapling Kermit's winter shoes together so he could hold them in the next scene. I think it would be amazing, when your friends ask you what you've been doing at work, to be able to say, "Oh, today I stapled Kermit the Frog's shoes together."

To a humble, slack-jawed yokel like myself, the whole process of shooting a big TV project like this is pretty impressive. Great care was taken for every shot to ensure that no puppeteers' hands or heads were seen onscreen. Kirk Thatcher made sure Fozzie carried the same candy cane from shot to shot, for "continudity" purposes. And a few times, Kirk and the writers had to confer on whether or not a particular joke would be allowed in a Muppet special.


Speaking of which, here's an interesting tidbit: Remember Gonzo/The Tin Thing's line "Those are my nipples" in The Muppets' Wizard of Oz? I thought that was pretty darn funny, but I was surprised it made the cut. Well, the story behind that came up during a discussion about what the Muppets can and can't get away with: Dave Goelz thought up the line and jokingly suggested it to Kirk Thatcher, prefacing it by saying, "We'll never actually use this, but it would be funny if Gonzo said..." And then Kirk put it in the movie! And that's the story of Gonzo's nipples.

The next scene we saw was an interaction between Fozzie and Bobo. Have we ever even seen those two talk to each other before? Here you have two of the greatest fictional bears ever (equal to Winnie the Pooh, and miles above Andy Williams' Cookie Bear) and they're both part of the same entertainment franchise, but I really don't remember ever seeing them in the same scene. I predict that once viewers find out about this moment, they'll flock to the special by the billions.

During this scene, Scott Ganz told us that a lot of the last-minute additions to this production were "stolen" directly from the script he and Samson and Fink wrote for the now-canceled election special. Which is reasonable. If you're working on a new Muppet special, and you happen to have a perfectly good, unused Muppet script lying around, you might as well use it, right?

At one point, there was a young kid present on the set... I'm not sure who he belonged to, but he was having a good time. As things were getting set up for one of the last scenes of the day, Bill Barretta brought Pepe over to talk to him, which was pretty great, although I'm not sure the kid had any idea who Pepe was. Pepe asked him about school and his favorite subjects, but he politely rebuffed the kid's attempts to stick a candy bar wrapper in his mouth.

It was also around this time that some glossy photos of the main Muppet cast (not to be confused with The MuppetCast) were making their way around the room. These were being autographed to give away to kids, and each puppeteer actually signed his characters' names on each copy. Of course, they could have easily gotten some intern to do that, but instead they guarantee that those kids get the authentic John Hancocks of Kermit, Bunsen, Animal, et al. And for the record, Eric Jacobson does a lovely Piggy signature.

The last shot of the day required Kermit, Gonzo, Pepe, Rizzo, Fozzie and two penguins, so it was all hands on deck for the puppeteers (For those of you keeping score: Steve was Kermit while Noel was Rizzo, Peter was Fozzie's right hand, and Matt and Marty were the penguins). This was some kind of POV shot, apparently taken from the perspective of another character watching the Muppets from a distance, and there didn't seem to be any specific scripted dialogue.

This allowed the puppeteers to ad lib, and danged if they didn't come up with something different to say for every single take. Once, Gonzo confided to Kermit, "If you run fast enough [through the metal detector], you don't have to take your belt off." Another time, Kermit noted that the security checkpoint is easier to get through when you don't wear clothing.

After a few successful takes of this shot, Kirk Thatcher announced that it was a wrap for the day, and everyone quickly dispersed. Joe and I, amazed that we were allowed to stay so long without being politely kicked out, said our thank-yous and exited to the real world, a world where prawns can't talk and bears rarely wear sweaters.

There's still a lot we don't know about Letters to Santa. And we know even less about the Muppet feature film that's being planned for 2010. But I have to say, I'm feeling more optimistic about the future of the Muppets today than I have in quite a while. The creative people know -- and they know that we know -- that not every production from the last 10 years or so has been a home run. But the enthusiasm on that set was pretty infectious, and while I've been "cautiously optmistic" about most of the recent Muppet productions, this time around I think I'll drop the adverb and just look forward to seeing what my favorite characters are up to this Christmas.

Click here to comment on this article on the Tough Pigs forum!

ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com

Labels: celebrities, Christmas, in development, interview, Muppet performers, Muppets on TV, The Muppet Show

About a week ago, I found a post on a Brooklyn Heights blog with an image of a notice on a lamp post saying that “Muppets Prod, Inc.” would be filming in the area on Monday morning. Being a Brooklynite myself, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see real live Muppets, as I’m sure none of us could. So I woke myself up extra early and bustled down to the Heights for what I hoped would be a good show.

For those who don’t know, “Letters to Santa” (working title) is a Muppet Christmas movie set to premiere on NBC this holiday season. According to the description written on a notice: “Our characters are forced to give up their Christmas vacation plans, of escaping the NY snow, to help get Santa’s lost mail into his hands before Christmas Eve.” I don’t know about you, but I’m gripping the arms of my easy chair already!

I showed up at 8:00am and stood on a street corner in front of a Cosby-esque brownstone and watched as 16 people stood in the late summer heat wearing winter coats, hats, and scarves. There was no doubt about it, this was a Christmas movie. A synagogue had been altered slightly to look like a US post office. The people all stood impatiently as a mailman drove his van up to the building, walked up the stairs, and went back to do it all over again. And again. And again. I forget that when making a real film, one take is never enough. The repetition made me dizzy.

But still, no Muppets to be seen. That’s when I saw Steve Whitmire and Bill Barretta, and a minute later, Kirk Thatcher. Now, people who know me well know that I’m fearless when it comes to talking to celebrities on the street. I’ve approached many here in New York, and most of them are happy for the attention. But when Steve and Bill walked past, I suddenly turned to a nervous ball of sweat and shakies. Crap! There goes my chance. Might as well go home, head in my hands.

Knowing the fuzzy ones were nearby, I wouldn’t even think of leaving until I saw a Muppet, so I stayed. I waited until Kermit made his little green face shown, followed immediately by Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Camilla, Pepe, and a team of rat carolers (adorned with tiny reindeer antlers). They went through a scene a few times and while I marveled at the fact that there were real Muppets mere feet away, I noticed that the crowd around me grew and grew. Parents were holding their kids up in the air to see Miss Piggy, kids were refusing to go to the playground (lest they miss the frog do something funny), and adults were dumbfounded that this was actually happening in their neighborhood. One woman in particular was completely unfazed, as Brad Pitt was two blocks away just last year. Psshh, girl didn’t know what she was talking about: Frog always trumps Pitt.

During a pause in filming, Steve brought Kermit into the crowd to say hi to some of the kids (he did this several times during the day, and while this might get tiring to you or me, he seemed to find a new delight with every child he made smile, and rightly so) when I finally found the courage to introduce myself. He shook my left hand since Kermit was sitting on his right, and said that he loves ToughPigs.com (Hi Steve!), but he really must get back to filming and he’ll try and stop for a conversation later. Ok, that might have been a very polite blowoff, but at least he was enthusiastic.

During the next pause in filming, the crew took an ice cream break (ye gods, I want to work for these people!). Steve came and found me in the crowd. Come on, he said, I’ll introduce you to the guys. I didn’t care who “the guys” were, I’d be following. Steve then introduced me to Martin Robinson, Tyler Bunch, Noel MacNeal, and Matt Vogel (Hi guys!). They were kind enough to chat with me for a while. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much info on upcoming productions (which was what most of my prepared questions involved), but I did get a lot of behind-the-scenes tidbits.

For example: Martin Robinson has no idea that people know what he looks like, as evidenced by the fact that I congratulated him on his recent marriage before he said his name. Puppet designer Jane Gootnick is the one responsible for the recent appearance of The Swedish Chef’s wedding ring. Dave Goelz performs, and has always performed, the eyes for Sweetums via remote. Martin Robinson was able to have his wedding on the Sesame Street stoop for free because nobody had ever asked before (though he did have to pay three unions since they were using a TV studio). And so on and so forth.

While we were milling about, an entourage of large black cars filled the street. None of us had any idea what was going on. Then New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg stepped out and readied himself for a cameo in the movie. Someone mentioned that he must be filling the role listed as “Handsome Celebrity Male” in the script. Well, they’re about half right (Sorry, Mike! I couldn’t resist). Then, just as quick as he appeared, Mr. Mayor fled into the night, joining David Dinkins and Ed Koch on the list of New York Mayors with articles on the Muppet Wiki. Yeah, I’m sure that’s why he agreed to it.

Puppet designer Bonnie Erickson, who, to my knowledge, hasn’t worked on a Henson production in some time, also showed up for the filming. It turned out that she lives only a few blocks away, and a phone call from Dave Goelz sent her running to the set. She also claims to enjoy ToughPigs.com (Hi, Bonnie!), and was just as thrilled to see the Muppets making a quality production as I was. And then her husband asked to take my picture, which means I’ve got to become famous quick, or else the photo will be worthless.

When the puppeteers got ready for the next scene, Steve pulled me aside again and helped me to find a cranny-like nook to squeeze into to watch the filming up close. When Kirk Thatcher saw this, he introduced himself (and no, Kirk, we almost never say you’re a bad director!) and took me into the director’s tent to watch the monitors over his shoulder. After every shot, Kirk would swear, yell, or wisecrack, then turn around and explain to me why directing is hard. And then I bit my tongue to keep from bringing up his appearance in Star Trek IV.

I then met Hugh Fink (formerly a writer for Saturday Night Live) and Andrew Samson who, along with Scott Ganz (not present), have been given a 1-year development deal with Disney to write for the Muppets. According to Fink, their pitch to Disney consisted of an idea for a Muppet roast and the previously announced election special. Disney loved the latter idea and had them sign on the dotted line. Unfortunately, now neither production is going forward, but they did write the script and screenplay for “Letters for Santa”, and they’ll continue to write for the Muppets for as long as the funny holds out. It seems that Disney’s finally getting a clue as to who their audience should be, and they’re showing it by hiring Fink to give them a “late night sensibility”, which sounds a whole lot easier to stomach than the ill effects of Studio DC.

I also discovered that not only did Paul Williams provide the music for the film, but it all stemmed from his original pitch. And that gives a whole new credence to the production. Add that to the great performers, Kirk Thatcher, and new writers Hugh Fink, Andrew Samson, and Scott Ganz, and we’ve got a Christmas movie that might just make it onto a few shelves. I know it’ll be on mine.

The last person I met was Kevin Frawley (apologies if I spelled your name wrong!), who talked up the recent Muppet productions with such enthusiasm that he gave me a true hope that the Muppets are back in the entertainment game for good. He also showed an unwavering faith that the Jason Segel-penned Muppet Movie will premiere in 2010, no matter what the trends of in-development movies are. He seemed genuinely concerned that the Muppets were previously only being kept barely alive for merchandising purposes and that he is making it his personal vendetta to keep them making quality productions. That’s a man I want fighting for the Frog.

At this point, I got a slight fear, like a sneeze about to ruin my family’s Thanksgiving dinner, that I might be looking over everyone’s shoulder a little bit too much. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that I may be there to have fun, but everyone else is there to work. So I made the hardest decision of my life and left the set. The puppeteers and crew were all incredibly cordial and never hinted that I was disturbing them, and a few made the offer for me to go back later this month (assuming they approve of this write-up, I suppose). So I guess I’ll do that. Y’know, if I’m still into Muppets by then.

It’s nice to know that we’re all on the same team, the fans and the creators. Everyone wants every production to be great, and everyone wants there to be more of everything. I want to thank everyone who took the time to talk with me, including the folks I mentioned in this article, the puppeteers, the P.A.s, the Creative Affairs department, and anyone I may have accidentally stepped on. Special super thanks to Steve Whitmire, who turned me from an outsider to an insider. Also for being the Frog.

There are a few things that I learned that didn’t quite fit into this article, so please head on over to the ToughPigs forum where you’ll get some more details about the Emmet Otter musical, the Muppet election special, and more. It’s also a great place to find me if you have any questions (but sorry, I won’t reveal plot details or anything said under strict confidence. However, I will plagiarize this book I have about ethics).

Labels: celebrities, Christmas, in development, interview, Muppet performers, Muppets on TV

On Wednesday, I reviewed You Can't Rock Sittin' Down, the new album by the Mighty Weaklings, a band that includes Sesame Street Muppet performer Matt Vogel (He's the one standing in front of the playground in that picture). Today, ToughPigs.com is pretty darn happy to present an interview, conducted via e-mail, with Mr. Vogel himself.

TOUGH PIGS: How did you come to be involved with Sesame Street? What was the first thing you did on the show?

MATT VOGEL: In 1994, I answered an ad in Backstage looking for a left-handed puppeteer. I’m not a left-handed puppeteer—but I am left-handed and I thought that was close enough. The job was to be the secondary performer of a full-body Coca-Cola Polar Bear puppet that Muppets had built for live appearances. I met with John Henson (the primary performer) and soon after started doing polar bear appearances.

My first Sesame Street gig was for a home video called Tell the Truth. I played some background characters with Stephanie D’Abruzzo. My first season on Sesame Street was in 1996. I did a lot of right-hand work, but also got to do some small characters including one of Kingston Livingston III’s Crew Four.

TP: Was it intimidating for you coming to work alongside Sesame veterans like Jerry Nelson and Fran Brill?

MV: Both Fran and Jerry are such great performers and they were very welcoming to me right from the beginning. They made me feel comfortable and at ease… but I was—and still am—in awe of them. So, I wouldn’t say that I was intimidated. Although I did see Fran wrestle a mountain lion. Not intimidating, but impressive.

TP: How and at what point was it decided that you would become the alternate Big Bird? Was the audition process open to any puppeteers beyond the Sesame cast?

MV: They were looking for someone to perform Big Bird at live appearances when Caroll Spinney was unavailable. So, Caroll held a workshop/audition with a few of the Sesame Street puppeteers. I’d never met Mr. Spinney before and when I was introduced to him as “Matt Vogel”, he shook my hand and said, “You know, your last name means ‘bird’ in German, this might be the job for you.” That was a bit intimidating. Caroll told us his history with Sesame Street and Jim Henson and then he had us each put on Big Bird and give it a shot. That was very intimidating—trying to sound like Big Bird right in front of the man who IS Big Bird. After that, I met with Caroll one-on-one a few times to work on Big Bird. Even now, Caroll continues to give me pointers and I consider him one of my mentors.

TP: Was Journey to Ernie your first gig as Big Bird?

MV: Well, my first real job as Big Bird was a live appearance in front of an auditorium full of Kmart managers. Seriously. Big Bird was revealed behind a giant revolving K (for Klassy).

My first Big Bird appearance on Sesame Street was not “Journey to Ernie”, but I think it was in a scene with a bunch of other characters and I said only a line or two.

TP: How are the Journey to Ernie segments produced?

MV: We shot those on a huge blue screen. I would only see a rough sketch of what the final animation would look like, I’d have to imagine the action that would be animated later. I found “Journey to Ernie” to be challenging because of how we had to shoot it, the physicality of the segment, and the fact that being inside Big Bird is disorienting—you only see what the camera’s shooting. There’s no peripheral vision, it’s like you’re working in a yellow bubble.

TP: Have you ever taken a crack at being Oscar the Grouch?

MV: Oh, sure…at home for my kids when I’m cranky. But I’ve never done it seriously.

TP: You were Big Bird for the Sesame Street segment with Laura Bush. What was that like? Did the Secret Service have to frisk the bird?

MV: The First Lady came to the Street prepared and she was very sweet. The Secret Service did not frisk Big Bird, but they did shake down Elmo.

TP: What's your favorite Sesame Street thing you've done? Do you have a favorite character you've performed on the show?

MV: I’ve had a lot of opportunities to perform some fun characters on Sesame Street. Some of my favorites are Howie Eatswell from the “Meal or No Meal” sketch, David Letterguy, Hansel (of Hansel & Gretel), and Herb the Dinosaur. But I also do a lot of right-hand work on the show and some of my favorite times are assisting puppeteers like David Rudman, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson and Frank Oz.

TP: What kind of hilarious or fascinating anecdotes can you tell us from behind the scenes at Sesame? Come on, you must have a million of 'em.

MV: I was doing a live appearance as Big Bird with Penny Marshall for a new Sesame Street kid’s clothing line. We were hosting a fashion show in front of a bunch of press and children. As Penny Marshall walked on stage, she lost her footing and grabbed Big Bird by the right wing—ripping it off the puppet! In front of everyone—Cameras, reporters, children!

There she was, standing there with the wing in her hands. She quickly realized what had happened and hid the wing behind her back. Neither of us knew what to do so I just said, “Don’t worry. It’ll grow back.” And we went on with the show.

TP: How much ad-libbing happens on Sesame Street? Or is it pretty much stick-to-the-script for maximum educational value?

MV: The puppeteers all respect the writers and the work that goes into the scripts on Sesame Street. When there is ad-libbing, it’s something that wouldn’t impact any educational point. Sometimes a puppeteer will change a word or switch the order of a sentence to make more sense to their character or the scene, but if someone really wants to change something major (which has happened) then there’s a discussion with the director, the writer—who’s always on hand—and the producers.

TP: According to Muppet Wiki, you voiced Scooter and Janice in the Muppet Race Mania video game. What was that like? If you're at liberty to say, is there a particular reason that was the only time you played those characters?

MV: I did voice Scooter and Janice for the Muppet Race Mania game. There were only a few lines and I think I was cast to do it because they hadn’t made any official recasting choices for those characters at the time. I had a good time doing it, but I never thought it was a recast, just a one-time job.

TP: So... your band. Why the name "the Mighty Weaklings"?

MV: The band was originally just me and my songwriting partner, Michael Ray Escamilla. We wrote and played goofy songs at parties and for anyone who’d listen. It was never really anything taken very seriously. The name The Mighty Weaklings was the winner we picked from a list of about fifty names we’d written down. But as the band has evolved and grown in numbers, the name really suits us.

The name is a dichotomy—and so are a lot of our songs. It’s kind of how we do everything. Like we wanted to do a kid’s album, but we didn’t want to sound like a kid’s album.

TP: You Can't Rock Sittin' Down is billed as a "rock album for kids." Did you approach the songs as rock songs first and kids' songs second?

MV: I’m a parent of four children, so I’ve heard lots of kid’s music. But after we’d done Jack’s Big Music Show and decided we wanted to do our own kid’s record, we wanted it to sound different from what was typically heard. The band already had a guitar-centric rock sound, so we knew the end result would be a rock album for kids.

We also wanted to make sure that parents could listen to it as much as their kids. The songs came about happened in a few different ways. Some were influenced by what I saw my kids were interested in (“Super Hero”, “Bug Town”) and some were my thoughts about what being a kid was like (“Grumpy Song”, “It’s Sunny When You Share”). Sometimes I knew what the song sounded like and other times Michael would noodle around with guitar riffs that would find the melody.

For “It’s Sunny When You Share”, I asked Joey Mazzarino to write it with me because he’s a really funny writer and I knew he could help make the song what it needed to be. On “Fallin’ Down”, our drummer, Bj Hemann, had the idea and the sound of the song and together we wrote the lyrics.

TP: Were you influenced at all by the kids' rock music that They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies have done? The Mighty Weaklings' material seems to fit in the same sub-genre.

MV: I’m a huge fan of Barenaked Ladies and They Might Be Giants. I’ve listened to them for years and my kids listen to them, too. We’ve been told we have a similar sound to both bands but we all come from a lot of different musical tastes including Van Halen, Ben Folds, Metallica, Billy Joel, Guns ‘n Roses, Journey, Neil Diamond – you name it—and they all influence our music in one way or another.

TP: Jerry Nelson makes a great cameo on the song "Mr. Grumpy." How did that come about? Did you have him in mind when you wrote those spoken interludes?

MV: Jerry’s a good friend of mine and I knew that I really wanted him to do something on the album. I thought the spoken word part on “Grumpy Song” would be awesome if Jerry did it, so I asked him and he agreed. We recorded it in his dressing room at Sesame Street during Season 39. We’re so honored to have him on our CD. It’s one of the highlights of the album for us.

TP: What kind of feedback have you gotten on the new album? It seems like parents would dig it just as much as kids.

MV: We’ve gotten great feedback for our album. People say their kids sing and dance along with all of the songs and laugh at the spoken word bits—which was one part of our goal—obviously, you want the kids to like the music. The other part of our goal was to have parents say that they like listening with their kids—which we’ve also heard.

We plug it as one of those CDs you could enjoy if you’ve got kids, know someone with kids, or ever were a kid yourself. It’s not available everywhere, so we’ve had to rely on word-of-mouth to help us and it seems to be working. We’re hopeful that by the end of the year, every kid in America will have a copy of You Can’t Rock Sittin’ Down. And The Mighty Weaklings will not rest until that happens! Unless, of course, there’s something really good on TV.

TP: There are several of those funny spoken word bits between tracks on the album. How did you decide to include that? Was it all scripted?

MV: We put the banter on the album to act as little intros into the next song but they’re also intended to give you an idea of the personality of the band members. Each of those bits are scripted, but it’s a pretty accurate picture of how each of us fits into the band dynamic. All five of us are trained actors, so doing the scripted parts were fun and kind of second nature to us.

TP: Finally, here's a very important question: Having worked intimately with all of them, what is your favorite letter of the alphabet?

MV: Wow. You know, I’d love to come right out and say I’m an “R” guy through-and-through…or a really big fan of “E”. But I can’t. To be honest, I think committing to a single letter in today’s rocky economy is foolish and can only spell trouble. So while I’d love to proclaim “L” my favorite above all letters…or tell you that I invest all of my free time in only “U”…I’d be lying. I just try to play the field with my letters and hope that at the end of the day the numbers don’t get too jealous.


Click here to comment on this article on the Tough Pigs forum!

The Mighty Weaklings album “You Can’t Rock Sittin’ Down” is available at CDBaby.com and iTunes. You can check out mightyweaklings.com for more.

Labels: interview, Muppet performers, Sesame Street