Selects: How Jim Henson Worked

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1:08Good morning, everyone. I hope you are watching Saturday morning cartoons, or maybe The Muppets, because this one is all about Jim Henson. I'm often asked what our favorite episodes are when we do the Q &A at live shows, and many, many times, I go back to the ones on The Muppets and Jim Henson because he was just one of the best. This is from January 6, 2015. How Jim Henson Worked. American Hero. That's not part of the title. That's just me.

1:42Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

1:51Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Howdy. And Jerry, for the last time this year. Yeah. She's just informed us and she's all smiles. She is. Not very nice, Jerry. How'd you like that presentation earlier? The sensitivity training? Uh-huh. It was great. Yes, people, because we work for a corporation, we have things like sensitivity trainings. Uh-huh. And in those trainings, you get shown video examples of various forms of harassment. And they are the best, most fun things to watch ever. They're pretty overt. Yeah, I could watch those all day long. I was wondering how much that production company made from that.

2:38Yeah. They did five little vignettes. I'm sure they paid the actors literal peanuts. Yeah, they were bad actors. They were like, there's the peanut bucket over there. You can pay yourself. Yeah, the one that really got me was the, actually they were all really funny, but the one with the old guy in the factory loading boxes, like a shipping warehouse. And they were giving the old man a hard time about everything. Because he was old? Yeah, because he was old and, you know, they were giving him a hard time because he was out of work for a while and they had to cover for him. Right. The old man, and he had the back brace on.

3:13Did you notice that? And he just, the look on his face, he just kept getting a little more like pouty the whole time yeah i was like dude that's good acting stick up for yourself tell these young kids you know what to do the back brace prevents him from it anyway i just had to bring that up because i just think that stuff is so funny and what's funny is people really do that some of that stuff that you're like what yeah there's some creeps out there yeah um that was a really weird setup for jim henson because he's the least harassy guy he was probably ever. Yeah, he certainly comes across that way.

3:48He's a genuinely good dude. It's not one of these stories you hear about like maybe some of your favorite children's books writers or cartoonists or something. Maybe it were kind of bad people. No, apparently not at all. He was not only... There's a lot of quotes in this article. I thought John Strickland wrote it. It turns out that's not the case. I'm surprised. Yeah. Because he's friends with or down with at least one of Jim Henson's kids. Oh, really? Who I believe lives here in Atlanta. Oh, wow. But in this article, it's one of those things where everybody who compliments Jim Henson, who worked with him, they go to the trouble of complimenting him in a way that's not just like, oh, he was such a great guy.

4:38Yeah. They all back up just a little bit because they're cognizant that that doesn't get it across. Sure. And they want you to understand that they're talking about more than just the great guy. Right. Like, oh, he's dead and I'm not going to speak ill of the dead. And he was a great guy and that's a really thoughtless, polite, inoffensive thing to say. Sure. So like Frank Oz said something like he was a great guy, but at the same time, you know, he was a human, but he was still a really great guy. Right. So like what you're thinking of as a great guy, get rid of that and actually replace it with a genuine human great guy.

5:17Yeah, because as a filmmaker, he's a puppeteer obviously, but he was a filmmaker first and foremost, which a lot of people kind of forget about. Yeah. Did you watch any of these? Oh, yeah. Man. That's a tough, tough job. Super stressful. And you and I have seen it can make good guys and good ladies be real jerks. And yell. Under stressful situations, you know, it's a tough thing. There's a lot of money on the line each day. It's like everybody relaxes, just millions of dollars. Yeah, but Frank Oz, I think that's the point he was making. Even when he would get frustrated and stressed like that, he was still a good guy behind it all.

5:55Yeah, and I read a, I guess it was a book review of a biography about him that showed that it was all, somebody said it was all just play to him. Yeah. Like work was play. Yeah. Even though he worked really hard, he was able to commit himself like that to his work because to him, he was having the time of his life. Yeah. All the time. And apparently there was no line between work and play, which now that we've seen that sensitivity training, could have gotten him in a lot of trouble. But he just enjoyed the life that he had from what I understand. Loved cars. He had like a lotus that was the same color as Kermit the Frog.

6:39He had a Rolls Royce early on from his work. Let's talk about the guy. Yeah, I mean, if you haven't, I just need to go ahead and say, if you haven't listened to the episode on The Muppets, this is what I consider just a more in-depth part two on the man himself. But that's one of our favorite all-time episodes, and from feedback, one of the great all-time fan episodes. Yeah, it was a great episode. Yeah, it was just a lot of fun, and so I hope this augments that one. I hope we do it justice. So that's actually one of the reasons why we can do this episode, because we already did a Muppets episode.

7:18And they tweeted about us. Do you remember? The Henson Company did. Yeah, they did. Which was huge. They approved. It got their actual approval. That's right. Man, that was something.

7:30The Muppets episode is its own thing. It's about Muppets. This is about Jim Henson, and it's appropriate that we're doing this because he was more than just the Muppets, even though everybody pegs him with the Muppets, and that is a huge thing. He was more than that. Like you said, he was a filmmaker, but originally started out as a puppeteer, but kind of a reluctant one. Yeah, he was born in 1936, September 24th, James Maury Henson, M-A-U-R-Y, in Mississippi. And his grandmother, maternal grandmother, was a painter and a quilter and a needle worker, and apparently was a big inspiration to him just to seek out the creative in life.

8:10Right. Which is pretty great. Yeah. And one of the things he got into, well, he was originally kind of a fan of ventriloquism a little bit. But he said later on in life that he was never obsessed with puppets or anything like that, like you would have expected him to be. And as he went to college, I think in Maryland, he started out as a studio artist. That's what he was studying. Yeah, he loved television above all else from the time he was a little kid. He was just transfixed by the tube. He almost kind of made himself destined to be on television by being obsessed with it. Yeah. But he kind of stumbled into puppetry in college, and he started out as a studio art major and ended up graduating with a home ec degree because home ec was the only degree that offered puppet making courses.

9:08Yeah, he majored or he took a puppetry course at first and then a bunch of textiles and crafts courses, which is a great way to start building and making your own puppets. Right. But he graduated with a home ec degree. But by the time he graduated, he was already extremely successful. The Rolls Royce that I mentioned, he bought in time to drive to his college graduation because he'd already created successful shows in his town. Yeah, I think he was in high school. He was on the local TV station doing little guest spots. And then in 1955, the show Sam & Friends debuted. And he also did work on the side making money with them.

9:57I think he did some of the really cool concert posters of the day, really colorful silkscreen posters. And Sam & Friends did really well. but he still wasn't quite sure. I still don't know if I want to. I'm a filmmaker. I did these short films, really sort of weird, abstract short films, live action. Experimental. Totally experimental. Did you see the time piece? Oh, yeah. That one was pretty cool. It was great in its way. And did you see the cube? I watched parts of the cube. Did you see the end? No. Oh, you've got to see the end. And I skipped the middle because I was like, okay, I get where you're going with this.

10:36Yeah, well, we should just set it up real quick. The Cube was a show on NBC. It was a one-hour show. In 1969. The name of the show NBC did was called Experiment in Television. Appropriately, yeah. It was a different thing each week, and he had one week's installment called The Cube, which was a guy just stuck in a white room, but other people could come in and out of the room, but he could not, right? Yes. Okay. and he starts to go kind of crazy. And it has the look and feel of a color TV ad, like lots of overacting and Carol Burnett-esque characters and stuff like that. But the sentiment behind it and everything behind it is really neat.

11:18And it really gives you a good, an eye-opening example of what Jim Henson was capable of, but also what he was into. because when you think of him, you think of Muppets and Sesame Street in particular. Sure, and these are weird, abstract art films, not unlike you watch a Jim Morrison art film from film school, and it's kind of the same style. That was what was going on back then. And he actually got nominated for an Academy Award for Time Piece. I think Jim Henson had Jim Morrison beat by a mile as far as experimental films went. Yeah, I'll agree with you there. so like i said he wasn't quite convinced that puppetry was his future because he was a filmmaker and he was like puppets are still kind of kid stuff right but uh post-college he did the old tour of europe and in europe puppeteering is a whole different business it was a lot more serious um and a lot more um i guess it was treated as art yeah exactly and he said you know what i am going to give this a shot.

12:24Came back to the U.S., married Jane, and even though he and Jane separated, they never divorced. Oh, really? I thought they did. No, they never fulfilled the divorce. They just stayed separated. Okay. And then he started making TV commercials and formed his own company in 1963 with, I don't know if he formed it with Frank Oz, but he hired Frank Oz and Jerry Jewell, who ended up being, obviously, legendary puppeteers. And lifelong collaborators of his. Yeah. Yeah, but he started out making basically a puppet-based commercial ad agency in New York in 1963. Yeah, and they weren't making funny commercials back then, so he was really pretty revolutionary at the time.

13:09Right, and they did pretty well for themselves, and one of the smartest moves he made early on was all of his contracts said that he retained the rights to any of the creations he made for these companies. Yeah. So he was creating some of the things that would later become famous Muppets, like the Cookie Monster was originally made for a chip maker. It was this puppet that couldn't get enough of these chips. Yeah, he was the wheel stealer, and he stole cheese wheels. Yeah, okay, that's what it was. Yeah. And he ended up being the Cookie Monster, and the reason he ended up being the Cookie Monster is because Jim Henson retained the rights to that creation.

13:46He was a very savvy business guy, too. Yeah, and he was using somebody else's dime, these advertisers, like budgets, to kind of hash out and form and make his Muppets. Yeah, Ralph the Dog started out on Purina commercials and was later a sidekick on the Jimmy Dean show in 1963. Which I remember that from the Muppets episode. Ralph was the first big Muppet. He's such like a bit character now. Yeah. That, you know, it's just mind-boggling to think he was the one that started it all. Even before Kermit. Yeah. Before Big Bird, it was Rolf. Kermit kind of stole the show, I think. Yeah. And we'll talk a little more about Kermit and where he came from right after this.

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17:16All right, so it's 1969, and a very, very big thing happens to Jim Henson. He was invited to be on the pilot of a show created by the Children's Television Workshop called Sesame Street. He did not create it. Some people think he did, but he did make his mark by creating most of the iconic characters. And if you were a fan of the old Sesame Streets back then, not all, but many of those little short films, the little claymation ones or the live action ones, he directed those as well, which is pretty cool. I never knew that. I think I knew that. Did you? Yeah, he was our Russ Vick. No, he was their Russ Vick.

18:01That's right. Russ Vick is ours. That's right. So, Chuck, the whole thing that changed everything for him was Sesame Street. Yeah. He wasn't a creator of Sesame Street. They just hired him on. Yeah. And they actually kind of won him over. Because remember, one of the things that Jim Henson always struggled with his whole career was he wanted to explore places that puppets had never really gone to. Right. in themes that they hadn't gone to, at least not in the modern age. Sure. But he was fighting against them not being taken seriously. Yeah, it wasn't like he was anti-puppet by any means. He was, or anti-kids.

18:44Because one of the big reasons he signed on with Children's Television Workshop was their goal to educate kids. Right. It meant a lot to him. But like you said, I think to merge those worlds successfully was a big part of his goal. Right. And struggle for a little while. Uh, Russ Vick, by the way, made the little interstitial things for the Stuff You Should Know television show. Yeah, the animations. Which is why I reference him. Yeah. So, the Children's Television Workshop, which is now called the Sesame Workshop? Yeah. From what I understand, they won him over big time. He makes all of these characters from, like, Big Bird, and I think Kermit came before Sesame Street.

19:22And he started out, I think we talked about this in the Muppet episode, too. He started out looking really weird. Yeah, like a lizard almost. Yeah, not cool at all, like really kind of freaky. Yeah. Which is something that I, now that I know a little more about Jim Henson, I think maybe he might have even been going for. Right. But one of the things that Sesame Street allowed him to do was to really kind of explore something that he'd long been obsessed with, which was television and where it converged with puppets, which was all new territory. and Jim Henson was at the bleeding edge of it. Oh, yeah.

19:59Because if you think about it, when you go to a puppet show live, you're looking at what's essentially a mechanism for hiding the human. And there's just a little area that the puppet can move around in. A little tiny fake stage. Yeah. So Jim Henson stepped back and said, okay, the television is that little tiny area that the puppet can move around in. But it also opens up the whole world for a puppet because you're using camera angles and there's editing and it's not in person. Yeah, just frame out the people. So, and again, we talked about this in the Muppet episode. He created something called Platforming Up to where the puppeteers no longer had to like crouch down to maneuver the puppets.

20:47Yeah, because he was a tall guy. Yeah, tall and lanky. Man, he was skinny. Oh, those running shots in Time Piece. Exactly. Because he was in it. They were hysterical. Yeah, and he weighs about 70 pounds somehow. His big lanky legs. So, yeah, the performers could stand up, which was a huge weight off. Yeah. But at the same time, because you're working with cameras and stuff like that, and they have the whole universe to move around in, and Jim Henson wanted them to move around as much as possible, it also put them in some weird positions. Yeah, if you ever – well, some people might think it's kind of ruining the thing, But I think it's really neat if you just look up on Google Images Muppet Show behind the scenes pictures.

21:27And it'll show the stage sets, you know, like six feet off the ground. Right. And all the people standing beneath. I think it's awesome to look at. But some people don't like, you know, they want to keep that illusion alive. Right. So depending on what kind of person you are, either seek that out or don't. And we gave that warning in the Muppets episode, too. Did we? Yeah. Yeah, I think they're really cool pictures. I agree. Because a lot of times they're looking at video monitors, standing there, contorted, using both hands.

22:01The way puppeteers work together, to me, is just a miracle. Because they're acting as the puppets, but they're still moving among one another as humans underneath, which can be really complicated. In fact, we know some really, really talented puppeteers here in Atlanta. Yeah, the Center for Puppetry Arts is, I think, the nation's largest puppeteer organization. Yep, and that is where we had our TV show debut party, premiere party. It was a really cool experience. Emmett Otter and the gang are right there on display. I think Henson and Kermit cut the ribbon for the grand opening back when it opened and ended up donating like 500 puppets and muppets to the Center for Puppetry Arts.

22:47So if you ever visit Atlanta, people always email us and say, what should we do? I highly recommend going and checking out the Center for Puppetry Arts. Yeah, because they have a museum with, like you said, Emmett Otter. Oh, man, all sorts of cool stuff. Like a full-size, life-size Skeksy behind glass, scary as you can imagine. Yeah, but I was talking about Raymond Carr, our friend, who I hate to keep bringing up the TV show, but it all kind of overlaps. He was a production designer for Stuff You Should Know on Science Channel. Yeah. And he and his friends, Brandon and the gang, are amazing puppeteers, and they're doing some really, really leading-edge, like, cool stuff here in Atlanta.

23:23Yeah. Like these giant puppets operated, like, you know, 15-foot-tall puppets operated by, like, six and eight people. Have you ever seen the Spaceman that they do? No. Oh, man, it's unbelievable. It's really cool. It's like, I don't know how tall he is. He seems like he's 20 feet tall. and they do these at parades and stuff and it's just really, really cool stuff. That's awesome. But Henson is a huge inspiration to them, obviously. Oh, yeah. I think anybody who works even remotely in puppets has got to be inspired by Jim Henson. He's the man. One of the other things that he came up with that was based on putting Muppets or puppets on TV was using softer materials.

24:01Yeah. Everything else was like, up to that point, stiff wood marionettes, ventriloquist dummies, that kind of stuff. Right. He used, like, foam, and it allowed the puppets themselves to have more expressive faces, which is great for a close-up on TV. Yeah, absolutely. And it also, I mean, now looking back, you just are like, well, yeah, of course it's what puppets do. I know. But that was Jim Henson that came up with that, and it changed everything because it took something like, I mean, imagine Howdy Doody. It was like, yeah, it's cool, you know, it's Howdy Doody or whatever. But whether close up or far away, he looked exactly the same.

24:41It was like a wood head with like a moving lower jaw. Yeah. And, you know, he gave you nightmares. With Kermit the Frog or something like that, the fact that he could have different expressions and react differently and his emotions could be shown on his face, that made him that much more popular, that much more approachable Sure. to people who were into him. Absolutely. Which is everybody. Yeah. Yeah, show me someone who doesn't like Muppets in any form. I get it if you don't like it anymore, maybe, but your heart is cold and dead inside. For a while, and this is something I don't think I knew, he dabbled on Saturday Night Live in season one.

25:22Lorne Michaels got him a deal to perform some sketches, and ultimately it wasn't a huge success, and it wasn't the greatest marriage, but it was pretty cool that he was seeking out different avenues to get those puppets on television. It was. And his big break came in 1975. He wanted to make The Muppet Show, and he had a lot of trouble in the U.S. still, even though he had his various successes on commercials and stuff. So he had to go to London, and a TV producer named Lord Lou Grade gave him a deal with Grade's ATV Studios and said, you know what, you can make your show. And The Muppet Show was born.

26:05Oh, yeah? Bada bing, bada boom. That was it. That was it. And you can really see Jim Henson's love of variety shows and just kind of, well, just the stage in The Muppet Show. Because if you think about it, the whole thing's set backstage at a variety show. It's such a great idea when you look back at it. We take it for granted a little bit because we were kids. but now as an adult it's like what a perfect way to frame this world is it's basically like 30 rock or 30 rock was the muppet show right well the muppet show started all that yeah i don't know if carol burnett was before the muppet show yeah it was before was it yeah so she did a lot of backstage stuff didn't she uh i wonder who started that i don't know i mean hers was more sketch Yeah, but some of it was like backstage.