Tough Pigs Anthology
Aug/Sept 2002
The Road to Hollywood
Chapter 1: The Swamp Years, Episode IV
The Muppet Movie is a perfect little gem of a movie. It just seems
completely effortless -- like, once you've decided to make a movie with the
Muppets, then this is the obvious story to tell, and that's the obvious way to
tell it. Every time I see it, I'm blown away by how easy it all feels -- like
they just took the puppets out, turned the cameras on, and this is the movie
they were destined to make.
But, obviously, the true story is that that feeling of fluid perfection is only
possible when a whole bunch of creative people work like mad on it. We only see
the product, not the process.
This month, in the Tough Pigs Anthology: a glimpse into the process behind The Muppet Movie, using an early script to see what got changed along the way.
The script I've got is written by Jerry Juhl and Jack Burns, and it's dated June 12, 1978. It doesn't say which draft it is -- it's pretty polished, and most of the movie as we know it is there, but it's also got a lot of bits that would be cut and changed before they started shooting in mid-July. Some of these scenes may have actually been shot, and they didn't end up in the final edit -- there's a few pictures in the Muppet Movie Book that don't appear in the film -- but much of it was probably changed before shooting.
I'm not going to post the script as is -- I don't have the rights to do that, obviously, and also it would be boring, since anybody who reads this site has already seen the movie a dozen times. I'm just going to excerpt the bits that were cut and changed, as a kind of academic Muppet Theory scholarship type deal, and hope that I get away with it.
Okay, is everybody ready? Roll film!
The Road to Hollywood Contents
July 2002 -- The Decline and Fall of Gorch, part two: The Fall
June 2002 -- The Decline and Fall of Gorch, part one: The Decline
April 2002 -- April Frog's Day
March 2002 -- The Muppets Take Madison Avenue
February 2002 -- Kermit and Piggy : That Magnificent Hankering
January 2002 -- Off the Street
December 2001 -- It Feels Like Christmas
November 2001 -- Muppets: 1, Host: 0