BAM!
Nov 20-21, 2004 : NYC
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Part
3: Commercials and Experiments
The Commercials and Experiments session was hosted by Craig Shemin, president of the Jim Henson Legacy and former Henson writer, and by Karen Falk, Jim Henson Company archivist. The place was packed with an enthusiastic crowd; it was neat to see so many people interested in Henson's early work.
Craig and Karen introduced themselves, and talked about the first batch of clips they were going to show. Something that I didn't know was that during the Sam and Friends days, Henson would do a Wilkins Coffee commercial for local DC stations, and then sell the same script to another sponsor in another area.
That's why you'll see Wilkins and Wontkins in ads for Kraml milk and other products, because it's a reshoot of an ad originally produced for Wilkins. To demonstrate this, Craig and Karen showed some "sets" of commercials:
Wilkins Coffee: Wilkins points a cannon at Wontkins. "Do you like
Wilkins Coffee?" "I never tasted it!" BOOM! "Now what
do YOU think of Wilkins?" Then the same ad for Kraml milk -- BOOM! --
and Frank's Orange Nectar -- BOOM!
Wilkins Coffee: Wilkins and Wontkins are standing near the Washington Monument. Wontkins says he doesn't like coffee, and the monument falls on him. Wilkins smiles, "Bad things happen to people who don't like Wilkins." Then a similar ad for Taystee Bread, with a spider gobbling up Wontkins. The same for Nash's Coffee, with the spider.
La Touraine Coffee: Wilkins has a can of La Touraine Coffee, and a can marked Cheap Coffee. He asks which Wontkins would like, and Wontkins says, "I'll have the cheap stuff!" The top of the can opens, and three birds pop out, saying, "Cheap cheap cheap!" Then the same ad for Dugan's Bread, and Nash's Coffee.
Esskay Meats: This was a sponsorship spot for Sam & Friends, with
Esskay spokeswoman Patricia and Moldy Hay, a proto-Ernie puppet. Patricia
has a paper bag stuffed with Esskay sausage products, and she's asking
Moldy Hay what he likes. She brings out each item, and he says that he
likes that one okay, but it's not his favorite kind. After
spotlighting each product, Moldy Hay admits that his favorite kind is pork
and bacon sausage. Kermit pops out of the paper bag, having eaten all the
pork and bacon sausage, and he delivers a tagline about how Esskay makes
their sausage with the finest quality pork and bacon, blah blah. Sticking
out of the bag, it actually seems a bit sarcastic, like he's poking fun at
Patricia without her realizing it.
Esskay Meats: Another sponsorship spot with Patricia, backed by Kermit and Harry. Patricia talks about cocktail wieners over a jazzy snare and hi-hat beat, and Kermit and Harry chime in on the beat with phrases like "Hot Shots!" and "Ess-Kay!"
C & P Telephone: Suzy is a Sesame-type little girl puppet; Mack is a big round guy (below in a picture from another ad). Mack is making a telephone call, and Suzy asks him: "Did you check the directory?" He says yes, and a big paper heart floats down from the ceiling to a chorus of jingling bells. Suzy smiles, "Nice things happen to people who use the telephone directory."
Southern Bell: Mack is making a phone call. Suzy says, "People who
don't use the directory blow up sometimes!" Mack says, "Oh,
that's a lot of--" BOOM!
Purina Dog Chow: Rowlf is a director, with a beret and megaphone. He's directing Baskerville in the new Purina commercial. Baskerville will be inside the Purina box, and he'll jump out of the box when Rowlf yells "CHOW TIME!" Baskerville gets down into the box. Rowlf calls "CHOW TIME!" but Baskerville doesn't jump out -- we just hear munching sounds. Rowlf calls cut, and asks what the problem is. Baskerville says he's eating the dog food. Rowlf pours in some water from a pitcher to bring out the flavor. Baskerville says he's ready, and Rowlf yells "Roll 'em!" An announcer says that Purina guarantees your money back if your dog doesn't love nutritious, flavor-charged Purina. Baskerville thrusts his head through the package: "Of course, your dog might like it in a bowl!"
Purina Dog Chow: Rowlf is eating Purina, Baskerville is eating another brand. Rowlf observes that Baskerville is looking a little flat today. Baskerville turns; he's two dimensional.
Marathon Gasoline: Two gas nozzles sing a peppy song about filling your car with Marathon. "Take it right from the hose's mouth!"
Southern Bread: The colonel is a Southern gentleman, with a white beard and mustache. "To prove my love for Southern bread, I'd stop a locomotive with my bare hands!" The train runs him over.
Southern Bread: "I'd do anything for Southern Bread. I'd even go to Yankee stadium!" There's a shot of a fan, screaming: "Let's murder the Yankees!" The Colonel brightens: "You know, I could really like it here."
Royal Crown Cola: Nutty Bird has a guitar, he sings a peppy song about RC Cola. Sour Bird grumps: "I hate a folk singer with a message."
Linit Fabric Finish: A frustrated housewife leaves the room, her ironing half-done. Sir Linit appears, a bottle of spray starch dressed as a knight. He sings about Linit, skating over a shirt with irons on his feet. The ironed clothes leap from the ironing board to join in the dance. When the wife comes back, she finds all the clothes ironed. She picks up the bottle of Linit, musing, "Maybe I should try this." The clothes jump up and scream, "Yes!"
La Choy Chow Mein: A housewife is preparing dinner when the La Choy Dragon pops his head through the window: "May I make a suggestion?" He stomps in. The woman gasps, "Good heavens! There's a dragon in my kitchen!" The dragon extols the virtues of serving canned chow mein for dinner, destroying the kitchen in his enthusiasm -- tearing cabinet doors off the hinges, demolishing the counters with a sweep of his tail. He says that the food is "quick-cooked in dragon fire," demonstrating by breathing fire at a can -- setting the drapes alight. "Dear me!" the woman cries, as she gets a fire extinguisher. And one more thing: "Never serve La Choy chow mein without the NOODLES!" The dragon slams a can of noodles on the table, smashing it and knocking the woman backwards onto the floor. She lies on the ground, unconscious, as he smashes through the wall on the way out.
Ideal Toys: The first time I heard about this commercial, it was on a storyboard in one of the traveling Henson exhibits. I wondered if maybe it was actually a put-on, a goof by Henson that wasn't ever made. Nope, it's real. Rowlf introduces the three Ideal Toys puppets -- Rowlf, Kermit and Snerf (a long, thin Frackle that bounces up and down and makes weird noises). Rowlf tries to keep control of the commercial, introducing each puppet, but the puppets have a life of their own. The Kermit puppet interrupts: "I am a Kermit. I'm made by Ideal. I think you'll agree I have real appeal." The Snerf puppets appear and make weird sounds. Then two Kermit puppets say: "Oh buy us, oh buy us, oh buy us we beg. For if you don't buy us, we'll bite you in the leg." Rowlf is outraged. Then three Rowlf puppets appear: "So buy us at once, we're a bundle of charms." The Kermit puppets: "And if you don't buy us, we'll break both your arms." Rowlf gives up: "Okay! That's enough! Friends, buy the Ideal Muppets. The kids will be screaming for them!" All the puppets scream.
Mike Douglas Show: A clip from a 1966 Mike Douglas Show appearance, with Henson talking to Mike, and another couple of annoying guests. He shows them a storyboard for a Southern Bread commercial, and says that sometimes an 8-second commercial could take half a day to film. They show a passel of commercials as examples (which Craig and Karen say are the only copies of these ads that they know of).
FHA: Grump tries to repair his decrepit house. A man from the Federal Housing Authority drives up and asks if he wants a housing loan. Grump says no, he can fix it himself. Then the house falls down around him.
FHA: Skip and Scoop are building a house with a housing loan from FHA. Skip has a two by four over his shoulder, he knocks Scoop over every time he turns around.
La Choy: The dragon and a male puppet are in trenchcoats, whispering about La Choy chow mein. The man asks where the dragon got his information, and the dragon whips off his hat and cries: "I'm the real La Choy Dragon! And I quick-cook 'em myself!" He lets loose with a burst of flame. "That guy burns me up," sighs the man.
Aurora toilet tissue: A beautiful ad featuring a white glove dressed up with pretty eyes, dancing on her fingertips and jumping around the toilet paper.
Craig and Karen introduce the next section -- industrials for sales meetings.
Pak-Nit: The Compax Corporation presents: Shrinkel and Stretchel! The
short tells the story of two siblings, a boy named Shrinkel and a girl
named Stretchel, who are lost in the woods. "They wandered around for
years, and finally stumbled upon a gingerbread house!"
Taminella the witch appears, and cries: "You're just in time for
dinner -- my dinner, that is!" She pushes the kids into a huge
oven. The kids seem unaffected. "My, it's hot in here," Shrinkel
observes. Stretchel agrees: "Just like the dryer back home!"
Taminella takes them out, and she's amazed: "How come you're in such
good shape!" The twins answer: "We've got Pak-Nit RX!"
Taminella gasps: "That's the new magic spell I read about in Witches'
Home Journal!" The kids show off how Pak-Nit RX keeps them from
shrinking and stretching in the wash. Stretchel says, "For the first
time, we're shape-controlled!" and does a funny, almost sexual little
dance. Taminella is impressed, and soon all of their clothes use Pak-Nit
RX. We see a clothes line with boys' clothes, girls' clothes -- and then
monsters' clothes, including a sweater with holes for two heads and four
arms. As the film ends, Taminella waves goodbye, then salutes.
IBM: A short celebrating Rowlf's many IBM industrials. It plays like the final short in the series, but I'm not sure if it was. Rowlf is at the piano, singing: "And now, the time is here, and I am filled with strange emotion... My friends all say it's clear: For IBM, I feel devotion... When I look at my career, I've traveled each and every highway... But much more, much more than this, I did it myyyyy way." As the song continues, it splices in clips from previous shorts. Rowlf puts salt and ketchup on a typewriter, and eats it. Rowlf throws a typewriter case down a spiral staircase, to demonstrate how durable it is. We see the typewriter fall, and then a shot from below looking up at Rowlf, a la Vertigo. The typewriter falls and falls -- and as Rowlf finishes his song with a flourish, the typewriter case smashes through his piano and hits him.
Wilsons Meats: The second sales meeting short, with Skip and Scoop
apologizing for the first one. Skip starts: "Hi there, all you lovers
of hot dogs and money!" Scoop says that last year's film was
regrettable, as it implied that shooting Wilsons commercials was a party,
complete with alcohol and dancing women. Nothing could be further from the
truth, so this year, they're going to show the real story of how a Wilsons
commercial is made. We see the Henson team -- Henson, Oz, Nelson and Juhl
-- meeting with Wilsons ad executives.
They agree to send a hapless Frank out to do customer focus groups, packing him off with a movie projector and a screen. Frank goes to a woman's house, pushing his way in and nervously wrecking the living room as he sets up his equipment. She throws him out onto the pavement. Frank is then thrown out of a succession of homes. He returns to the conference room with a cast on his arm and plaster on his nose. Frank hands over his "report" -- a loose sheaf of crumpled, wet paper.
Henson pitches a low-pressure, artistic approach, and the execs agree. He takes a handful of money out of the cash box, and they get to work. We see a woman in a diaphonous gown, dancing around in a desert at sunrise. At the last moment, she puts in a plug for Wilsons bacon.
The execs don't like that one, so Henson takes another batch of cash to create a fast-moving, pop art commercial -- an odd assortment of animated paper cutouts, explosions and shirtless men shouting "Wilsons Meats!"
The execs suggest a more conservative approach, so Henson takes more cash.
The next commercial takes place in a laboratory, with men in white coats
hunched over a collection of dingy machinery. A narrator describes the
research being done for Wilsons, running a strip of bacon through the
"smoke-o-meter" to determine the smoked goodness in each piece.
The tagline: "Wilsons Bacon: Scientifically proved to be immeasurably
gooder!"
That still isn't right, so Henson takes more money to do a commercial with stop-motion animation. He describes the process of stop-motion, moving the item a tiny fraction and taking a picture. The completed ad is a mess, with a big ham and a little ham doing jerky dances around each other. The cans get dented as the ad goes on, and black paint is spilled on the background.
Now all the cash is gone. The execs in the conference room revolt, surrounding Henson and forcing him down on the table to beat him. Jerry Nelson gets an idea, and runs into the back room to get the two Muppets, Skip and Scoop, which were stored in a cardboard box from last year's ads. Everyone agrees to do another series of commercials like last year's.
The short ends with another party, an inspiring example of research driving today's modern advertising.
Wilsons Meats commercial: Skip and Scoop are in Italy, standing in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Scoop asks why they're there, and Skip says they're there to prove that "nothing's leaner than Wilson's certified bacon!" The tower falls on him. Scoop says, "Help stamp out bad jokes. Buy Wilson's Certified Bacon!"
Craig and Karen segue into the Experiments part of the program with some
commercials that also qualify as experimental.
Parody: Craig introduces a short which seems to be a parody of a bunch of different commercials; they have no idea why this was produced, or if it was ever used for anything. It may have just been made for fun. A dozen different ads flash by for products like Flapsole Sneakers and Dandy Diapers.
Bufferin: A spooky Bufferin commercial, produced by Henson in collaboration with composer Raymond Scott. This commercial is live-action humans. A man talks about his memories, and the camera zooms in on his forehead -- and then in through his skull. We see stringy synapses float by as he gives us a tour of his brain. "Over here, I keep my childhood memories..." We see weird flashes of childhood images. He shows us his wife, and his kids. "Hey, here's a nice memory..." Flashes of a family picnic in the woods. Suddenly, there are ugly scratches and smears on the film. "Wait a second -- what's this? Oh, yeah, I had a headache that day." Flashes of a box of Bufferin. The pills in his hand. He takes the pills. Then back to the happy shots. He talks about taking Bufferin, and getting back to the things that make nice memories. We pull out of his skull, past the synapses, and see his face again. "Fast-working Bufferin. Remember?" It's really weird. I can't believe this was on television.
IBM: An excerpt from an industrial called "Paperwork Explosion." A narrator talks about the march of progress, as clips show medieval woodcuts, machines, factories, cars, Einstein, the lunar surface. An old man shrugs, "Well, you can't stop progress!" Fast cuts show IBM employees at work. "At IBM, our work is related to the paperwork explosion." BOOM! Stacks of paper blow up.
Craig and Karen introduce some of the really experimental stuff.
Sam and Friends: Visual Thinking. Harry shows Kermit how to visualize his thoughts, with animations superimposed on the screen. Craig points out that Henson was using very new technology here -- in the mid-50's, the only way you could see what something would look like on television is to be in a TV studio. They had to experiment with this technology in the studio itself.
Mike Douglas Show: Another clip from the Mike Douglas appearance, where
Henson demonstrates his "No-Body" puppet -- floating eyes and
lips that appear over a projection of film clips. Henson demonstrates how
the puppet works, which requires three people to operate. He performs a
sad song called "Nobody," about how alone he is.
Ripples: Henson did two short films in the early 60's with Raymond Scott, called Ripples and Wheels. We see Ripples, which involves a man sitting by a lake tossing in stones. Each stone creates a "ripple," with quick cuts illuminating a particular theme -- religion, family, progress. The short ends with a shot of the man sipping his coffee. The audience goes, "Hmmm."
Youth 68: Henson produced two hour-long specials for NBC's "Experiments in Television" series in the late 60's. The first is Youth 68, a "collage" about what was happening with the younger generation. We see an excerpt, and it's wild -- a series of film clips and interviews with young hippies, disapproving oldsters, and the Mamas and Papas. (Seriously.) There's odd juxtapositions, and a superimposed silhouette of a dancing woman. "The kids want to be free, man." It's impossible to describe, but it's lovely -- this is at the Museum of Television and Radio if anybody wants to see it. Karen has a whole stack of letters in the Archive that were sent in response to Youth 68, ranging from "This beautiful work of art reflects the tenor of our time" to "You're certainly doing your best to kill television."
The Cube: Henson's second "Experiments" special, from 1969. A
hapless man is trapped in a white tiled room, where he's visited by
mysterious strangers who drift in and out. We see a few clips, including
Jerry Nelson's appearance as a monk who tells the man that "all is
all." Craig says that there are some documents in the Henson Archive
working on a proposal for a third "Experiments" show that was
never made.
Cyclia: Some clips from the footage that Henson shot between 1966 and 1969 for his proposed nightclub. The footage is uninspired, basically blobs of color and kaleidoscopic paper-cutout animation, over the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction."
Cat and Mouse: An experimental cartoon, which may not have been made for any specific purpose. It's beautiful -- a short set to a jazz riff, with an ethereal cat drifting in and out of shadows to chase a mouse.
NBC White Paper: An opening that Henson put together for a special called
"NBC White Paper: The Ordeal of the American City." It involves
a juxtaposition of urban images -- traffic, industry, fires, riots.
Sesame Street: Two of Henson's Sesame animations, one for 4 and one with the song "Eleven Cheer."
Timepiece: Henson's 1965 Oscar-winning short about a man in the hospital confronted with the fact that his time is running out. This piece really stands out in the context of the other "experimental" pieces in the program, many of which were very unsettling and spooky. Timepiece has odd juxtapositions and weird cuts, but there's humor in it -- it's essentially good-natured, whereas some of the other items tonight have been dour and maybe even threatening.
That's the end of the film program, and now the panel is introduced: Craig, Karen, Jerry Juhl and Jane Henson. (All these quotes are approximate, based on notes that I was taking on the fly.)
Craig: "Do you have any opening statements, or rebuttals?"
Jane: "Thanks for sitting through all that! There's lots more where that came from, and it's always fun to see. Craig and Karen go through all these things, and they probably know more about it than we do... Jerry and I were over there, feeling like we were Statler and Waldorf."
Jerry: "We looked at some of those things and thought, oh... They paid the rent, but ohhhh..."
Craig says that Jerry did the voice for the Rowlf doll, and tomorrow we'll also see him as Rowlf's nephew.
Q: Some of the material was so dark; how does it fit in with the rest of the Muppet work?
Jerry: "There's stuff in the Muppets that's on the dark side too. Some of it is youth, the kind of angst and dark thinking that you do as an undergrad -- and it carries over, and you work it out as an adult. The material may look dark on the screen, but Jim's attitude about it was always playful. He was never dark about it."
Craig: "Some of this was done when Jim was still in college. You can see him maturing as an artist through the years."
Jane: "There's an interesting relationship between the stuff that's known as the 'Muppet work' and this stuff. Jim was always working on projects. I feel that when we talk now about what was going on in 1968, "Youth '68" was a beautiful piece of what was going on. Jim was very early in that style of editing, he was very fascinated by the psychedelic thing. People look at it now, and they think it had to do with drugs, but Jim never had anything to do with drugs."
Q: In the very early days of Sesame Street, a lot of it was like this experimental work, more than the puppets.
Karen: "Joan Ganz Cooney looked at children watching a lot of television commercials, memorizing commercials... How many of you can sing the Oscar Mayer commercial? It's deep in your soul -- so she wanted to use that to sell educational concepts. They looked to Jim because of the commercial work, and Ed Sullivan."
Q: Were the Muppets originally made for children?
Jane: "No." (Laughs.) "We were coming out of college, Jim made Kermit when he was 18." When they were on WRC doing Sam & Friends, they were at the end of the news strips, at 6:25 and 11:25. "And in the last five minutes, they had this puppet show on. It was wonderful for us, because the audience we picked up -- we introduced Huntley and Brinkley, and then Steve Allen's Tonight Show. We picked up a very sophisticated audience. Jim didn't think about puppets as being for children."
Jerry: "When I joined, Jim used to talk about how he was very interested in the European tradition -- they use puppetry for adults, for political commentary. We were talking like that until Sesame Street happened. It was a change, but not a complete change. We knew that we were writing for small children, we knew it wouldn't be a success if we didn't also appeal to parents."
Jane: "We felt as young parents that we desperately needed a children's show that we could enjoy. The monsters on Sesame Street... Jim loved those monsters, but they were originally on Ed Sullivan, and they were darker, and they had teeth."
Jerry: "We had one huge book in those days, with the educational goals of the show... The show was based on that, and theoretically we were supposed to justify anything that we wrote. But I have to say, sometimes we would write a bit just because it was funny -- good for the characters, or good for the show -- and then we would ransack that book, looking for justification for it... We reversed the process for The Muppet Show. We did it for adults, but we also brought the children along."
Q: Was the experimental stuff self-financed, or did Jim have backers?
Jane: "Self-financed."
Craig: "The commercial work really under-wrote the rest of it." The Wilkins commercials were done in maybe 15 markets, and they were profitable. Once the puppets were built, and the sets constructed, it was easy to redo the commercials and make money from that.
Q: There was a lot of irony in the commercials. Was that Jim's attitude,
that he was doing this to make money, but he would slip in his own ideas?
Jane: "Jim really enjoyed the jokes. He loved to shoot funny things; they were a real challenge for him. When we got the coffee commercials, he didn't drink coffee. He enjoyed the challenge of doing those commercials, even though he didn't drink it."
Jerry: "He enjoyed the irony of doing these commercials, using characters who vehemently do not like the product. He always appreciated that, and it was amazing, he could sell that to the client."
Craig: "Those were the real ad guys in the Wilsons Meats film, at the conference table."
Jane: "They really enjoyed doing that!"
Q: Do you think Sesame Street has maintained its dual appeal?
Karen: "Sesame Street has lowered its age target overall. It was originally for kids who didn't have access to pre-school, and give disadvantaged kids opportunities. Now that preschool and day care are pretty universal, they knocked it down a year or two. There's still an effort to make it appeal to adults..."
Craig: "When you get celebrities like James Gandolfini and Edie Falco on the show, that's there for the adults. But I don't know if it's done in the same way as it used to be."
Q: It seems like there's a lot of material left behind. How much did Jim save, even for things like commercials?
Karen: "Jim kept copies of all his work, and drawings, and files."
Craig: "They weren't always well labeled, but he had them!"
Q: How did Jim take it when things didn't really work out?
Jane: "Mostly, I feel like -- with Jim, he took a few breaths and went on to the next thing. He always had several things he wanted to accomplish. He'd go on to the next thing, sometimes without even breaking step."
Jerry: "There were certainly low points, and times that were really hard for him. But I concur with that completely, he was always looking forward. That was a keystone, he was always forward-looking. There were times in the 80's when we were doing clip shows, like an anniversary show, and Jim wouldn't like any of the clips. He was always interested in the next thing. He didn't even want to look at the old things."
Q: What was he like as a collaborator?
Jerry: "It was extraordinary on all sorts of levels. To use a phrase, somebody once described Jim as having a whim of steel. He was very quiet, very calm about things -- in 35 years, I saw him mad maybe twice. He would always introduce things in a way that was very calm, very casual... but he always knew exactly what he wanted."
Jane: "Jim was a great appreciater. He loved other people's creative energy. Although -- if he said it was "interesting" -- that meant go back and do it again."
Q: Who wrote the No-Body song?
Jerry: "I think... I think I worked on it with Jim." (The audience laughs, that he can't quite remember.) "You know, it was a job! Thursday morning, cup of coffee, we gotta write something. The more I think about it, I think that Jim did that. That kind of a cadence, that sounds like Jim to me."
Q: Can you name any influences that inspired Jim when he was young? Any formal musical trianing?
Jane: "He really launched into his career at 17, so his career was
his training... Burr
Tillstrom really opened the door with Kukla, Fran and Ollie... Another
big influence was Pogo.
And we certainly used a lot of Stan
Freberg in the early days."
Jerry: "The Hubleys also really influenced his animation style."
Time is up, and they have to close. They get huge applause from the audience.
Craig: "And come back tomorrow!"
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